Immigration Minister Tony Burke has quietly accrued the power to more readily impose electronic monitoring and curfews on dangerous non-citizens released from detention.
Under the new rules, Mr Burke will have the ability to release non-citizens from immigration detention without the approval of the High Court and impose strict conditions upon them, if they are deemed to be ‘community safety concern’.
The Albanese government will be hoping these sweeping measures finally halt the political nightmare the Labor Party has facing since the High Court ruled in November 2023, that non-citizens who cannot be deported can’t be indefinitely detained even if previously criminally convicted.
That decision along with other legal challenges lost by the Albanese government has seen murderers and child rapists back on the streets with dozens being arrested for various crimes or breaching release conditions.
Mr Burke’s new powers come courtesy of a deal Labor struck with the Opposition during the final sitting week of federal parliament for this year.
Along with the discretion to monitor freed detainees, Mr Burke will also have more power to deport foreigners with no right to remain in Australia.
The Albanese government’s previous attempt to impose curfews and monitoring on freed detainees was struck down by a separate High Court ruling in November, with the measures labelled ‘punitive’ and unconstitutional.
The new legislation seeks to circumvent constitutional issues by introducing a new ‘community protection test’ to re-implement ankle monitoring and curfew requirements.
Immigration Minister Tony Burke has been given sweeping powers to impose curfew and electronic monitoring on criminally convicted non-citizens Australia can’t deport
Australian Lawyers Alliance and barrister Greg Barns argued the new regulations breach the human rights of detainees, who had served their jail sentences and in many cases were not at a high risk of reoffending.
‘Rarely would any Australian citizen who is released from jail have such conditions placed upon them,’ Mr Barns told The Australian.
Under the recently rushed through laws, the government will also be able to impose travel bans on countries that don’t accept their own deported citizens.
There is also more leeway to force foreigners to co-operate in their deportation.
An additional provision will allow the government to deport unlawful non-citizens to a third country under a paid arrangement.
Since taking over the troubled immigration portfolio from Andrew GIles, Mr Burke has also had to clean up a mess created by his government’s Direction 99 order.
A detainee released after last year’s High Court decision that indefinite detention is unlawful
Ninette Simons, 73, who was allegedly bashed and robbed by free immigration detainee in her Perth home
This was intended to moderate the deportation of New Zealand-born criminals back to their birthplace and was announced by Mr Giles in May.
Mr Giles that asked courts and tribunals to consider someone’s ties to Australia as a primary consideration when reviewing their visa.
However, the order led the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to cancel the removal of dozens of dangerous offenders from Australian shores.
Labor has since revised the direction to more strongly consider community safety.
During his busy re-introduction to the portfolio, which he previously held under the second Rudd government from 2013, Mr Burke has also flown to Indonesia.
Its believed he asked the Indonesian government to crack down on asylum-seekers leaving that country to come to Australia by boat.
A handful of illegal vessels made it to the shores of northwestern Australia earlier this year, which threatened to reignite the issue that dogged Labor the last time it was in power.
In one of the most shocking incidents stemming from the High Court decision in 2023, Perth grandparents Ninette Simons, 73, and her husband Phillip, 76, were allegedly robbed and assaulted on April 16 by a free detainee.
Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan, who was allegedly one of the three men who bashed the elderly couple leaving haunting images of a badly bruised Ms Simons.
