October 1, 2015 12:00pm by David Farrar

I’m on Australia’s side

The Herald reports:

It could soon be time to introduce laws to treat Australians in New Zealand as poorly as Kiwis are received across the Tasman, the Maori Party says.

If this means deporting Australians who do serious crimes, I’m in favour.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop met New Zealand counterpart Murray McCully and Prime Minister John Key in New York this week.

Afterwards, she said the Australian Government would talk further about its policy of detaining and deporting non-Australian offenders who have served a prison sentence of a year or more. Ms Bishop said she would ask Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton to speak to New Zealand Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse but gave no indication that the policy would be reviewed. That meeting has not been scheduled.

If Australia was deporting people for incredibly minor offences such as say one shoplifting offence after 30 years of living there, then that would be stupid. But to get a jail sentence of one year or more requires a relatively serious or persistent level of offending, and why would Australia want to keep criminals they don’t want to?

If you are a Kiwi living in Australia and don’t want to be deported back to NZ, then there’s two ways you can do that.