Kiwis to get new rights in Anthony Albanese deal with Jacinda Ardern
Anthony Albanese has made a raft of concessions to NZ, including an easier path to citizenship and potentially a right to vote.
Anthony Albanese has made a raft of concessions to New Zealand, offering to end automatic deportation for its citizens convicted of serious offences, provide an easier path to Australian citizenship and potentially give Kiwis the right to vote.
The Prime Minister’s proposal to change a longstanding federal government policy of deporting New Zealand citizens with serious criminal histories in particular could ease one of the biggest irritants in relations between the two Pacific neighbours in decades.
Mr Albanese agreed at bilateral talks with his New Zealand counterpart, Jacinda Ardern, on a timetable of Anzac Day next year to finalise a deal that would not only settle how deportations of convicted criminals were handled, but also secure a “pathway to citizenship” that made it easier for New Zealanders to gain all rights available to Australians.
Australia would soften its “Section 501” policy of deportation for convicted Kiwi criminals, including those who had grown up in Australia and had no New Zealand links.
Mr Albanese said the deportation policy would remain in place, and Australia would continue to expel people convicted of serious offences where appropriate, including New Zealanders.
But he said “common sense should apply” for Kiwi citizens who had “lived their entire life effectively in Australia with no connection whatsoever to New Zealand”.
A citizenship deal could address a situation where hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders living and working in Australia on visas that reflect the two nations’ special relationship, are denied unemployment benefits and other social welfare payments and are required to undertake university studies as full-fee-paying students.
New Zealand citizens are not entitled to join Australia’s armed forces and cannot work for the commonwealth public service.
As part of what he called a reset in relations, Mr Albanese said his government would also explore how New Zealanders residing in Australia could gain the right to vote. The Prime Minister said parliament’s joint standing committee on electoral matters would consider whether there was a way to “return to systems that have existed in the past” – giving New Zealanders working and paying taxes voting rights in Australia.
“We won’t pre-empt that process,” Mr Albanese said. “But it is, I think, a really commonsense position to at least examine over coming months.”
In New Zealand, Australians who have been residents for more than 12 months currently have voting rights.
Australia’s deportation policy has been a persistent sore point for New Zealand, pressed repeatedly by Ms Ardern without resolution during past discussions with previous Australian prime ministers Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull.
New Zealand’s complaint is that the forced deportation of convicted criminals with New Zealand citizenship, many having been born or grown up in Australia, has been unreasonable and helped fuel an increase in local crime and gang violence. After one meeting with Mr Morrison, Ms Ardern said publicly: “Do not deport your people and your problems.”
Until Friday’s signal that the policy would be softened, the Australian government had held firm to automatic visa cancellations and deportation for New Zealand citizens – regardless of their links to New Zealand – with convictions for offences such as child abuse, date rape, breaching AVOs and possessing illegal weapons.
Opposition home affairs spokeswoman Karen Andrews raised doubts about how the Albanese government’s revised deportation plan could work, saying what Labor proposed “in real terms” was unclear.
Ms Andrews said the safety and security of Australians should always come first, regardless of how many tough conversations needed to be had between traditional allies and Pacific neighbours.
“True friendship is based on mutual respect, not avoiding the issues,” Ms Andrews said.
“Labor needs to come clean on what their changes to section 501 actually mean in real terms. What in years, or by percentage of an individual’s lifespan; does living in Australia essentially all their lives actually mean?
“Will the PM or Home Affairs Minister be discussing character cancellation cases individually with New Zealand’s government?
“Will Mr Albanese meet with the families of the victims of those who have been deported for serious crimes like murder and rape?”
The former Coalition government cancelled or refused more than 10,000 visas on character grounds between 2014 and 2022, claiming it had kept Australia safe from “the triads, mafia gangs and bikies”. Of these, 335 visa decisions related to members of outlaw motorcycle gangs, and 233 were removed from Australia for breaking laws.
While details of how a “commonsense” application of the deportation policy would work remained unclear on Friday, there were suggestions it would require a case-by-case consideration and ministerial liaison between the two countries.
“Where you have a circumstance where someone has lived their entire life, effectively, in Australia, with no connection whatsoever to New Zealand … we will act as friends and we will work through those issues in a commonsense way,” Mr Albanese said.
Ms Ardern said New Zealand acknowledged that Australia would continue to deport its citizens convicted of serious offences, just as New Zealand deported those who “did not have a long-term connection to New Zealand”.
According to Ms Ardern, New Zealand has never sought a reversal of the deportation policy, only changes to its being imposed unfairly. “This is exactly what we have asked of Australia,” she said on Friday.
Ms Ardern said New Zealand had requested a greater acknowledgment of the role New Zealanders played in Australia. “The fact that we have – and you’ll see this in our communique – agreement that no New Zealander or Australian should be rendered permanently temporary, that is a step change in the way we’ve previously seen New Zealanders treated here,” she said.
The New Zealand Prime Minister welcomed the Australian government’s proposed “pathway to citizenship”, pointing to a lower take-up rate of joint or sole citizenship among New Zealanders compared with other immigrants. She said census data showed New Zealanders took up Australian citizenship at a rate of about 30 per cent, while the rate was closer to 60 per cent for other nationalities.
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