New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister has hinted at a softening in Australia’s stance on deporting Kiwi nationals who have committed crimes in Australia, after bilateral meetings in Sydney.
Winston Peters told media on Friday afternoon he had “reasons to believe” the Australian government’s bill to strengthen character test visa provisions was not “fixed in stone at this point in time” and could accommodate New Zealand’s requests.
The bill to change the Migration Act proposes expanding the grounds for automatically refusing or cancelling a visa to include non-citizens who have been convicted of a crime which carries a minimum two-year prison term – regardless of of their actual sentence.
This has been a point of contention with New Zealand, particularly after expert advice that it could increase the number of New Zealander visa cancellations five-fold.
“We’re having discussions about an improved circumstance on that issue … and the proposal is not fixed in stone at this point in time,” Peters said. “We seek to be optimistic about this, to get a better outcome than the one we’ve currently got, and we’re hopeful that that is going to happen, and thus far we’ve got reasons to believe it will happen.”
Asked if he had been given reason to believed the bill would not pass in its current form, Peters said: “I could take a pretty serious bet I’m right on that.”
Under existing laws Australia has deported thousands of non-citizens, more than half of them from New Zealand. Frequently these are people who have lived in Australia since early childhood and who have no social or family connection to New Zealand.
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has called the policy “corrosive” to the bilateral relationship.
It has also seen people deported who are of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage.
Peters was in Australia for the latest of the bi-annual Australia-New Zealand foreign minister consultations, with his Australian counterpart, Marise Payne.
Standing alongside Peters at the press conference, Payne added the two countries were working “very hard to work cooperatively to manage these issues between Australia and New Zealand”.
“Today’s discussions were a representation of that and I look forward to that continuing,” she said.
New Zealand has for some time been lobbying Australia to have reciprocal arrangements when it comes to New Zealanders, including “special consideration” for New Zealanders and a return to a 10-year threshold. Under that rule New Zealand accepts it has a a responsibility for a person who has lived there for 10 years or more, and does not deport them.
“Over time in a country a person is socialised into that country, into the norms of that country and the behaviour of that country,” New Zealand’s high commissioner, Annette King, told a Senate inquiry in August.
“We believe that, after a period of time, they have become part of New Zealand and therefore we have a responsibility to take account of the time they’ve been in New Zealand and the fact that they have become New Zealanders, as permanent residents.”
Should the Australian government accept the changes sought by New Zealand, it would not change the impact of the proposed law on people of other nationalities.
The bill, which passed through the house of representatives in September and is yet to be debated in the Senate, is currently opposed by Labor, the Greens and Centre Alliance.
The immigration minister, David Coleman, rejected changes demanded by Labor in return for its support – including special consideration for New Zealanders, making it non-retrospective, and exempting low level offences with a threshold of an actual 12-month minimum sentence.
Coleman said any increase to visa cancellations as a result of the bill was “by design”.
Asked to respond to Peters’s remarks, Coleman told Guardian Australia the government’s priority was keeping Australians safe “and we make no apologies for that”.
“This important legislation applies to all visa holders irrespective of their nationality, and will capture people convicted of serious crimes, including violent crimes, sexual assault, firearms offences, or breaching a family violence order,” he said.
“If people who are not Australian citizens have committed these serious offences, then objectively they should fail the character test.”
