Decision to kick a convicted sexual predator out of Australia is overturned by a bleeding heart tribunal

Because it might cause him "hardship"! Isn't that exactly what he has earned?

A DECISION to kick a convicted sexual predator out of Australia has been overturned because the pervert loves footy and his hero is Peter Brock.

As thousands of innocent would-be migrants are sent packing each year, the rapist and paedophile is now free to walk the streets of Melbourne despite Immigration Minister Chris Evans' decision to deport him.

The man has just been released from prison and is on the registered sex offenders' list for the rest of his life. He served a 7 1/2-year sentence for the rape of his partner and attempted incest on his step-daughter, then 12, which a judge described as "revolting".

But a tribunal decided the man was "virtually an Australian person", though he was not a citizen, and that it would be unfair to deport him to his homeland of Malta.

The decision has sparked outrage and the minister is considering his options, including an appeal to the Federal Court.

The registered sex offender, who cannot be named for legal reasons and is known as DNCW, fought the decision to deport him in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which reviews ministerial decisions.

The tribunal's senior member, John Handley, said even though the offences committed by the man were "repulsive" it would cause him "hardship" if he was deported.

He said the man had lived in Australia since he was four, with the exception of a few years when his family returned to Malta, and he had no memory of his homeland. "(He) is virtually an Australian person. He supports an Australian Rules football team. He also enjoys tennis, volleyball, badminton and soccer. He enjoys motorbike and motor car racing and his hero was Peter Brock," Mr Handley said.

Even though DNCW described the man's relationship with his partner in 2003 as "pretty good", he raped her.

He then twice tried to have incestuous sex with his 12-year-old step-daughter. Mr Handley said: "The attempted incest offences, by their description alone, are revolting. "The man described himself as a father figure (to the girl). Despite her protests, he violated her on two occasions.

"(The partner who was raped) was devastated and inconsolable whilst giving evidence. I do not know of any more disgraceful or depraved conduct by a man upon a woman."

The man also had a string of prior convictions including theft, unlawful assault, breach of an intervention order, burglary and cultivating a narcotic plant, he said.

The man had no close relatives in Malta, barely spoke the language, was not eligible for social security in Malta and would "suffer considerable hardship", he said.

An Australian resident of 14 years who was deported to Sri Lanka forcing his elderly mother, who is a citizen, to return with him, is outraged. Edward Joseph, who was caring for his 93-year-old mother, Irene, in Box Hill until his deportation in July, was refused a protection visa even though he claimed persecution as a Tamil.

"Australia is allowing a convicted rapist to remain in the country," he said. "If justice is what the Australian Government has given this rapist, please give my mother and I the same justice. "We are not rapists but, rather, ordinary people who have been made to suffer as a result of poor administrative decision-making of the Department of Immigration."

The tribunal has reviewed 270 of these cases of which it has overturned more than a third of the minister's refusals.

Justice advocate Steve Medcraft said the tribunal should "stick to backyard disputes" because, despite its senior members earning about $200,000 a year, they had no background in criminal law.

SOURCE