A decorated former soldier who faces deportation from Australia as a security risk – despite a military record including acting as bodyguard for the New Zealand prime minister in Afghanistan – has asked from prison: “Doesn’t John Key remember me?”

The case of Ngati Kanohi Te Eke Haapu, also known as Ko Rutene, is at the centre of an emerging trans-Tasman political dispute over Australia’s hardline approach to deporting New Zealand-born residents on “character grounds”.

Rutene, who has no criminal record, is one of up to 300 mostly New Zealand-born men who risk being deported from Australia solely on the basis of membership of the Rebels motorcycle club, according to his barrister Michael Pena-Rees.

Pena-Rees said the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, was unaware of both Rutene’s distinguished military background and his de facto relationship with an Australian woman when revoking his visa.



“As soon as there’s an attachment to a [motorcycle] club, you are deemed a national security risk,” Pena-Rees said.

“The problem we have with the former soldier [is] you can’t be a national security risk if you fought in Afghanistan and were privy to national high security information, you were protecting the prime minister, you were operating sophisticated weaponry.

“This was such an inept investigation by his staff that Dutton wasn’t even aware this former soldier had a partner in Perth, and was stepfather to her child, when one of the main things you have to consider under the UN charter is the effect on families.”

Pena-Rees said the former army lance corporal was awarded three medals of honour after serving from 2008 to 2012.

News of his detention prompted broadsides from opposition MPs in his home country, including New Zealand Labour’s corrections spokesman Kelvin Davis, who said it was an example of the “politics of fear” and “pretty damn shit to be honest”.

The New Zealand minister of internal affairs, Peter Dunne, wrote in Fairfax Media on Thursday that Australia was subjecting his country’s citizens to “appalling treatment” in “pretty disgusting” detention centres.

“Australia has always had a much more frontier approach to justice than New Zealand, as the treatment of their Indigenous people has shown, and the current treatment of boat refugees continues to show,” he wrote.

“The modern concentration camp approach Australia has taken is simply wrong.”

Rutene was arrested last week outside a maximum security Perth prison where he had just visited clubmate Joel Makaea, another New Zealand native who in September became the first person in WA to face deportation solely because of membership of an outlaw motorcycle club.



Other New Zealand-born Rebels facing deportation include Mehake Tepuia, a father of three with no criminal record, and Michael Joiner, whose convictions Pena-Rees said dated back more than a decade.

Friends claim Rutene was asleep in the back of a car when police pointed a stun gun at his head, dragged him out and handcuffed him before taking him back inside the prison.

Rutene’s partner Teresa Mariner told Guardian Australia that he spent the next six days in solitary confinement.

Mariner said she had been unaware of Rutene’s work on Key’s security detail in Afghanistan in 2010 until she was visiting him in prison this week. Key had told New Zealand media that he was not aware of Rutene’s case.

“He just said the other day: ‘Doesn’t John Key remember shaking my hand and thanking me when I was his bodyguard? I was one of his personal bodyguards in Afghanistan and this is how I’m being treated’,” she said.



“He doesn’t talk much about the army, he’s normally very reserved and for all this to be going on around him, I think he would be mortified.”

Mariner said she and her daughter, both Australians, would ultimately have no choice but to join Rutene in New Zealand should he be deported.

“I could understand it if he was a criminal but he’s not and it’s just so unfair,” she said.

“Our life is here. We met each other here. Everything we have is here. We have a daughter at kindy, her grandparents are here. But I know it’s not something he would want, to be pushed away, when he’s done nothing wrong.”

WA Rebels president Nick Martin said Rutene was one of eight New Zealand-born Rebels in Western Australia held in Australian prisons for deportation and vowed to fight the case “as far as we can fight it”.

Pena-Rees said he estimated there were up to 300 foreign-born members of the Rebels in Australia that Dutton could deport “if the minister wishes to do it”.



He said Rutene’s case was likely to end up in the high court. He called for his release into the community “pending an outcome of a judicial review”.



A spokesman for Dutton told Fairfax that a person suspected of having been a member of “a group or organisation which has been involved in criminal conduct ... does not pass the character test”.

New Zealand citizens held in Christmas Island detention centre, the scene of violent protests earlier this week, included those convicted of manslaughter, grievous bodily harm, child sex offences, armed robbery, armed assault on a child or spouse, assaulting police, drug supply and weapons and stalking offences, the Australian government said.