'Got to obey the law': deported bikies promise to behave in New Zealand quarantine
Jacinda Ardern’s government expressed its unhappiness this week about Australia resuming deportations of New Zealanders during the Covid-19 pandemic – but at least one motorcycle gang boss has pledged that he and his associates will adhere perfectly to quarantine rules for returning travellers.
“The guys here in Melbourne, we’ve had a good chat, and we know that there’re rules in quarantine that we’ve got to follow and we also know that we’ve got to stick by ... you know, you’ve got to obey the law there,” Raymond Elise, a former president of the Rebels motorcycle gang’s Victoria branch, told the news outlet Stuff.
Elise was scheduled for deportation on Tuesday, along with eight others in detention in Melbourne, the Australian city that has been hardest hit by coronavirus.
“Our boys know that what we do there could potentially slow the process for the boys coming after us,” he said.
The move comes amid rancour at New Zealanders returning home only to abscond from isolation hotels over fences and through windows on trips to the supermarket or liquor store.
Two returning travellers who fled quarantine in violation of the rules have appeared in court. Neither were deportees. They face fines or prison terms if found guilty.
Elise, who had lived in Australia for a decade before he was arrested in April and his visa cancelled, has not been convicted of a crime. Stuff reported that Elise was told his criminal offending from a young age in New Zealand, disregard for Australian laws, and “extensive network of criminal associates” had been among the reasons for his visa cancellation.
Australia said on Monday that it would send 30 people from its detention centres to Auckland this week, to the chagrin of New Zealand’s government. A special quarantine hotel has been prepared for the new arrivals to stay in during their two-week mandatory isolation period that applies to all travellers entering the country.
Extra security would be on hand to monitor the deportees, said Chris Hipkins, New Zealand’s health minister, on Monday. He added that the arrivals were at “higher risk of potential offending”, and “extra precautions” were needed to manage them.
Deportations of people who live in Australia back to New Zealand when their visas are cancelled (some of whom have never lived in New Zealand before and have not been convicted of any crime) have strained relations in recent years, and the practice had temporarily stalled during the coronavirus outbreak.
New Zealand appears to have quashed community transmission of the virus, with the last known instance reported as recovered in June. There are 25 active cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, all of them returning travellers.
No one is in hospital with the virus. New Zealand has reported fewer than 1,200 confirmed cases of Covid-19, with 22 deaths.
New Zealand’s strict border rules, which have been in place since late March, bar anyone except New Zealanders, their families, and certain essential workers from entering the country. Returning travellers now receive two Covid-19 tests during their isolation period.
More than 1,000 New Zealanders have been deported by the Australian government under a law change made in 2014. Even if they have lived and worked in Australia for decades and hold permanent residency, New Zealanders can be ejected on “bad character grounds”, for being sentenced to 12 months or more in jail, or at the discretion of the home affairs minister, in the name of national security.
Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, has repeatedly urged the Australian government to revoke the measure.
