Monday 2 May 2022 The Guardian •
19cannot even speak the language. It
is happening not just under s501,
but s116, which again uses the char-
acter test.
It has a long list of reasons the
minister can use to cancel a visa,
including if the holder “ may be, or
would or might be , a risk” to the Aus-
tralian public.
Sixtus had her permanent visa can-
celled under s116. She is still trying to
get home to Australia.
She says she was never a threat
to the public, and it came as a com-
plete surprise when she was taken
into immigration detention a month
after her release from jail.
“I didn’t know what to do. The Bor-
der Force came ... I was like: ‘What the
hell is going on? I didn’t know that
could happen’,” she says.
She admits she “screwed up”, but
says she was scared and confused by
the process. From the start of 2019 to
the end of 2021, 1,090 New Zealand
citizens were removed from Australia- 1,029 of them were considered to
have left voluntarily.
Asked whether “voluntarily” was
the word used when someone was
given a choice between staying in
detention and leaving the country,
the Border Force says: “New Zea-
landers who are detained as unlawful
non-citizens can request to voluntar-
ily return to their home country at
any time. Those who are unwilling
to depart voluntarily may be sub-
ject to detention and removal from
Australia.”
Earlier statistics released under
freedom of information laws show
there were 36,420 s116 cancellations,
including 463 minors in the fi ve years
to the end of 2019.
Section 116 was also used to deport
tennis player Novak Djokovic. Filipa
Payne, an advocate for New Zea-
landers’ rights, says the process of
deportations is “morally bankrupt”.
“Under s116 you can reapply [for
an Australian visa] after three years,”
Payne says. “[But] I don’t know any-
one who’s been successful in that
application, because they then cancel
them under 501. It’s morally bank-
rupt, and it’s completely destroying
families.”
Sixtus is now 23, and trying to
make a life in Auckland, studying
business and marketing. It hasn’t
been easy.
“My family’s still in Australia. I’ve
been alone this whole time, mov-
ing around,” she says. “I’m trying to
make a life, to get comfortable.”
But she misses her family, and her
life in Australia.
“I actually got deported on Mum’s
birthday. It’s so hard for her because
she can’t come over all the time,” she
says, adding that the situation has
been complicated by Covid.
“I grew up there. I’m more Austral-
ian ... I still miss it a lot. I miss my life
over there,” she says.
“We all change. We should all have
a chance to prove ourselves.”
‘The future is femme’
Indian art fair takes
on the patriarchy
Page 25US immigration
Republicans reheat
the Trump playbook
Page 21
Tory ShepherdMystery “Missy” Sixtus was just
seven when she moved to Australia,
too young to know about becoming
an Australian citizen. When she was a
teenager, she started hanging around
with a rough crowd.
“I screwed up,” Sixtus says. “I
started to get into trouble.”
She was 18 when she was found
guilty of assault, for which she spent
a month in prison. Then the federal
government deported her, alone, to
New Zealand under Australia’s Migra-
tion Act.
Those laws give the immigration
minister what have been called “God-
like” powers over overseas-born
people in Australia. The minister can
cancel their visas for a range of rea-
sons, sending them into detention
then back to where they were born.
Earlier this year the Coalition
government was seeking “more dis-
cretionary powers” to cancel visas
using the character test , underAustralia’s hardline policy
on deportation leaves no
room for second chances
head of the centrist party MoDem ,
and a key Macron ally, during the
campaign. “There must be a new
government approach, which must
be constantly in consideration of the
French people.”
Sylvain Burquier was one of 150
people randomly selected to take part
in a citizens’ assembly to develop
methods for cutting carbon emis-
sions during Macron’s fi rst term.
Environmentalists criticised the gov-
ernment for not going far enough to
follow the citizens’ recommenda-
tions. But Burquier said the method
itself – of forming an assembly of
everyday people to thrash out diffi -
cult public policy issues – had proved
it worked and should be expanded.
“The 150 of us are convinced that
new forms of participative or delib-
erative democracy can move issues
forward,” Burquier said. “By being a
middle path – neither activists nor
businesses – we shook things up
... The population was behind us,
we’re still active today, we upset a
lot of people because we were totally
transpartisan, and only linked by the
common good, not at all by political
posturing .”
Macron has promised his second
term would be devoted to tackling
the climate emergency, after admit-
ting environmental policy must be
speeded up. But an Elabe poll after
his win on 24 April found 57% of peo-
ple did not believe he would make the
environment his top priority.
A key policy task in the short term
is to address the cost of living crisis.
Macron is expected to renew caps on
energy costs and consider further
anti-inflation payments to low-
income households this summer.
Ultimately, he has promised to get
France to full unemployment. The
unemployment rate dropped to its
lowest in 13 years during Macron’s
fi rst term as president, and its econ-
omy – the world’s seventh largest
- outperformed other big European
countries as well as the broader euro
currency zone.
But with infl ation in France reach-
ing a new high of 5.4% in April, while
growth stalled in the fi rst quarter,
May Day marchers warned that peo-
ple were angry at the struggle to make
ends meet, calling for salaries to be
increased and pensions raised.
Trade unions at the demonstra-
tions said Macron’s plans to raise the
retirement age could lead to strike
action. During the president’s fi rst
term, a diff erent proposed overhaul
of pensions sparked protests that
lasted longer than any strike since the
wildcat workers’ stoppages of 1968.
The reform was later shelved during
the pandemic.
“If there’s a need to, we’ll strike,”
the secretary general of the Force
Ouvrière trade union told BFMTV at
the Paris demonstration. “Let that be
heard. We have our reasons. It’s not
just pure obstruction, it’s based on
an economic and social argument.”
Masked protesters burn fl ares at
the annual May Day march in the
streets of Paris yesterday
PHOTOGRAPH: SARAH MEYSSONNIER/REUTERS
Direct fl ights a step closer
Qantas is set to announce a
landmark order for Airbus A350-
1000 jets capable of non-stop
fl ights from Sydney to London as
part of a wider deal with the fi rm,
according to sources.
The multibillion-dollar order
brings Qantas closer to launching
record-breaking direct fl ights of
nearly 20 hours on the lucrative
“kangaroo route” by mid 2025.
Qantas has touted plans for
the world’s longest commercial
fl ights for more than fi ve years, but
delayed its “Project Sunrise” due to
the coronavirus pandemic.
The deal is a breakthrough for
the airline’s chief executive, Alan
Joyce, who has described non-stop‘The Border Force
came ... I was like:
“What the hell?
I didn’t know that
could happen”’Mystery Sixtus
Deported to New Zealand‘Take Back The
Night’: feminist
march calls for
streets to be
safer in Berlin
Kate Connolly
BerlinA feminist march on the eve of May
Day, known as Walpurgisnacht , when
witches traditionally meet, kicked off
May Day demonstrations in Berlin,
with a group of around 2,500 cam-
paigning for safer streets under the
slogan “Take Back the Night”.
The demonstration, described
as lively and initially peaceful, was
aimed at reconquering the night
for women, lesbians, and inter and
transexual people, according to the
organisers. Accompanied by a large
police presence, it concentrated on
the northern and central Prenzlauer-
berg and Mitte districts of Berlin. But
police intervened to stop the march
after some participants set fi re to
fl ares and bottles were thrown.
Later in the evening protesters
apparently acting independently
of organisers threw paint at shop
windows and several panes of glass
were broken, leading to three arrests.
Charges were brought for breaching
the peace, violent assault, bodily
harm and criminal damage, a police
spokeswoman, Anja Dierschke, told
the broadcaster rbb24.
Walpurgisnacht is an event in Ger-
man folklore when witches meet to
hold revels with the devil, tradition-
ally in the region of north central
Germany on the Brocken mountain.
Tens of thousands of others took to
streets elsewhere across the country,
drawing attention to a range of issues
dominated by the war in Ukraine.
A separate demonstration around
an election campaign event in the
state of Schleswig-Holstein saw the
foreign minister Annalena Baerbock
face accusations of warmongering
for her support of providing arms to
Ukraine. An event later in the day
in which she was due to participate
had to be called off after protesters
sprayed the stage with butyric acid.
The German chancellor, Olaf
Scholz , speaking to a May Day rally
in Düsseldorf, said he respected the
values of pacifi sts but defended his
decision to send arms to Ukraine.section 501 of the act. Labor said the
government already had the power
to cancel visas at will, but eventu-
ally waved the changes through
the House of Representatives. They
remain unlegislated as no time
remained for Senate debate before
the election.
The government has been cancel-
ling the visas of increasing numbers
of people, mainly to New Zealand,
which is strongly critical of the laws.
People are often sent to countries
they barely know, are isolated from
family and friends, and sometimesSydney-London fl ights as the holy
grail for the 101-year-old carrier.
The Australian airline launched
the route in 1947 with Lockheed
Constellations, which took several
stops and 58 hours of fl ying.
Today’s one-stop fl ights take
almost 24 hours. In 2018, Qantas
started non-stop fl ights from
Perth, in Western Australia, to
London that take 17 hours to carry
passengers 9,000 miles.
The Airbus expansion comes
days after Boeing further delayed
the development of its 777X
jetliner, which had at one stage
been in contention to allow direct
fl ights from Australia’s east coast to
London and New York. Reuters▲ Franziska Giff ey , t he governing
mayor of Berlin, at a May Day rally Mystery Sixtus was seven years
old when she moved to Australia but
was sent back to New Zealand alone
PHOTOGRAPH: FIONA GOODALL PHOTOGRAPHY