There’s been a very interesting decision from The High Court delivered on the 501 deportee issue, perhaps more accurately described as something of a bombshell in the New Zealand Herald. 

It concerns a former drug dealer who is a 501 deportee, who has successfully challenged the Government’s authority to impose special conditions upon his return to New Zealand.  

As we know, what’s been happening up until now is that anyone deported to New Zealand under a 501 order from Australia has had special conditions imposed upon them when they arrived in New Zealand, such as having to reside at a particular address, supply fingerprints and DNA, and attend rehabilitation.

Here’s the thing, in the case of this 501, it’s illegal, according to the judgement of Judge Cheryl Gwen.

The consequence of that decision is that in the case of this former drug dealer, an order has been made for the police to remove his fingerprints from the database, remove his photograph and his DNA, and the applicant has been granted name suppression which will likely be permanent.

The thing is, and you’re not going to like this, in my view the judge got this 100 percent right. The former prisoners’ claim was that the law was imposing a retrospective punishment, which had taken place after the person had served their time. 

I have to confess, I’m a little surprised that it’s taken this long for a legal challenge to be mounted, because it always seemed a bit strange that someone could have. Because it always seemed a bit strange that someone could have served their time and completed their sentence, and have conditions imposed on them once it's all done and dusted.

Another was of highlighting what's wrong with the this decision, or the current practice should I say, is that if that prisoner had voluntarily moved to New Zealand, they would possibly have been free to do so without any restrictions. 

The problem is that nearly 3000 501’s have been deported and the majority of those have re-offended and some are deeply involved in organised crime.

I guess the question now (and it means getting technical) is that this particular offender was convicted before the Returning Offenders Act took effect in 2015, so perhaps there’s a difference when it comes to offenders who have been convicted after that date.

But now, I guess we’re going to have to wait and see as to whether the court rules that that the act is also guilty of imposing punishment after people have already served their time.  

And I’ll have to be honest with you, I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with retrospective legislation, regardless of how comfortable I am with the issue of Australia deporting its’ problems to us. 

But parliament is definitely going to need to clarify its intent.  Because as much as we might not like it, retrospective legislation is not something any of us should be comfortable with.

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