New Zealand prime minister says deportations are damaging relations with Australia, but Peter Dutton defends policy

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Australia’s deportation of criminals with almost no connection to New Zealand isn’t “fair dinkum” and Kiwi prime minister Jacinda Ardern says she won’t let the issue go.

Ardern held talks with Australian prime minister Scott Morrison on Friday and the issue was discussed alongside terrorism, trade and the Pacific step-up.

Before the meeting, the home affairs minister Peter Dutton defended the deportation policy and the opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, said Labor “[hasn’t] argued for change in this area”.

“We have seen cases where there is also almost no connection of an individual to New Zealand who have been deported,” Ardern told reporters in Melbourne on Thursday.

“I consider that to be a corrosive part of that policy. And it’s having a corrosive effect on our relationship.”

The 2014 changes to Australian law mandated the automatic cancellation of a visa for anyone sentenced to 12 months or more in jail.

In the past five years more than 4,000 people have been stripped of their Australian visas and returned to their country of birth, regardless of how long ago they left. New Zealanders have made up the vast bulk of the deportations.

On Friday Dutton said “we need to stand up for Australians and the New Zealand prime minister is rightly doing that for her people”.

“But where we have Australian citizens who are falling victim in certain circumstances where people are sexually offending against children for example, we have had a big push to try to deport those paedophiles and people who have committed those crimes,” he told Channel Nine’s Today program.

Bad neighbours? Australia and New Zealand 'not friends' after deportation row Read more

Albanese said “the balance is essentially right but it is legitimate if there are issues for Jacinda Ardern to raise those with Scott Morrison”.

“We don’t want to see this to be a partisan debate. New Zealand is a very good friend of Australia.”

Following Friday’s meeting, Ardern said New Zealanders look at this policy and “think ‘that’s not fair dinkum’,” she told reporters.

Morrison made it clear the policy will not change, but Ardern said she will keep raising it.

“New Zealand absolutely accepts that Australia is within its right to deport those who have engaged in criminal activity in Australia,” she said.

“However, there are examples, what I would call on the more extreme end, where individuals have little to no connection at all to New Zealand, who have for all intents and purposes grown up in Australia, and those are the cases we continue to raise at every level.”

Leaving the meeting, Morrison did not answer a question on the deportation issue.

“Progress for a lot of issues today. It was wonderful ... it’s always a great relationship,” he told reporters.

Rock star welcome

Ardern received a rock star welcome from a packed Melbourne Town Hall where she delivered an address on why good government matters on Thursday evening. During her speech, she said politicians should not be stoking a climate of fear and hate.

“We have choices as politicians in a political environment, you can either choose to capitalise on that fear, stoke it and politically benefit from it,” she said. “Or you can run a counter-narrative, you can talk about hope.”

During the address she reflected on the importance of building consensus in politics.

“To be truly transformational in government you have to build consensus. People have to actually decide what you’ve done should stick, otherwise it’s gone,” Ardern said, adding she hopes her government can build a lasting legacy on reducing child poverty and action on climate change.

Asked what it will take to get meaningful global action on climate change, Ardern responded: “a visit to the Pacific islands”.

“If you visit Kiribati or Tuvalu, it is real. This is not a hypothetical. The changes they’re seeing in their natural environment are happening now.”

Ardern was reluctant to offer Australia any advice on its journey towards Indigenous constitutional recognition because she said New Zealand had an imperfect record when it came to the Māori people.

“We’re not ones to lecture,” she said.

The 38-year-old leader lamented there were too many Māori children in state care and adults in prisons.

“That really is an acknowledgement of the failings in our system, we need to address that, acknowledge that and change that. It’s taken us too long to date,” she said.

Ardern was widely lauded for her empathy following the Christchurch attacks in March.

She brushed off the international attention her behaviour garnered, telling the audience, it was a very Kiwi response and she was mirroring exactly what was happening all over the country.

“I was saddened by it, it shouldn’t have been noteworthy,” she said.

It’s understood the prime minister’s schedule won’t permit her to take time to see the mural in Brunswick, which depicts the iconic moment she hugged a Muslim woman.