On Monday, the network aired an exclusive report by Nine News Queensland reporter Jordan Fabris, who was given special access by the Australian Border Force to go on board the “secret prisoner plane” being used to deport Kiwis convicted of crimes.

“Taking out the trash,” the host said as she introduced the segment.

“Tonight, we’re revealing the secret prisoner plane booting foreign criminals out of Australia. From murderers to child abusers, these people have no place in our country.”

The report also featured Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton describing the flights as “taking the trash out”.

“We’re talking about the most serious offenders here, and our country is safer for having deported them,” Mr Dutton told the program.

“Over the course of the last 12 months or so Border Force has been able to deport over 700 people. It’s taking the trash out, then we can make Australia a safer place.”

The program showed a number of notorious criminals being loaded onto the unmarked Airbus jet, including Grant David Mitchell, who choked his girlfriend Nella Poli to death in the 1980s and remained a fugitive for nearly 24 years.

Also featured were killer conman Edwin Lewis, crazed Geelong car chase gunman Bruce Savage, bikie drug runner Gavin Lou Boynton-Taiawa, sex offender Jamie Roy McKeay, and in Perth, “two criminals whose identities are classified”.

At one point in the segment, Fabris thrusts a microphone at a handcuffed woman as she’s led across the tarmac. “How does it feel to be kicked out of Australia?” he asks.

After the woman tells him to “f**k off”, Fabris says, “Our country doesn’t want you, are you excited to go home?”

The issue of criminal deportations, which were briefly suspended last year during the COVID-19 pandemic, has festered as one of the most contentious diplomatic issues between the two countries.

A surge in gang crime following the return of hundreds of former prisoners has made headlines in New Zealand, where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has slammed the policy as having a “corrosive” effect on trans-Tasman relations.

In an article about the Nine News report, the NZ Herald’s headline quoted one reaction describing it as “upsetting”, and the article itself labelled Mr Dutton’s “trash” comment as “incendiary”.

The newspaper noted criticism of the deportation policy, which has seen New Zealanders who had spent their life in Australia deported after committing minor offences.

Four people have died in connection with the policy, including a man who committed suicide 18 months after being deported, according to a “Border Deaths Database” maintained by Monash University.

The NZ Herald quoted a woman who works with deportees in New Zealand, who said the report did not accurately reflect the reality of the policy or the ratio of Kiwis being deported for relatively minor charges.

Aimee Reardon from Prisoners’ Aid and Rehabilitation Society said Mr Dutton’s comments were “ignorant” and that he was “ill-informed”.

She also said racism played a part in how the policy was enforced and that there were “ulterior motives” involved.

“She said his comments would hit hard for returnees, many of whom already needed counselling to ‘see themselves as people’ again,” the NZ Herald wrote.

“She said she has spoken to one returnee was ‘really upset’ after seeing the report and concerned that his family in Australia might see it and it might affect the perceptions of people in his new community.”

In an opinion piece for the Stuff.co.nz website, journalist Andrea Vance suggested Prime Minister Scott Morrison was engaging in “a touch of Kiwi bashing” to distract from his government’s scandals.

“It’s easy to tell when Scott Morrison is feeling under pressure – he picks a fight with New Zealand,” Vance wrote.

“The Australian Prime Minister’s Liberal party is marred by a succession of explosive rape and sexual misconduct allegations. Two of his senior ministers are on sick leave, facing pressure to resign. In times like this, a touch of Kiwi bashing plays well domestically.”

Vance said in the last week, Mr Morrison had “taken a couple of cracks”.

“On Wednesday, he blamed New Zealand for the failure to open a trans-Tasman travel bubble,” she wrote.

“Then, later in the evening, a local television station aired an extraordinarily grotesque piece of jingoistic propaganda, thinly disguised as a news item.”

Vance said the PM’s “spin doctors would be delighted with this timely promotion of their punitive border security and detention policies, which enjoy widespread public support at home but have attracted widespread international criticism”.

“The news track is as shallow as the policy – it finishes once the plane doors slam shut,” she wrote. “There is no thought given to what happens once Australia washes its hands of the exiles.”

The Nine Network has been contacted for comment.