June 4, 2024
Immigration Minister says Home Affairs' detainees advice wrong
Embattled Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has been forced to walk back his claim that drones were being used to monitor former immigration detainees released by the High Court.
Mr Giles blamed the Department of Home Affairs for his incorrect claim last week that drones were part of the arsenal used by authorities keeping track of the 153 people released from detention since November as a part of Operation Aegis.
"I relied on information provided by my department at the time, which has since been clarified," he said in a statement confirming the embarrassing backflip.
But opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said fault laid with Mr Giles, who still took days to clarify the situation after his drone claim was not backed up by his department or Border Force officials questioned during Senate estimates last week.
"It's a truly bizarre thing to invent a fictitious secret drone surveillance program operating in Australia, and it just shows this government has no idea," Senator Paterson said.
In a statement on Monday, Mr Giles said Operation Aegis drew on information from a range of sources, including open-source aerial imagery and other technologies.
"Our strong laws impose strict visa conditions on everyone in the NZYQ cohort that were released due to a High Court decision," he said. "This can include electronic monitoring, curfews, financial reporting, spot checks, random home visits, as well as the other mandatory conditions which means the location of every individual is known." Mr Giles also revealed he had rushed to cancel 30 visas of non-citizens with "serious" criminal histories in the scramble to reverse Labor's directive that allowed foreigners to remain in Australia despite their offences.
He said the decisions were in the "national interest" after it had become clear that the interpretation of his "Direction 99" by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal as it overturned dozens of deportation orders "did not meet community expectations".
Direction 99 allowed the AAT to give more weight to a foreigner's longstanding connection to Australia when considering overturning visa cancellations issued due to a non-citizen's criminal activity.
"Ministerial Direction 99 has not been working as the government intended," Mr Giles said.
"The government is on track to overhaul this regime and put in place a new direction before the end of the week." The Coalition welcomed Labor's move to fix its Direction 99 "mess" and used Question Time to continue to put pressure on Anthony Albanese about his connection to the failed measure.
The Prime Minister was repeatedly asked if the direction was the product of his discussions with then-New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, which Mr Albanese denied.
Mr Albanese said the allegation that he had told the department to "fix" the issue was not right.
