ARDEN TO OZ: DON’T DEPORT ‘PROBLEMS’

Canberra, Feb. 28: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called out her Australian counterpart at an extraordinarily abrasive joint news conference Friday for his country’s rigid policy of deporting foreign criminals to homelands they left as children.

Ardern called the policy unfair and corrosive to the near-neighbors’ ties, but Australian PM Scott Morrison publicly held firm. “You commit a crime here, if convicted, once you’ve done your time, we send you home,” he said.

New Zealand and Britain receive large proportions of these felons under the policy, but many long-time Australian residents are sent to countries where they don’t speak the language and have no family or community ties. Ardern said many of the 2,600 New Zealand citizens Australia had deported in recently years had no “home” in New Zealand because they had left years ago. New Zealand courts were dealing with these long-term Australian residents who were failing to rehabilitate because they lacked the necessary family and social networks, she said.

She urged Australia to adopt New Zealand’s approach to foreign criminals by stop deporting New Zealand citizens “who on any common sense test identify as Australians.” “Australia is well within its rights to deport individuals who break your laws. New Zealand does the same. But we have a simple request: Send back Kiwis — genuine Kiwis,” Arden said. “Do not deport your people and your problems.”