If there were any doubts about Jacinda Ardern’s ability to deliver the goods as a campaigner, then they were quashed by her masterful performance against Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday.

Ardern made what is being reported as a “stunning attack” on the Australian Government, while standing alongside the Australian PM in a highly-orchestrated press conference. She declared his Government were in the wrong for deporting people to New Zealand who have very little connection with our country. She said, “We have a simple request. Send back Kiwis, genuine Kiwis – do not deport your people and your problems.” And she concluded: “We will own our people. We ask that Australia stop exporting theirs.”

Ardern’s extraordinary attack, and the reaction, is well covered by the Herald here: NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern lashes Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison – the reaction.

For a good report on the press conference, see Henry Cooke’s account: Extraordinary scene as Jacinda Ardern directly confronts Scott Morrison over deportations. He says the confrontation was highly unusual: “Ardern went for the jugular”, Morrison responded strongly, and “They didn’t just make their points and leave it at that – they directly argued with each other”.

Cooke looks at the motivations of both sides: “There was no softening of positions on either side. Both prime ministers were clearly playing to domestic audiences. Morrison got to look tough on criminals while Ardern got to look like a leader unafraid to smash another politician in the face when needed. It was quite a show.”

I’ve written for the Guardian today about the political calculations behind the PM’s performance – see: Taking on Scott Morrison over deportees is a win-win strategy for Jacinda Ardern.

In one respect, the attack is clearly an attempt by the Government to deal with the Opposition’s strong push on law and order issues: “It’s election year and National started the year ramping up talk about criminal gangs in New Zealand. While that’s to be expected every election year, there is evidence that the Australian deportation policy has contributed not just to growth in criminal activity but, alarmingly, to the establishment of a whole new gang culture imported from Australia.”

I explain the PM couldn’t let the National own this issue: “Ardern needed to be seen to be doing something about it, and directly confronting Morrison on his home turf certainly got everyone’s attention. Making this stand on the international stage, in such a commanding fashion, also ensured that opposition leader Simon Bridges was overshadowed and left with few options to attack her on.”

This was a departure for Ardern, who has been relatively quiet in dealing with other world leaders recently over other big issues. For example, last year she met with Donald Trump but did not raise any contentious issues such as climate change – see my Guardian column at the time: Ardern was supposed to be the anti-Trump, but she failed to speak truth to power.

So, Ardern has answered her critics and shown she will stand up to bigger countries when necessary. As I argued in today’s Guardian column, “Her supporters want to see her ruffle feathers internationally on issues of principle and humanitarianism, especially at a time when critics say she has been too pragmatic. Compassion, particularly when it comes to migrants, is one of her defining political characteristics, and in Scott Morrison she has almost the perfect foil. Standing up for the rights of New Zealand citizens abroad is always a winner.”

For more background on the political threat the deportation issue poses for the Government, and why Ardern had to respond so strongly, see Luke Malpass’ PM Jacinda Ardern gets a win in ScoMo’s territory.

He explains that deportations are linked to concern about a rise in gang problems here, made even more galling by the fact that New Zealand doesn’t treat Australians in the same way. Malpass says the deportation move “has sparked a crime wave in New Zealand, boosted gang membership and introduced a whole new Australian gang, the Comancheros, to these shores. It is a fair gripe. Under New Zealand law, with few exceptions, if you’ve been on these shores for 10 years you are considered New Zealand’s problem.”

National has started to make political capital out of this, and have been campaigning hard on the need to reciprocate and deport Australians, and this is worrying Labour: “The fascinating thing domestically is how the gangs and deportations issue is clearly now starting to nip at Labour’s heels. It has not been the party of law and order for many decades”, but with Ardern’s response on Friday, “Law and order just became a bigger part of the election campaign.”

In terms of impressing supporters, the strategy worked. For example, Labour blogger Greg Presland wrote about how Ardern had effectively snookered Bridges and shown her toughness: “National with its latest tough on crime approach will be hating this. Not only has Jacinda again displayed a backbone of steel but she has again shown that she is one of the most remarkable International leaders. The justice of her argument is clear.  And she has trashed traditional notions of how New Zealand Australia relations are conducted when making her point” – see: Do not deport your people and your problems to New Zealand.

Even some of the more sceptical voices on the left watched Ardern’s performance with great appreciation. For example, blogger Martyn Bradbury says “Jacinda stepped up……she is just such a class act isn’t she? She has acted with real leadership… She’s just amazing” – see: Jacinda robs Simon Bridges of his Australian thunder.

Bradbury also sees the electoral strategy as very smart, saying “Last week I thought Bridges had made a break through moment by promising to deport Australian criminals back home to Australia”, but now “she makes Simon’s earlier announcement of reciprocity look blunt and desperate”.

Ardern’s strong attack on the Australian Government over deportations was justified, according to Guardian reporter Ben Doherty, who specialises in immigration issues. He says: “Australia is unambiguously in the wrong here, and it has been consistently for years” – see: Not much love actually: Jacinda Ardern was right to call out Australia’s ‘corrosive’ policies.

Doherty argues: “countries are responsible for the people they create…They are Australian, and they are Australia’s responsibility. Just as parents can’t spurn their children who behave badly, states can’t simply foist people they find difficult onto other countries. The Australian government mounts arguments around national security and safety, but they are spurious, and made for the hackneyed political gain of being seen as tough on crime, and harsh towards ‘others’.”

Although Ardern is being widely celebrated for speaking out so strongly on Australia’s treatment of deportees, there are rumblings about her silence, so far, on controversial statements from one of her own ministers. On Saturday, NZ First’s Shane Jones went on Newshub Nation to say this about immigration: “If you want another million, 2 million, 3 million people, we should debate it and there should be a mandate, rather than opening up the options, unfettered, and everyone comes here from New Delhi. I don’t like that idea at all. I think the number of students that have come from India have ruined many of those institutions” – see Dan Satherley’s Shane Jones says Indian students have ‘ruined’ NZ academic institutions.

David Cormack suggests there is a clear mismatch between Ardern’s treatment of Morrison and her continued leniency towards Jones: “So as our Prime Minister was standing next to a man who has the leadership skills of a potato and telling him to change Australia’s domestic policy on deporting criminals, a man who sits in her Cabinet was back at home belching out vile racism. And will she say anything about it? I hope so, but I’m not holding my breath” – see: Jacinda Ardern’s deafening silence over Shane Jones ‘racist’ comments (paywalled).

Finally, comedian Oscar Kightley is impressed with Ardern’s press conference on Friday, saying it “felt like a turning point in terms of our relationship with Australia. Finally, a leader from here was willing to stand up and say what New Zealanders have been thinking since this discriminatory treatment started – see his broader outline of how this latest spat fits into the long-running relationship between the two countries: Jacinda Ardern’s shirtfront on ScoMo a turning point in trans-Tasman relations.

By Philip Cass

“It’s like crabs being stuck in a bucket scratching each other to get out.”

“It’s like rubbish dumping.”

Those are two views about the crisis facing Tonga as countries like the United States, Australia and New Zealand deport criminals to the kingdom.

The first comes from a deportee who talks about how it feels being sent back to struggle for a living in a country with which he and other former prisoners are often barely familiar.

The other is from Tonga’s former Commissioner of Prisons, who wants Western countries to take more responsibility for the people they deport and stop treating Tonga – along with Samoa and Fiji – as dumping grounds for people they regard as “rubbish”.

READ MORE: Responses to Gangsters in Paradise

They are, he reminds us, human beings.

The two views come from a hard-hitting documentary, Gangsters in Paradise – The Deportees of Tonga. A regular contributor to Kaniva Tonga news, photographer Todd Henry, acted as associate producer for the Vice Zealandia documentary.

Talia’uli Prescott … permanently banned from NZ – “I loved being a bad guy, but now I want to be a good guy,” Image: Vice/Kaniva News

Statistics show that the United States deported 700 criminals to Tonga between 1992 and January 2016, an average of 29 criminals a year. However, police figures show that up to 40 percent of the criminals deported to Tonga have come from New Zealand.

Most of the deportees are men between 25-35 years and have usually done time for assault, robbery, burglary, theft and drug offences.

20 years absences
Most have lived outside Tonga for 20 years.

Last year former Deputy Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni said about 400 Tongans had been deported from the US, Australia and New Zealand since 2012.

More than half had partners or children living overseas.

Gangsters in Paradise is not comfortable viewing. It begins with an interview with a deportee who admits to having been jailed when he was barely out of childhood for shooting another boy four times in the stomach.

Violence played a big part in his upbringing, as it did in the lives of other deportees. For others, migration and re-migration provided a disturbed and unstable childhood.

Talia’uli Prescott talks about joining the King Cobras in New Zealand. They were aiga he tells the camera, explaining that it is a Samoan word for family.

“When you don’t have a family, they give you one,” he explains.

Permanently banned
He is permanently banned from New Zealand.

“That’s the only world I know,” he says.

“It’s very sad.”

By good fortune he has a job at Queen Salote wharf and says that he doesn’t want his legacy to be as somebody who was deported to Tonga.

“I loved being a bad guy, but now I want to be a good guy,” he says.

Other deportees have had a harder time fitting in.

As American deportee Sione Ngaue says: “We’re judged before they even get to know us. We have a red ‘X’ against us.”

Family land
Some deportees, like Ngaue, have staked a claim to family land. He works 6 hectares after a dispute with his uncles.

While some of the interviewees regard their time in prison as a chance to rethink their lives and gain a different perspective, others have brought nothing but trouble to Tonga.

Tonga is in the midst of a methamphetamine crisis and some deportees have gone back into the drugs trade.

One scene in the film shows a dealer preparing methamphetamine for sale, boasting that he can make TP$5000 (NZ$3200) from his Sunday night trading.

And sympathetic as he might be to their plight, Prisons Commissioner Sione Falemanu says deportees have brought more crime to the kingdom and sparked a wave of robberies.

With the Tongan diaspora spread between Sydney and Salt Lake City, this issue is clearly not going to go away. After a public screening of the documentary in Auckland last week, members of the audience who spoke during a talanoa, were sympathetic, but others warned that the deporting countries would also have to take note of what was happening.

“In all honesty, this is an ongoing issue, and believe it or not, it won’t be resolved in the near future. We’re going to have a lot of deportees. And to be honest, we need to start removing the [negative] perception around deportees,” one audience member said.

However, another warned: “If New Zealand does not actually pay attention to what we are seeing, it’s going to backfire on New Zealand. We’re already seeing it.”

Dr Philip Cass is an editorial adviser for Kaniva Tonga.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz