Motekiai and Sione Taufahema are due to be released in 2012 after an 11-year sentence for the manslaughter of Senior Constable Glenn McEnally in Sydney, and before then both had many convictions and jail sentences for other crimes.

Belatedly the Immigration Department announced that it would cancel their visas and deport the brothers to Tonga at the end of their sentences, but both appealed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and Motekiai won his appeal because, the tribunal held, it was in the interests of his seven-year-old daughter, born after he was last jailed, that he stay in Australia. The Government appealed this to the Federal Court and Sione Taufahema appealed the tribunal's failure to overrule his deportation to the same court. A month ago the Federal Court upheld both decisions by the tribunal, with the result that Motekiai was to stay and Sione was to go. And last week Minister Evans used his discretionary ministerial powers to say that he would act in the nation's interest by deporting Motekiai Taufahema.

Australia will be a better place when they're both gone.

But why has it taken so long? Both failed the deportation character test by being sentenced to jail for at least 12 months a long time before they were involved in the killing of Constable McEnally, so should they not have been deported then? Why should not all non-citizens be deported at the first opportunity when they fail this character test? Should the courts be required to give the protection of the Australian community, the national interest, more weight?