The Prime Minister’s department directly instructed the Home Affairs department to attempt to find a way to stop the deportation of so many New Zealand citizens who had lived in Australia for many years – and the department tried to find a way to restrict the change to New Zealand citizens only but found they legally couldn’t, Sky News can reveal.
The PM’s department’s instruction came prior to the drafting of Immigration Minister Andrew Giles’ Direction 99 in January 2023, which has led to a series of administrative appeals tribunal decisions overturning the minister’s decisions to kick sex offenders and other criminals out of Australia.
Information from sources involved in implementing the decision at the time is that both Immigration Minister Andrew Giles and the Prime Minister’s department instructed the Home Affairs department to “fix the problem”.
This came after discussions between the PM and former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
Ms Ardern had lobbied Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton in the previous government to change the settings on deportations to no avail.
In implementing the Andrew Giles change, the Home Affairs department looked at ways to confine the direction to New Zealand citizens but found that because the Migration Act was non-discriminatory, they could not do so.
In a six month period between Jacinda Ardern and Anthony Albanese meeting and discussing this issue and Andrew Giles putting in place direction 99 in January 2023, the New Zealand High Commission was even lobbying the Home Affairs department on the issue, sources have told Sky News.
The Prime Minister first flagged that he was acting on this matter after meeting Jacinda Ardern in both June and July 2022, shortly after winning office.
“We will continue to deport people when appropriate,” Mr Albanese said at the time.
“But we will have some common sense apply here.
“Where you have a circumstance where someone has lived their entire life effectively in Australia with no connection whatsoever to New Zealand, common sense should apply and we will act as friends.”
The Prime Minister told parliament last week that the New Zealanders actually wanted him to throw out section 501 of the Act which automatically says serious offenders have to be deported.
The government did not do this and Mr Albanese repeated those comments in an interview on Friday.
“Section 501 has not changed,” the PM told the ABC.
“Indeed, we have deported some 4,200 people from immigration detention in our first year of office, almost double the number of people were deported as were deported under the previous government, in the previous year.
“The directions that are being spoken about are actually quite thick documents. The previous directions all had in them as well, a higher level of tolerance, to quote the directions documents, for offenders with long ties to Australia.
“And under the Leader of the Opposition, who of course, was the Minister for Home Affairs, some 1,300 offenders of serious issues were released, including 102 sex offenders, 64 child sex offenders, four people who were either murderers or involved or connected with murders.”
Under pressure on the issue, the PM finally announced in Question Time last week that direction 99 would be changed. He then received a lobbying phone call from the New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
Direction 99 states that: “With respect to decisions to refuse, cancel, and revoke cancellation of a visa, Australia will generally afford a higher level of tolerance of criminal or other serious conduct by non-citizens who have lived in the Australian community for most of their life, or from a very young age”.