The woman who said "f**k off" is one of O'Dowd's friends. "I left behind two children so I was boarding that plane knowing that I was never ever coming back. And then to have those things yelled at you as you're boarding a plane in handcuffs..." O'Dowd told Newshub. "Our country doesn't want you, are you excited to go home?" the reporter asked the deportees. O'Dowd said it was "horrible". "The last thing I heard leaving Australia was 'we don't want you here'." Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has previously labelled Australia's hard-line deportation policy as corrosive to the Anzac relationship.