Broadcast: Selwyn Manning and Peter Godfrey deliver their weekly bulletin Across The Ditch. This week they discuss: Should US performer Chris Brown be allowed a visa + NZ PM’s Staunch Message to Australia over Kiwi deportations + Rugby World Cup Update… Go Australia!
ITEM ONE: Should gangster rapper Chris Brown be permitted a visa? ITEM TWO New Zealand Prime Minister John Key will raise Australia’s deportation policy with Malcolm Turnbull when the two meet for their first Trans-Tasman leaders’ meeting. Both New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister and John Key spoke this week to Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop about the issue on the sidelines of the United Nations general assembly in New York. Late last week, it was revealed up to 80 New Zealanders had in recent months been deported by Australia to detention camps, including around 28 Kiwis last week alone who were flown to the detention facility on Christmas Island. Early this week news reports revealed how 200 New Zealanders had been detained or deported since new policies were established over one year ago. While New Zealanders and Australians have the right to travel or live in either country, the new rules in Australia mean any foreign national who has served more than one year in jail can be deported. The view here in New Zealand is that if Australia is going to deport a New Zealander, then they should be deported to New Zealand, not detained on the Australian continent, on Christmas Island, or anywhere else. This week, it was revealed that a New Zealander had allegedly killed himself while being detained in solitary confinement in an Australian detention centre – 23-year-old Junior Togatuki died in Goulburn Jail earlier this month awaiting deportation. From New York, John Key told Radio New Zealand that his message to Julie Bishop was blunt. Key message to Bishop suggested there is a “special relationship between New Zealand and Australia and you challenge that relationship to a degree when you see New Zealanders being treated … in this way.” He added: “There is an Anzac bond and an Anzac spirit … that surely means we might get some treatment that’s different from other countries.” After the meeting Julie Bishop told ABC news: “I discussed more generally with Prime Minister Key and with foreign minister Murray McCully whether there are other arrangements that Australia and New Zealanders could reach in relation to the deportation of New Zealanders,” she said. “There is no closer relationship than Australia and New Zealand, and so I think it’s appropriate that we consider this matter as Prime Minister Key has asked us to do.” ITEM THREE Rugby World Cup update, the form, the injuries, the big games looming…Across The Ditch broadcasts live each Thursday on FiveAA.com.au and webcasts on EveningReport.nz LiveNews.co.nz ForeignAffairs.co.nz.
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