Bye bye Cliffie so pleased to see you get the boot! As if we do not have enough criminals it seems the writer wants another?
The fact is that Cliff and his crim mates will use any law to get what they want and then squeal when they get what they asked for.
I think it is wonderful decision and such a pity it is not used as the first resort and not the last!
Australia gives migrants so much and it is not asking much in return to not injure and steal from Australians.

It's a pity we don't deport more criminals to where they originated and only discover the opportunity to do this by accident.

Whether it is fair or not to the "victim" is hardly the issue, the issue is he is a criminal, is of undesirable character and now we have discovered we can remove him permanently from our society.

Yay, let me line up with the victims of his crimes, who appear to attract no sympathy at all from the author, in waving farewell to another failed human being.

There are repercussions to actions, not always expected or in your control.

If he had not been a criminal, he would have been fine .. it was his choice to be on the wrong side of Australian society's acceptable activities.

Lot's of Brits in similar position go to Bali or where ever then discover we have new rules (since the 80s) but we let them back in.

I hope now this person accepts that he is responsible and accountable for his actions in Australia and does not continue his life of crime in the UK.

Well, I don't care if he does or doesn't to be honest. I imagine the victims feel much better though.

There is some irony in idea of deporting convicts to Britain.

While I hold no sympathy for criminals, this 47 year old man has lived here since he was six. He has lived for 41 years in Australia.

Mr Clifford is by all accounts an Australian in the spirit of the law even if not in principle.

It will probably be overturned as in the case of Robert Jovicic which set a precedent for this sort of removal.

It seems to me to be a pity that there is not a greater focus upon what appear to be the necessary implications of the rider to Section 44 (iv.) of the Constitution with respect to the validity of ordinary Commonwealth citizenship or nationality legislation as it may purport to relate to permanently resident British subjects.

To be sure, the rider to that sub-Section on the face of it deals with exemptions from disqualification from membership of either House of the Parliament of officers and members of both the Commonwealth, and the British, forces; a disqualification that might otherwise arise in the event of their being in receipt of pay, half-pay, or a pension from the Commonwealth.

The necessary implication contained in the rider is that the Constitution recognises an equality of status within Australia as between native born and/or naturalized Australians, and permanently resident British subjects, at large. That this recognition is mentioned in relation to membership or former membership of the respective armed forces is only for the purpose of excluding being in receipt of payment by this sub-class as grounds for disqualification from membership of the Parliament.

It would seem to me that if any ordinary Commonwealth legislation was intended to establish anything different to this implicitly recognised Constitutional equality of status, there would first have to have been an alteration to Section 44 of the Constitution. There never has been, and Section 44 is not a transitional provision of the Constitution, either.

Perhaps this is yet another case in Australia, where public and political responses to great issues tend too often to flow from robustly held misconceptions rather than from reasoned argument, of a permanently resident British subject being discriminated against contrary to their possession of an equality of status implicitly recognised within the Constitution.

If a person spendt most of his childhood in this country, I am afraid we are struck with them40 years later. it is not fair of us to load them off to another country our responsibilities. If he is dangerous here, he will be more dangerous there.

Richard Laidlaw,

Your article about the fate of Clifford Tucker could not but touch me.

Having listened to what Sir Gerald Brennan, chief of the High Court of Australia, the highest in the land and the one that exclusively deals with Constitutional matters, I realized how detached ‘formal justice’ is from the concerns of the ordinary people.

What is admirable in your writing is the humanitarian way with which you address the uneven contest between State and man