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National | Australia

Kiwi detainees deported from Australia

Minister of Corrections Kelvin Davis says claims that Kiwi detainees in Australia are being offered cash incentives to return to New Zealand but not receiving any monies was a matter for the Australian government.

This comes after a plane of Kiwi detainees deported from Australia arrived in Auckland this morning.

Davis says, "That is a matter for the Australian Government.  What I do know is that the cost to accommodate a detainee at a detention centre for a year costs more than it does to deport them to New Zealand."

Davis says support will be available to the 13 deportees who landed in Auckland this morning.

"Australia has the authority to deport them back here, but our responsibility when they land is to provide them with support so they do not fall back into reoffending."

Eleven of the returning thirteen were eligible for a Returning Offender Order, a supervision regime which applies to people who have served a term of imprisonment of more than one year in another country and requires them to comply with parole-like conditions.

Davis says “more than 500 detainees have arrived in the past two years under the Returned Offenders Order and only 13 percent have reoffended and been sent back to jail."

Australia's Department of Immigration and Border Protection told Te Kāea that post-removal support is undertaken on a case-by-case basis to meet the immediate needs of an individual for community integration [and] for operational reasons the department does not comment on detention or removal operations.