Bikie deportee Paul Burgess says he doesn’t ‘even know how to ride a bike’

AN ADELAIDE man accused of being a bikie, who is set to be deported overseas, says he doesn’t even know how to ride a motorcycle.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has stripped Paul Burgess of his permanent residency visa and is in Christmas Island, awaiting deportation.

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AN ADELAIDE man accused of being a bikie, who is set to be deported overseas, says he doesn’t even know how to ride a motorcycle.

Paul Burgess, 32, also says police pulled him from his bed and took him all the way to the airport in just his underpants.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has stripped Mr Burgess of his permanent residency visa on character grounds, citing his bikie links and criminal history.

But The Advertiser revealed last week that Mr Burgess spent just two months with the Comancheros three years ago, and that his lawyer considers his criminal history “not of the same nature” as other serious criminals deported from Australia.

Mr Burgess is in detention on Christmas Island and is likely to be sent to the UK soon, although he left there when he was just two years old. He has a fiancee and a five-year-old son here.

From detention, he told The Advertiser that police stormed his home early in the morning and did not tell him what was happening.

“They grabbed me in my jocks and zip tied me up. No handcuffs. They didn’t say ‘you’re under arrest’ or anything,” he said.

“They wouldn’t tell me anything until I got on the plane.

“I was still in my jocks at the airport. I was begging them to undo my zip ties, I was in pain. There was a doctor waiting at the top of the plane, I said ‘I can’t feel my hands’.”

His fiancee said “huge” police came into their bedroom while their son was sleeping. She insists Mr Burgess is “not the face of organised crime”, and he says that’s true.

“They think I’m a bikie. They know I’m not,” he said. “I don’t even know how to ride a bike, for starters.”

In a “notice of visa cancellation”, Mr Dutton notes that deportation will cause severe hardship.

“I have considered that he would experience severe emotional and psychological hardship in being separated from his family,” he wrote.

He told The Advertiser that “criminal bikie gangs pose considerable threats to the Australian community”.

“Protecting the Australian community is the highest priority of the Turnbull Government,” he said.

“If foreigners are involved in serious criminal activity I won’t hesitate to cancel their visa and have them removed from our country.”

Mr Burgess has just weeks to mount a court challenge to the visa revocation, but Mr Dutton has the power to immediately revoke it again if he’s successful.

His lawyer Mitchell Simmons, of McDonald Steed McGrath lawyers, has said his crimes were “just not of the same nature” as other Australians who have had their visas revoked on character grounds.