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501s: The Reluctant Returnees
By Angus Gillies
Upstart Press
Reviewed by Grant McDougall
This is a very sobering and insightful book about people expelled from Australia and forced to live in New Zealand, a country they have had little or no connection to since childhood.
The title refers to the December 2014 amendment by the Australian government of section 501 of their Immigration Act, which gave the immigration minister the power to arbitrarily expel immigrants on character grounds.
In the following year, deportations from there to here rose by 660% and another 69% the year after.
It was and remains a vexatious, simmering source of tension between the subsequent political leaders of both nations.
Throughout 501s: The Reluctant Returnees, Angus Gillies clearly and succinctly shows how this particular political football has been kicked around.
The deportees arrive bitter, resentful, hurt and unwelcome.
Initially, each returnee was given $700 and two weeks accommodation.
Now it is $50 and five days.
The complete lack of adequate reintegration shown in the book is damning.
Gillies focuses on a handful of returnees and their stories are told in verbatim interviews, linked by pithy, astute observations and analysis by the author.
Most spoken to had links to gangs in Australia and use them to start supplying and dealing drugs, mainly meth, here to fund lavish lifestyles, before being jailed.
One of them complains about police procedures.
In response, Gillies sums this up smartly: “I doubt the court of public opinion will cry any tears…” and “To many Kiwis, particularly those with meth addiction in the family, this will be seen as a good result”.
The returnees’ views and experiences are balanced by interviews with Detective Superintendent Greg Williams, the director of the National Organised Crime Group.
In his opinion, the problems are no longer to do with 501s specifically, but transnational crime issues.
This is starkly depicted in the book’s most chilling chapter, “The execution of Epalaheme”, in which a naive, young man gets involved with the Comancheros gang, then incurs their wrath and is murdered.
There are also, I am relieved to note, some positive aspects to the lives of some of the 501s interviewed.
Many of those spoken to have helpful, loving partners, while one was a 2026 Local Hero medallist in the KiwiBank New Zealander of the Year Awards.
Tellingly, all of those spoken to believe their situation is due to their upbringing in Australia and they are a by-product of that nation.
It will be fascinating to see how our trans-Tasman cousins handle this issue over the next few years.
Grant McDougall is vice-president of the Dunedin Film Society and a former music writer