Court overturns Australian deportation to New Zealand

An Australian set to be deported to New Zealand despite never having set foot here has won a legal battle to remain there.

Alex Viane, 40, has been held in Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre since Australia’s minister for immigration and border protection, Peter Dutton, cancelled his visa in July last year.

In February, Viane lodged a notice of appeal to stop him being sent to New Zealand. He argued that Dutton had denied him procedural fairness by failing to consider the effects of his forced relocation on his partner and daughter.

In a decision at the Federal Court of Australia in New South Wales late last week, Justices John Reeves, Darryl Rangiah and Craig Colvin allowed Viane’s appeal.

The court quashed a decision by the minister’s parliamentary secretary refusing to revoke Viane’s visa cancellation, and ordered that the matter be redetermined. It also ordered the minister to pay the costs of Viane’s appeal.

Viane was born in American Samoa and has lived in Australia for more than 25 years.

He became a New Zealand citizen as a teenager after he was adopted by his uncle, a Kiwi living in Australia. However, he has never been here.

Viane was sentenced to 12 months’ jail after assaulting his partner in 2015. As a result of this offending, Dutton cancelled Viane’s visa on character grounds.

Justice Minister Andrew Little said: ‘‘As someone who had never set foot in New Zealand, Mr Viane’s case is emblematic of the problem we have with deporting people who have made their whole lives in Australia and have few, if any, family connections in this country.’’

The issue of appropriate consideration of connections to Australia and connections to New Zealand was one that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had raised with Malcolm Turnbull, Little said.