{"id":587233,"date":"2026-09-01T20:40:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T20:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/587233\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T20:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T20:40:13","slug":"nz-woman-deported-from-australia-as-a-501-following-violence-against-her-ex-partner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/587233\/","title":{"rendered":"NZ woman deported from Australia as a 501 following violence against her ex-partner"},"content":{"rendered":"

The parents of a 17-month-old Australian girl hoped that the child’s grandmother, a New Zealand citizen, would have a presence in their daughter’s life.<\/p>\n

But the 43-year-old grandmother will have to watch the child grow up from a distance, because she is being deported from Australia for her persistent and escalating criminal offending.<\/p>\n

The woman is being sent back to New Zealand after serving a prison term for domestic violence offences against her former partner.<\/p>\n

The Australian Administrative Review Tribunal has turned down her request to overturn the cancellation of her visa to be in Australia, where she has lived for the past 11 years.<\/p>\n

In doing so, it has noted the “increasing seriousness” of her criminal offending, which it says has been driven by alcohol consumption.<\/p>\n

The woman thus becomes a ‘501’, one of more than 3700 New Zealanders deported from Australia under Section 501 of the Australian Migration Act since it came into effect in 2014.<\/p>\n

More than 90 percent of those deportees have been men, but the woman failed the “character test” to be allowed to stay in Australia when she went to prison for her offending against a former female partner.<\/p>\n

The woman will leave three adult children behind, as well as the 17-month old granddaughter, whom she has never met because she has been in prison or immigration detention since the child was born.<\/p>\n

The little girl’s parents, the woman’s son and daughter-in-law, wrote to the tribunal saying they hoped she would be present in their daughter’s life.<\/p>\n

But the woman, whose name has been redacted from the tribunal decision, will have to keep contact with the child remotely.<\/p>\n

“If the applicant were removed to New Zealand, I find that she and [the child] could nonetheless maintain contact by telephone or video calls,” tribunal member Greg Weeks said in his decision on the woman’s case.<\/p>\n

“While I accept that it would be in the best interests of [the girl] to have a relationship in person with the applicant in Australia, I find that she would still have a relationship with the applicant if she were removed to New Zealand.”<\/p>\n

Given the child’s age and the lack of any relationship with her grandmother to date, Weeks said he attached only “limited weight” to the girl’s best interest in deciding whether to reverse the visa cancellation.<\/p>\n

Criminal record in New Zealand<\/p>\n

The woman already had a criminal record in New Zealand when she moved to Australia in 2015 – something she failed to disclose to immigration authorities.<\/p>\n

Her New Zealand offending mainly involved traffic offences and theft.<\/p>\n

She continued stealing after she arrived in Australia, shoplifting and taking petrol without paying for it. She spent time on probation.<\/p>\n

In 2019, things took a more serious turn when she assaulted and screamed racial abuse at a 73-year-old woman.<\/p>\n

By 2023, her behaviour had become more serious again. By now, she was committing family violence against the woman with whom she had been in an intimate relationship.<\/p>\n

At various times, she broke into the woman’s house and threw a television to the floor. She drove a car at her aggressively, threatened her with a bottle, and pushed her onto a roadway where buses were passing.<\/p>\n

She ignored the Australian equivalent of a protection order which was supposed to keep her away from her former partner.<\/p>\n

She was sentenced to prison for 22 months for breaching the order, assault, breaking into a house, destroying property, intimidation and using an offensive weapon.<\/p>\n

This prison sentence triggered the cancellation of her visa, and her subsequent appeal to the tribunal.<\/p>\n

Tribunal weighs decision<\/p>\n

Weeks weighed a number of factors before deciding that the woman would not be allowed to stay in Australia.<\/p>\n

These included the protection of and risk to the Australian community, the nature and seriousness of her criminal offending, the family violence involved, her ties to Australia, and the interests of minor children.<\/p>\n

He also considered the woman’s history of being abused in New Zealand while growing up.<\/p>\n

“The applicant has offended frequently and repeatedly during her residence in Australia,” Weeks said.<\/p>\n

“Much of that offending has been violent or has otherwise placed the Australian community in peril.<\/p>\n

“The applicant’s multiple family violence offences are a consideration that has been particularly important to the determination of this case.<\/p>\n

“For the reasons set out above, the applicant’s criminal history and the risk that she will reoffend in the future are the issues to which I have attached the most significant weight.”<\/p>\n

On balance, he decided not to revoke the cancellation of the woman’s visa.<\/p>\n

* This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Open Justice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The parents of a 17-month-old Australian girl hoped that the child’s grandmother, a New Zealand citizen, would have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-587233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}