Donald Trump hush money trial verdict reached; Labor government grapples with detainee crisis – MASHAHER

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he regrets Australia’s decision to scrap a rule stemming the deportation of Kiwi criminals who have little connection to their country of birth.

Speaking at a press conference this morning, Luxon said he had spoken to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday morning about Labor’s decision to rewrite ministerial direction 99, a policy that mandates a visa holder’s Australian ties need to be considered before deporting them.

“We’ll be advocating very strongly,” Luxon said. “I raised my concerns with the prime minister yesterday morning during our phone call.

“We understand Australia is a sovereign nation, and it can make its own decisions, but we have great concern about that decision because we don’t think that people who have very little attachment to this country but with strong connections to Australia should be deported here.”

Luxon said he had phoned Albanese as soon as he had found out about the government’s decision, given it went to longstanding diplomatic issues between both nations.

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“This is something that is concerning and so, as I said to him, we regret this decision that Australia has taken. I raised those concerns about that, and he reassured there would be a commonsense approach,” he said.

Earlier this week, Albanese announced the direction would be rewritten after Immigration Minister Andrew Giles came under pressure to stop non-citizen criminals from being allowed to stay in Australia and to save his job.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) has cited direction 99 when revoking several government visa cancellations of convicts.

That direction, implemented by Giles earlier in his term to address concerns from New Zealand that its citizens were being deported despite living in Australia for a long time, states: “Australia will generally afford a higher level of tolerance” based on the length of time a non-citizen has spent in the Australian community.

The government claims the AAT misinterpreted this directive when citing it to rule that some violent criminals could stay in the country, despite the government’s efforts to cancel their visas on character grounds due to their convictions.

With Lachlan Abbott