2015: Section 501 Transportation
February 23, 2023
By AHNZ
“Anyone will tell you its a prisoner island” according to the song Great Southern Land by Ice House (1982) or “Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them,..” according to Vizzini in Princess Bride (1987.) They say these things because Australia, unlike New Zealand, has a very strong past relationship as a destination for transported criminals.
Prisons had not been invented yet in mid-1700s Britain and their romantic ideals sad it wasn’t OK to punish or hang the growing numbers of criminal offenders. So, Transportation was the answer and away the convicts were sent to places like Virginia. After the American colonies revolted in the 1760s Britain had to re-divert the plumbing again and use locations in Australia starting with Botany Bay.
New Zealand and other colonies were adamant that they were not ever to be used this way. We were not to be a refuse dump for British criminals! Cape Colony, in 1849, successfully resisted being established as a convict colony by repulsing the first ship sent (carrying 289 convicts) for 5 months before it quit for Tasmania. These sorts of Imperial vs. Colonial battles of will were fresh in the mind of New Zealand founders such as Canterbury’s John Godley who mentioned it explicitly. Ref. 1849: On The Government of Colonies, AHNZ
When 92 youth offenders called ‘The Parkhurst Boys’ were successfully disembarked at Auckland in 1842 it caused a great uproar and the practise was put a stop to. New Zealand was exceptional and not to be treated as a Prisoner Island. On the other hand we certainly did deal with our own People Problem of criminality by sending them off to Tasmania. For example, some of the captured raiders of Boulcott’s Farm were sent away for a while to Van Dieman’s Land. Ref. 1846: Boulcott’s Farm Raid, AHNZ
Until Australian Federal politician Peter Dutton (image, above) gained power in the Liberal Ministry (2013-22) of that country New Zealand remained a Transportation-free nation throughout its history. The ex-cop, Dutton, had big plans to be tough on crime and used his new powers as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection and Minister for Home Affairs to do so. One of his cunning plans was to re-write Section 501 of the Migration Act (1958) to Transport criminals if they were technically New Zealanders.
Reverse Brain Drain
New Zealand and the National 5.0 Ministry under Prime Minister John Key were blindsided by what Minister Dutton over the ditch had done.
The year 2014 was the year of the Nicky Harger book Dirty Politics which posited a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy from the bitter Left out of power. Labour Opposition Leader David Cunliffe gave a speech apologising for being a man that went down so badly it led to his quick replacement only weeks later. It was the year that ‘Ka Mate’, the haka dance-fight song used by the All Blacks and others, was copyright protected as belonging to Ngati Toa tribe on the basis that the Warlord Te Rauparaha (1768-1849) was the artist and dance choreographer. It was also the year John Key’s Ministry introduced New Zealand’s Capital Gains Tax which they disguised by calling it ‘The Bright Line Test’.
Dutton’s end-of-year surprise for New Zealand, the 501 revision, started a Reverse Brain Drain of talent in the Crime Industry. From 2015 into the 2020s a more sophisticated criminal was being imported. Australia is a much bigger fishbowl than little New Zealand so the crime is more sophisticated, organised, clever, and ruthless. Think about it. During the Labour 6.0 Lockdowns of New Zealand (excused by the COVID-19 virus) many Kiwis came home and had to find homes and jobs here. Many of these international Kiwis will have been wealthy big shots used to high status jobs and big money from working far up the ladder. The houses and jobs they demanded put pressure on the domestic population.
“Cocaine worth an estimated $242m on the street has been seized in New Zealand over the past decade and, with use doubling in recent times, the motivation for dealers is increasing. That figure, however, doesn’t include the latest record haul of 700kg seized in March this year.” – Stuff (Dec 2022)
The same effect happened in the Crime Industry. An Australian criminal deviant Transported to New Zealand will continue his vocation but he will not simply conform to the small-scale and comparatively retrospective operations he finds in the domestic market. He will want to use his better skills and international contacts and look for a similar level of earnings and status to match what he had become accustomed to. The drug deals in New Zealand are bigger than ever before.
Domestic Gangs Respond
New Zealand’s Legacy gangs, now faced with the Transported and sophisticated 501 rivals have become outclassed. Unable to adapt they have entered violent death throes. They are like neanderthals being confronted with homo sapiens. Since they can’t out-think or out-plan the new invasive species they can only become more violent and use more force to compensate. Shooting wars have broken out, especially in South Auckland, and spill over into non-gang life. Ram Raid youth crime has taken off during the recent time period.
A house and sleepout on a Manurewa street were sprayed with bullets overnight in a shooting apparently linked to the King Cobra gang.” – Auckland shooting: At least 20 bullet holes in house, sleepout – believed to be gang-linked, NZ Herald (May 2022)
“In what is becoming an all too regular occurrence in Auckland there were more shooting incidents overnight. ” – Auckland gang wars: More shooting incidents overnight across four suburbs, Newshub (June 2022)
Another cascade effect from Dutton’s 501 change seems to be that domestic gangs have put on a Public Relations Offensive. It’s sort of like the periodic (and economically misguided) ‘buy Kiwi made’ campaigns. For example, the Mongrel Mob gang now has Louise Hutchinson (a woman) as its Public Relations Representative. The Tribal Huk gang has diversified their criminal activity by becoming charity sandwich artists. Perhaps most disturbingly of all, the New Zealand Police Service gang have abandoned their uniforms for various Diversity-promoting costumes for their members and for their various vehicles. Ref. Political Policemen, NZB3
Community Life Constricted
As a direct response to Dutton’s Transportees (Which was not undone by Anthony Albanese’s Labour Government, est. 2022) our New Zealand community life has also become constricted.
Kiwis became subject to new money-laundering rules intended to hinder the new superior criminal class. Normal lending activity from your bank now flags an alert which your bank must act upon. Our banks have become unpaid spies for the government on their own customers. If someone deposits or withdraws cash in ‘unusual’ amounts then they will be interrogated and a report filed that the State reviews. We never had that before the 501s.
Likewise, setting up an Incorporated Society has now become very hard to set up. Many would rather not even bother. The new tighter rules hurt everyone but the target group are the 501 crooks who know how to funnel their activity and cash through legitimate clubs and societies. Yet, the Government still insists that people who wish to freely associate to pay table tennis or continue running a community hall or some country picnic need to register for State approval. Just to be on a committee in such a group now involves multiple checks and identify proofing loopholes. This makes it very hard for a community to organise. But, then, Government has never approved of community life that is organised without State permission.
It’s a curiosity that New Zealand’s early 2020s Opposition leader, Christopher Luxon, is right-wing and bald. It’s an even more curious parallelism that Australia’s early 2020s Opposition, Peter Dutton, is right-wing and bald too. Perhaps one or both of them will become the next Prime Minister of their countries and it will be hard to remember who is who?
Dutton’s new rules set out a nebulous “good character” test which basically mean he can Transport any New Zealander he likes so long as they are technically, legally, a New Zealander. They are Paper New Zealanders. Few, if any, are Kiwis.
Because Dutton and his successors want to look tough on crime they will not change the policy. Why should they? It has almost been 10 years now and the measure has saved Australia millions in legal processing and incarceration along with exporting the criminal activity onto a new host: New Zealanders.
On the receiving end the New Zealand State doesn’t know what to do and hasn’t been doing it. The 501s haven’t broken any laws here and we can’t just lock them up because Dutton had an obscure view that their “character” was “bad.” To punish the 501s would be a situation of Double Jeopardy. But Labour 6.0 wants to look tough on crime too so civil rights will not get in their way. The trouble for Labour 6.0 has been that their Frenamie David Parker is Attorney General and keeps ruining plans to punish the 501s.
Parker is a Labour 5.0 legacy MP and not really part of the cooperative team of Hipkins-Robertson in any of its forms. Parker would probably go away and stop plaguing the Executive if they’d just pay him out so he could get another job but seemingly his price cannot be met. So, he pontificates about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the civil protections of the 501s when Ministers of Justice (Andrew Little, Kris Faafoi, and Kiri Allen) want to prosecute them for crimes against Dutton’s sensibilities. Parker, in his legalistic piety, doesn’t mind irritating his party at all and is probably padding his current CV with this behavior so he can get another fancy job after retiring from politics with his golden parachute.
As of now, Labour 6.0 is persecuting the 501s unlawfully while doing everything they can to make the unlawful lawful. The court, and Attourney General, have proved most uncooperative in this law-breaking…
“The Government is urgently passing a law to keep imposing parole-like conditions on “501” offenders deported from Australia, after the High Court ruled the practice unlawful. The court, in December, said the Government’s handling of New Zealand citizens deported from Australia after serving a prison sentence breached a prohibition against retrospective penalties and double jeopardy.”
“Attorney-General David Parker, in a report on the Bill of Rights implications of the amendment bill, said he was alerting Parliament to an inconsistency in the bill with two aspects of New Zealand’s bill of rights. He said the bill was not consistent with the prohibition on retrospectively increasing the penalty an offender faces, and the right to natural justice when a determination is made about a person’s rights.” – Parole law for Australian 501 deportees being urgently passed, Stuff (22 Feb, 2023)
Let there be no mistaken. Apart from the technical legal sense in which case the 501 is a deportee they are, really, Transportees. They are exiled Australians not Kiwis.
The 501s have done nothing wrong yet. If they had they could be caught and charged and sentenced. Going after them because Dutton pointed at them is unjust. But we would have to go back many generations to find a Justice Minster who cared less about Justice than the new person in that role, Kiri Allen.
In New Zealand it’s not a problem for the government to break the law. They can always go back and fix it with retrospective legislation. That means they can do anything to any group they like. If you’re not a 501 you might think that’s OK because it doesn’t effect you. You have “good character.” However, if the government can persecute one minority group they can persecute any. All it needs is popularity. So long as a Ministry can hold onto power they can vote white into black and illegal into legal. And they us ‘anarchic’.
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Image ref. In The Wire season 3 the criminals become so sophisticated they start having formal meetings and use Robert’s Rules of Order (1876) to ensure best results in a corporate meeting environment among professionals
Note: Why do you think Labour 6.0’s new police phone number is 105? It’s 501 backwards! How can this be an accident? Ref. Dial 105 for Nash, NZB3 (2019)
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