November 7, 2024
Labor is under pressure to explain how it will keep Australians safe after suffering an "embarrassing loss" in the High Court ending the use of ankle bracelets and curfews to monitor immigration detainees free in the community.
The Coalition has called on the federal government to introduce new laws immediately to respond to the court ruling that electronic ankle monitors and curfews were punitive and therefore unconstitutional.
In the decision handed down on Wednesday morning, the court found in favour of a 36-year-old stateless refugee, known as YBFZ, who had challenged the measures Labor rushed through parliament in December last year.
The government unsuccessfully argued the legislation was an alternative response to managing non-citizens who could not be deported, and not a form of punishment.
The curfews and ankle monitors had been imposed on the cohort of convicted criminals released from immigration detention since November 2023 in the wake of the High Court's NZYQ decision.
In that case, the court found detainees unable to be deported after completion of their criminal sentences either because they were stateless, their home country was unwilling to accept them, or it was unsafe to send them also could not be held indefinitely in immigration detention centres.
As a result 215 individuals were released into the community and, in the last year, at least 65 have been charged with new state and territory criminal offences.
The use of ankle monitors and curfews was designed to assist authorities monitoring the cohort and reassure the public of their safety.
In a joint statement released after Wednesday's decision scrapping those measures, Coalition home affairs spokesman James Paterson, immigration spokesman Dan Tehan and shadow attorney general Michaelia Cash called on Labor to explain how it would protect Australians following the "embarrassing" High Court loss.
"The effect of this decision will be that 215 dangerous non-citizen offenders including 12 murderers, 66 sex offenders, 97 people convicted of assault, 15 domestic violence perpetrators and others will be free in the community without any monitoring or curfews," they said. The Coalition said the loss compounded the "failure" of the Albanese government to use the preventive detention powers the parliament rushed through almost 12 months ago to re-detain any high-risk offenders.
"The government repeatedly assured us that the amendments they drafted were constitutionally sound, and as recently as Monday in Senate estimates promised they had comprehensive contingency plans in place if they were unsuccessful in this case," it said.
"Tony Burke must immediately reveal what urgent action the government will take in response to this loss to protect Australians."
