Jacinda is nothing more than a virtue signalling prime minister who has won international acclaim for donning a hijab and hugging people, but telling Australia how to manage its own immigration policy is going to cost us dearly. We have already speculated that her finger-wagging at Australia will result in them making it harder for Kiwis to live there.
Well, guess what? Add that to her stunning list of achievements.
The relationship between New Zealand and Australia could be under further strain amid proposed immigration law changes.
The Australian Federal Government is looking to tighten visa requirements which will affect New Zealanders with criminal offences.
The proposed changes mean that anyone who has committed an offence that had a penalty of two years imprisonment could have their visa cancelled – even if that sentence hadn’t been imposed.
Under the current law, Kiwis who had been sentenced to 12 months jail had their visas automatically cancelled and were deported back to New Zealand.
So, to stop Jacinda bleating about Kiwi criminals being deported from Australia, the Aussies are tightening the rules and will now not grant a visa to anyone who has a criminal conviction that carried a sentence of two years or more; whether or not the sentence was actually imposed.
Once again, Australia has a perfect right to do this. Just try getting a visa for the USA if you have a criminal conviction.
Immigration researcher Henry Sherrell told ABC that if the bill was passed, some people would then fail the visa character test.
“If they’re guilty of a designated offence which is punishable by at least two years jail – but they don’t need to be sentenced to two years jail, they just need to commit a crime where the maximum punishment is two years.”
The law change would also be retrospective, meaning people with decade-old convictions could also be affected.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…excuse me while I laugh. It is not that I want to see people who have turned their lives around being sent home… it is that Jacinda thought she could turn on the fairy dust in Australia; only to have it backfire spectacularly, resulting in even more Kiwis being sent back. The predictability of this whole situation is completely stunning… and the princess, of course, never saw it coming.
“Anyone who holds a visa who’s a non-citizen, this is an automatic provision, they won’t be automatically deported but they will fail the character test and then the department or the minister will have a discretionary power to cancel their visa if they see fit,” Sherrell told the ABC.
The bill has been referred to a Senate Committee which will report back in September.
So what was all that about “Yeah, we are great mates, and because of that, we can say what we like”, Jacinda? Your own relationship with your Aussie counterparts has to be built on friendship and respect… you can’t just hang off the coat-tails of real diplomats like John Key.
When Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern visited Australia earlier this month she said the current deportation laws were having a “corrosive effect” on the relationship between the two countries.
While there, Ardern told New Zealand media that in some cases cancelling visas was justified but in others, it wasn’t.
“We have seen cases where there is also almost no connection of an individual to New Zealand who have been deported,” she had said at the time.
“I consider that to be a corrosive part of that policy. And it’s having a corrosive effect on our relationship.”
So, in an attempt to stop Australia from deporting Kiwi born criminals, she has managed to fix it so that they will now deport even more Kiwi born criminals; and many of these will be people who have not even committed a crime in Australia. Well done, Jacinda! What was that about their policy being ‘corrosive’ again?