Deportation could cause prison rows

Press, 27 November 1982, Page 14

Deportation could cause prison rows

NZPA Sydney A “lot of trouble” would occur in New South “Wales jails if a prison reform activist, Brett Collins, was deported to New Zealand, according to a tape-recording smuggled out of the maximum security jail at Goulburn. The voice on the recording was that of Raymond John Denning, who is serving a life sentence for the malicious, wounding of a warder. Mr Collins, the administrator of a Sydney half-way house for prisoners, has been pjaying a cat and mouse game with the police, who have a warrant for his arrest By telephone, he said that his solicitor was organising a Federal Court hearing for a stay of the deportation pending an , appeal, which had been lodged. ■ . k Mr Collins, a New Zealander, has been fighting through the courts a deportation order served on him soon after he was released on parole in June, 1980, after serving 10 years , for armed robbery and assault. “It is a race to see what happens first; whether they swoop on me or if we can

get a judge to hear the case,” he said. He said that the Federal Minister of Immigration, Mr John Hodges, apparently wanted him to be flown to New Zealand as soon as possible. “There is a seat- on the plane with my name on it. But we are depending on a stay of execution on the deportation,” Mr Collins said. In the meantime he was “permanently on holiday.” He is believed to be staying somewhere in Sydney and has not been to his Glebe home, I which has been raided by the police. The recorded message from Denning was made available to two Sydney radio stations, 2GB and 2JJJ, by prison reform sources. “New South Wales prisoners have become very agitated over this forced exile. He is one of their only spokesmen,” said Denning. There would be “a lot of trouble in the New South Wales jail system” if outspoken people such as Mr Collins were forced out of Australia, he said. During his 19 months of freedom after escaping from Grafton Jail, Denning won the support of many

prisoners with his statements on jail reform and his taunting of the police. He once left a note pinned to the front of the Sydney C. 1.8. headquarters, taped an interview for radio, and even made a video recording for a television current affairs programme.

The Corrective Services Department was making inquiries into how the tape was smuggled, , from Goulburn Jail. “I face the intolerable decision of having to choose between a well established life in Sydney of over 30 years or exile with my spouse,” said Mr Collins’s wife, Ms Irina Dunn. In a-television interview, Mr Collins said he had been ordered out of Australia for his political activities. Now widely recognised as the main spokesman for prisoners’., rights and jail reform, Mr Collins said he had been doing his best since he was paroled to contribute to Australian society by serving on the Legal Services Commission and working at the half-way house. A Ministerial statement that he had a criminal record in New Zealand was false. He had only been in a boys’ home when he was 17, he said.