A New Zealand-born teenager has been released after nearly four months in detention in Australia following an appeal to win back his visa.
The 17-year-old, who has a string of criminal offences, had been held in an adult immigration detention centre in Melbourne after Immigration Minister Peter Dutton revoked his visa.
He had lived in New South Wales with his family for the last seven years and was to have been deported under Section 116 of the Migration Act, which provides for deportation where someone on a visa is deemed a potential risk to the community.
The youth was released yesterday and was being taken back to his family in Sydney.
He had a closed hearing in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal last week to appeal against Dutton’s decision.
In New Zealand, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed today that the youth had been released.
His lawyer, Greg Barns, told The New Zealand Herald yesterday it was deeply concerning that Dutton had revoked the youth’s visa.
Acting Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters weighed in on the case recently, saying Australia was breaching the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
He said today the release was good news. “I hope he uses this chance to turn his life around,” Peters told RNZ.
Dutton has remained unapologetic, saying if New Zealand wanted the youth back he was welcome to get on the first flight out.
“We will make sure that he’s deported at the first available opportunity but at the moment he’s delaying his return to New Zealand,” Dutton said.
More than 600 New Zealanders have had their visas cancelled in Australia since stricter deportation laws came into place in 2014.
Some have spent the bulk of their lives in Australia and have no connection with New Zealand, raising questions about the rights being afforded to Kiwi ex-pats.
In a television programme to be aired in Australia on Tuesday night, New Zealand's Justice Minister Andrew Little said the deportation laws lack "humanitarian ideals".
"It seems to me that there is a venal, political strain to all this," he told the ABC's Foreign Correspondent.
"Some Aussies obviously like this, but it's not good for those people. It's certainly not consistent with any humanitarian ideals that I thought both countries once shared."
Mr Dutton told the programme every nation - including New Zealand - exerted its own right to deport criminals.
"They're New Zealand citizens, they're not Australian citizens. And it's no breach of human rights," he said.
- NZME and AAP
