A New Zealand boy with a dangerous criminal history has been spared deportation from Australia.
The 17-year-old boy, who had lived in New South Wales since he was nine, was ordered out of the country by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.
The juvenile, however, will be spared being put on a plane across the Tasman Sea after the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on Monday ruled he could stay in Australia.
A New Zealand boy with a dangerous criminal history has been spared deportation from Australia (stock image)
The 17-year-old boy, who had lived in New South Wales since he was nine, was ordered out of the country by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton (pictured)
The boy, who had been locked up in immigration detention in Melbourne since March, has now moved back to New South Wales to live with his grandparents, aunties and uncles.
Freelance journalist Rebekah Holt, a volunteer with immigration detainees, met the boy outside the Broadmeadows centre, in the city’s north, soon after the decision.
‘He was super pleased to be able to get home and see his family,’ she told Daily Mail Australia today.
‘For me, it was lovely to meet him. He’s obviously and understandably relieved because he’d been terribly homesick.
‘He’s a really nice, smart, young man.’
Mr Dutton is considering whether to appeal the tribunal decision.
The boy, who had been locked up in immigration detention since March, has moved back to New South Wales to live with his grandparents, aunties and uncles (stock image)
‘The decision has been handed down and the minister is taking legal advice as to options,’ a spokeswoman said in a statement.
The boy was sentenced to juvenile detention in New South Wales last year for a minor, summary offence however he is understood to have committed a series of other crimes that didn’t incur a long prison sentence.
Mr Dutton had sought to deport the boy under Section 116 of the Migration Act normally reserved for bikies and terror suspects.
In a first for Australia, that aspect of the law was being used against a child.
During the past three years, 1,300 Kiwis have been deported from Australia after the minister regarded them as a threat to public safety.
New Zealand’s Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters has angrily accused Australia of breaching its U.N. obligations as a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child
The boy, raised by his grandparents, aunties and uncles from age four, had suffered anxiety and depression since he was sent to the Melbourne Immigration Transit Centre at Broadmeadows in March.
Ms Holt said he didn’t have any relatives in New Zealand he would want to live with.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal declined to elaborate on its decision given the age of the boy.
Earlier this month, New Zealand’s Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters has angrily accused Australia of breaching its United Nations obligations as a 1990 signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
‘This person is regarded as a child or a minor, and I’m just reminding the Australians – you’re a signatory, live up to it,’ the leader of New Zealand First party who is also foreign minister said.
‘They are clearly in breach of it. There’s no complication. They know that, we know that.’
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton hit back and claimed this boy was dangerous
A boy from New South Wales has unwittingly stirred diplomatic tensions between Australia and New Zealand (Kiwi Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, left, with his Australian counterpart Julie Bishop)
Barrister Greg Barns, whose law firm is representing the boy, claimed the government was wrongly applying deportation rules normally reserved for violent, career criminals
Mr Dutton hit back and claimed this boy was dangerous.
‘If New Zealand want him back, then he’s welcome to get on the first flight out,’ he said.
Barrister Greg Barns, whose Hobart-based legal chamber represented the boy, claimed the government was wrongly applying deportation rules normally reserved for violent, career criminals.
‘There’s nothing in his prior history that would make him in any way, shape or form a threat to the good order of Australia particularly when he’s 17,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
Mr Barns, a former Liberal Party member, said Section 116 of the Migration Act, which Peter Dutton had used to deport 1,300 Kiwi bikies during the past three years, was for the first time being used on a child.
‘Mate, it’s just bizarre,’ he said.
‘I’m not aware of 116 being used on a kid.’
Under the law, foreigners can be deported if the minister regards them as a ‘risk to the health, safety and good order of the Australian community’.