AUDREY YOUNG

Has NZN gone too soft on deportation?

It is not often that Australian laws on deportation look attractive to New Zealanders. But comparing Australia’s hardline law with the legal obstacle course in New Zealand that kept the Lynn Mall terrorist from being deported back to Sri Lanka, it is time to take a hard look at whether New Zealand has gone too soft.

A review needs to take place which should test the assurance by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern that everything that could have been done was done before Aathil Samsudeen stabbed five shoppers on Friday, inspired by Islamic State.

Choices were taken by Immigration, the courts, the police and politicians. For example, according to the Prime Minister’s timeline, Immigration chose not to put Samsudeen in custody pending appeal of his deportation because Crown Law thought he would be eventually allowed to stay. That sounds like failing to act because someone had second guessed a legal outcome.

There are other questions, such as whether the original granting of refugee status was robust enough, whether more could have been done for the offender’s psychiatric problems, why he was given supervision instead of intense supervision by the court in July.

There is welcome political bipartisanship from National. It has agreed to expedite a bill before select committee which clarifies that planning and preparing for a terrorist act is a criminal offence.

But you need to see the objections from the legal fraternity to see that legal principle often impedes attempts to deal with dangerous reality.

The legal purists would argue that two men buying nails, one for a roof and one for a bomb, should be treated equally, and that neither has committed a crime.

The public would expect the state to know about the planned bomb before it goes off and to have the tools to prevent it before it is built.

The existing law already says planning and preparations to carry out a terrorist act amounts to an act of terrorism, whether or not it is carried out.

But when police tried to use it last year citing a knife purchased by Samsudeen for an attack, a High Court judge said it required too much conjecture as to what sort of attack might be planned. He said it was not unequivocally clear what Parliament intended.

And that is about to be made crystal clear in the bill to be passed by the end of the month.

Bipartisanship on the review is crucial. Lack of it prevented earlier attention to elements of the existing law, the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002.

Judith Collins was Justice Minister when it was taken off the Law Commission’s review. That was because it would have faced a backlash from Labour which was fomenting opposition to a remediation of the GCSB legislation.

National would also have been viewed with suspicion by its Ma¯ori Party partners after the Tu¯hoe raids of 2007 which used flawed parts of the law.

Act’s David Seymour is right to caution against a knee-jerk response by Parliament. The review into the Samsudeen case should be undertaken by someone who knows the law and the public sector and can act swiftly.

It need not be a witch hunt. The primary aim of an inquiry, besides revealing what happened, should be to identify what extra powers should be given to which part of the system to ensure that the safety of New Zealanders is put ahead of the freedom to offend.