Deported

[sprintcyclist]

In and out of prison throughout his adult life, Gus Kuster is about to walk free. But not in Australia, the country he has called home since he was three years old.

Kuster has been jailed 10 times in 20 years, often over drug and driving offences.
His six-year-old Australian son does not know his father is being deported
Today Australian officials will escort the 40-year-old onto a one-way flight to Port Moresby, where he will be given two weeks' accommodation, $250 and no chance of returning.
The Federal Government will bill him for the cost of his removal.
After that, Kuster's family say he will be on his own, to start his life over in one of the world's most dangerous cities.
The Papua New Guinea-born man has fallen foul of Australia's toughened immigration rules, and a government seeking the power to banish tens of thousands more permanent residents with criminal records.

Kuster has been jailed 10 times in 20 years, often over drug and driving offences.

The most serious sentence was a two-and-a-half-year prison term for dangerous driving during an amphetamine-fuelled police car chase in Brisbane in 2004.

Last year he served out a 12-month sentence for an offence that cannot be legally disclosed.

He has since spent more than a year in immigration detention fighting to stay in Australia.

Kuster's blood ties to Australia run back three generations.

His father Richard, an Australian citizen, says he brought his children back from PNG "to live in Australia as Australians".

His Tamworth-born grandfather fought for Australia in PNG in World War II.

His Sydney-born great grandfather fought in Gallipoli.

His six-year-old Australian son does not know his father is being deported.

"I just can't understand how I can be outcast, as not an Australian," Kuster said on the eve of his deportation.

"That's the hardest part about being here."


Visa cancellations risen by more than 1,000 per cent
But Kuster, who has worked on Sunshine Coast trawlers, in labouring jobs and on farms north of Brisbane, never became an Australian citizen.

This exposes him to a government character test that mandates removal for anyone sentenced to a year or more in prison.

Last month the Morrison Government introduced legislation to allow it to deport people with convictions but not jail time.

This would put tens of thousands more Australian residents in line for removal, a senate inquiry has been told.

Visa cancellations have already risen by more than 1,000 per cent since the Government last toughened the rules in 2014.

Last year, the department moved to deport 888 people under the character test, including 22 from China, 14 from Iraq and 11 "stateless persons".

Kuster is among a handful of long-term Australian residents known to be deported to PNG.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade warns of a "constant threat of violent crime" in PNG, particularly in Port Moresby, where car jackings, burglaries and armed robberies are common.

The IMF rates PNG the 38th poorest country in the world, with average earnings of just $US3,789 a year.

"It's going to be absolute disaster for him," he said.

Mr Lomai said Kuster will be starting from scratch without a job in a place where public cashflow is grinding to a halt, services are virtually "non-existent", and thousands of families go without food every night.

"If he doesn't know people around here, it's going to be an absolute nightmare for him."

His Brisbane-based family said he has no living relatives to turn to in PNG.

His mother Agnes hails from the remote Ninigo Islands, 320-kilometres north-west of Manus Island.

Agnes said her son "doesn't know anything about New Guinea, nothing".

Kuster said he is worried about what will happen to him.

"There's a lot of raskols (criminal gangs). I'm struggling to think about what I'm going to do. I'm worried. I've got no support."

Kuster's family said he faces an existential threat.

"I just don't want him to go back, I'm sorry, to New Guinea, because he won't live," his father Richard said.

Kuster's older sister Annette said she's "appalled and saddened".

"We just wanted that chance for him to [turn his life around] here in Australia."

Younger sister Lisa Nolan said her parents who "already lost a son [through suicide] and they're losing another son".

Tensions heightened with Pacific neighbours
Mr Lomai said Australia's approach in such cases was likely to cause more friction with the PNG Government.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden has described Australia's policy as "corrosive" for Trans-Tasman relations.

Kuster's appeal to Immigration Minister David Coleman has been met with no reply and the minister did not respond to the ABC's questions.

The Department of Home Affairs said it did not comment on individual cases.

"The department takes seriously its responsibility to protect the Australian community from the risk of harm posed by non-citizens who engage in serious criminal conduct," a spokesman said.

"A non-citizen may apply for revocation of a visa cancellation decision and can choose to return to their home country while they await an outcome."

Barrister Greg Barns, of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, said Kuster's case represents "a new low" for the Government.

"To remove a person to one of the poorest countries in the world in circumstances where you know that that person is likely to endure real suffering, potentially violence, ill health, is simply an act of cruelty," he said.

Mr Barns said Australia was doing "what no other civilised country does in the world, and that is remove people who've effectively lived their entire lives in Australia, irrespective of the age of that person, irrespective of the fact that they have families here, and irrespective, it seems, of the gravity of the offending".

"It's cruel, it's inhumane, it breaks up families, it causes extraordinary suffering, not just to the person, but to those who are around that person."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-21/ ... g/11427542

[cods]

so many cases each and every one an individual...

t is tough.....

in this case this man is not a FATHER sorry if they use that as an excuse we would have more rehab institutes than any country
yet here he is still breaking and abusing our laws...

well sadly for him this is another of our LAWS...
and at 40 he should have been well aware of the consequences he faced...

it is tough but why should we put up with a revolving jail door father he has ruined his life no one else..

[sprintcyclist]

so many cases each and every one an individual...

t is tough.....

in this case this man is not a FATHER sorry if they use that as an excuse we would have more rehab institutes than any country
yet here he is still breaking and abusing our laws...

well sadly for him this is another of our LAWS...
and at 40 he should have been well aware of the consequences he faced...

it is tough but why should we put up with a revolving jail door father he has ruined his life no one else..

yes, he is still ruining other law abiding people lives.
he had does this himself

[Bogan]

Brian Ross wrote

Thing was, the Government didn't bother to check to make sure he was a citizen of PNG, failed to warn the Government of PNG of his arrival and then tried to serve them with his deportation bill. Typical of il Duce' and his minions, what?

Ok guys. What is Brian Ross's motivation here? Forced to choose between some foreign criminal and the safety of his own people, Brian's default position is to always take the side of the criminal because Australians are the problem, not the foreign criminals.

Brian Ross's Formula Which Explains Everything goes like this.

1. White people are always wrong, and dark skinned people are always right.
2. Anything that goes wrong in a darker skinned people’s society is always the fault of white people.
3. Not only are white people always wrong, they are especially wrong if they are Americans or Israelis.
4. Whatever injustices occur in white society must be pointed out and savagely attacked. But if darker skinned societies are riven with the foulest injustices and human rights violations, it is impolite to point that out.
5. The cultures of dark skinned people must be protected, while the cultures of white Europeans, the cultures which every non European is trying to barge into, must be destroyed.
6. White people are always the oppressors, and dark skinned people are always the victims.