November 28, 2024
Australia will be able pay other countries to take foreign criminals who cannot be deported home and jail non-citizens who refuse to leave under a tough new immigration laws proposed by Labor.
A raft of significant changes to the Migration Act across three separate bills were rolled into one package and expected to pass parliament as soon as Wednesday night after the federal government struck a deal with the Coalition.
The proposal will allow the Immigration Minister to direct a non-citizen to complete specific actions or face deportation under a "removal pathway direction". If the person doesn't comply with this direction, they could face up to five years in prison.
In addition to the removal powers, the government will be able to pre-emptively ban travellers from whole countries that refuse to accept their own citizens being returned against their will, such as Iran, Iraq and Russia. The opposition agreed to support the three bills in exchange for some safeguards around the traveller ban and tougher scrutiny of protection visas.
Labor will also be able to reinstate ankle bracelets and impose curfews to monitor the NZYQ cohort of former immigration detainees released by the High Court.
One of the bills allows officers in immigration detention facilities to confiscate items they deem dangerous, like mobile phones.
When introducing this legislation, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said there "had been incidents of criminals in detention facilities using encrypted messaging services to run drug trafficking and other organised crime activities".
Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said prohibitive items legislation had been a "long-held objective of the Coalition," claiming detention centres had become "lawless places" that put officials in danger by immigration detainees using mobile phones "to run drug smuggling networks from inside".
Mr Paterson said the opposition had agreed to support Labor's bills because it would not allow the government's "weakness and incompetence" on national security to "put the Australian public in danger".
Human rights advocates criticised the changes, while the Greens' immigration spokesman David Shoebridge said the bills amounted to "the most extreme migration legislation since the White Australia policy".
