Man speaks about his anguish after bungled deportation from Australia to PNG
The man at the centre of Wednesday’s bungled deportation operation has spoken of his anguish at being rejected by two countries in one day. “Where does that leave me?” Gus Kuster told AM in his first interview since being forced to return to the country that tried to deport him.
“The Australian Government is saying I’m not Australian, and the [Papua] New Guinea Government is saying that I’m not allowed there because I’ve lived all my life in Australia.”
He also described farcical scenes on the runway at Port Moresby’s Jacksons International Airport after the plane used to deport him from Australia landed. “As we were about to leave the aircraft, the PNG Government come on board and said that I couldn’t get off the plane,” he said.
“So it turned around and we had to come back.” Immigration officials from Australia escorted him on the flight to Port Moresby.
“[The Australian officials] were quite confused about what was going on, but they didn’t really have an answer.”
Mr Kuster’s baggage was taken off the plane, leaving the clothes he wore on the plane, a phone and Government-issued pyjamas as his only remaining possessions. Before boarding the plane in Brisbane he had been allowed an hour visit with seven family members to say a tearful goodbye.
“Now I’m back,” he told AM. The PNG Government said it had not been provided with paperwork confirming Mr Kuster’s citizenship. He is now back in immigration detention in Brisbane where he has spent the last 12 months in legal limbo, which is now set to continue indefinitely.
“Like everybody that’s in detention there’s no end date, so really it mentally plays with your mind and you start to lose yourself a bit,” he said.
The 40-year-old was born in PNG to an Australian father and a Papuan mother, then moved with his parents to Australia at the age of three.
He came to the Government’s attention following a string of drug and driving-related run-ins with the law, for which he served time in prison.
Border Force officials advised him last year that he was not an Australian citizen and he was to be deported to PNG on character grounds.
He was told he was to be given AU$250 and two weeks accommodation to start a new life in Port Moresby, which The Economist last year ranked alongside wartorn Damascus and Tripoli as one of the least liveable cities on earth.
“I don’t know how that was going to pan out, knowing that I haven’t been there at all since I was the age of three,” he said.
He says he never knew he had to apply for citizenship. “Doesn’t ‘permanent resident’ mean you’re permanent?”
And he says he’s paid his debt to society for the crimes that drew his attention to the Government.
“Here I am now, I get put in detention, that same amount of time of I’ve done it already again.
“It’s double punishment, how does that work?”