The gulag across the Tasman
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday July 25, 2009
IN THIS confusing economic calamity where the price of men's undies goes down but women's up one Australian export is under particular threat: criminals.We make them and, in a new age of transportation, send increasing numbers to an eastern gulag. New Zealand is an archipelago of hard prison islands, where inmates are punished with plentiful pinot noir, succulent rare roast lamb and more lush golf courses than any other country.We send criminals there such as Patricia Carol Toia, who moved to Australia when she was one year, two months and 13 days old. She moved first to Brisbane, her first mistake (and it's time toddlers took responsibility for their parents' actions).She left home at 13 and did various unsavoury acts before ending up in Kings Cross possessing a criminal record longer than the entire Moran clan. Her visa was cancelled for poor character and she is to be repatriated to her nation of citizenship, the Shaky Isles (which are now 10 centimetres closer after the recent earthquake).As the Herald reported this week, Australia exports more bad New Zealand apples than those from any other country, even if those apples went to an offender finishing school in, ahem, Australia. In 2007-08, 41 Kiwis were sent home to our 21st century Port Arthur, a record, but a recent ministerial direction is likely to cut the industry back.Getting in before the expected downturn is Stanley Taurua, to be sent offshore despite being "more Australian than Australians". Presumably that means he has a criminal history more extensive than that required for an earlier age of Australian residency.The Kiwi-born demonstrated a fine grasp of written Strine in tribunal proceedings: "Yous say my character is repugnant yet it is the very one Australian culture gave me. I am a product of the hardest Australian way of life yous recognise the true Aussie battler."A valiant defence, appealing to our cultural cringe while adopting our preferred spelling of the second person plural pronoun. But while God may love a trier, the Commonwealth does not. Off he pops.He's part of a splendid national tradition of exporting anyone of whom we've tired: Amanda Vanstone to Rome, Alexander Downer to Cyprus and Kylie Minogue to London. Wilson Tuckey cannot be long for this land, as soon as Malcolm Turnbull finds somewhere soundproof. It is a tradition to be expanded, not curtailed.But the long-running case of Toia, better known as the one-woman crime wave, has caused periodic diplomatic skirmishes, with a former Kiwi foreign affairs minister, Phil Goff, saying in 2004 that she "doesn't know New Zealand, doesn't remember New Zealand, hasn't lived in New Zealand and for all intents and purposes is Australian".Five years on, his point remains unclear. Is hand-washing now undesirable? Are we meant to deal with our own rubbish?Pfft. The same could be said for Russell Crowe, a Kiwi turned Woolloomooloo-ian, or Jacqui Kelly, who caused a byelection when she was first elected by the people of Penrith those renowned practical jokers by maintaining dual nationality, or Sonny Bill Williams.Still, most traffic goes east, as it should continue. Some countries make rubbish and some countries are made to take it.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
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