November 9, 2023
GARY ADSHEAD: Let's have a chat. Senator James Paterson, Opposition home Affairs Spokesperson who joins me. Thanks very much for your time, Senator.
JAMES PATERSON: Great to be with you, Gary.
ADSHEAD: Now, the book's quite disturbing is that it's not just one case. There are a whole bunch of cases that sort of fit this criteria. But just tell us about this Is a person in this instance who committed child sex abuse.
PATERSON: Exactly right, Gary. If you're an Australian citizen, you have an absolute right to be here. But if you're a visitor in our country, then you can only be here if you meet certain conditions and one of those conditions is you are a good character and you don't break the law. Now, this person is from Myanmar. They're a Rohingya minority, and while they were here in Australia, they raped a ten year old boy and were convicted and jailed for that crime. This is obviously not a person of good character, obviously not someone we want to have in our community. And so that person's visa was cancelled. But his home country, Myanmar, didn't want to accept him back and that means he couldn't be deported home and so there is a grey area there about what you do with those people. But the answer to that question cannot be, in my view, that they're allowed to roam free in the community and if it was just one child sex offender, that would be a concern. But we know that there are at least 92 people who fall into this category who need to be almost immediately released, according to the Solicitor-General, and up to 340 people involved in similar issues who now may have to be released as well.
ADSHEAD: And so, say that 92, they're not all obviously from Myanmar. They're from different parts of the world. So, I can't all be stateless, can they?
PATERSON: Well, what they have in common is that they are not citizens of Australia. They've either committed a serious crime or otherwise breached the character provisions of the Migration Act, and they do not have a valid visa to be here in Australia, but they can't be returned to their country. It might be because they're stateless, but also perhaps because their country doesn't want to accept them back because of the serious crime committed while they're in Australia. And the scary thing is we don't really know the details about who these people are, where they've come from, what crimes that were committed, because the government hasn't provided any of that information. And even worse, they don't appear to have any back up plan at all, they haven't got any legislation ready to go in the Senate where we're sitting this week or the House of Representatives next week to deal with this problem of these potentially violent offenders being released in our communities.
ADSHEAD: So, ok, is it a legitimate excuse for these people who've committed these crimes and been held in prison, and then being held in detention, while we work out what's happened, to say that they would be persecuted if they were to be sent back to the country they came from in the case of this particular person. Would it be a fair reason for our government to keep them here?
PATERSON: It may be some of those people may be genuinely persecuted minorities from their country. In the case of the person who's been known as that pseudonym, NZYQ, he's from the Rohingya minority who are persecuted in Myanmar. But because he's persecuted in Myanmar is not a good reason for him to be out walking in the streets in Australia after he committed to child sex offences, there has to be another solution to that problem. In the terrorism world we have things called continuing detention orders where people can be incarcerated beyond their term expiring. We have extended supervision orders, we have control orders with a whole range of options for dealing with potentially dangerous people after they're released from prison and something like that could be applied to these people if the government had a plan to deal with it. But they don't.
ADSHEAD: And so, in the meantime, though, the High Court have ruled that it would be wrong to continue to detain someone who's done the crime and done the time.
PATERSON: Exactly right. And so, they will be released and they may even be eligible for compensation at the taxpayers expense for the time that they being held in detention and so we could be up for a bill of compensation of many millions of dollars for these hundreds of people. And potentially dangerous people could be on the streets without restriction. And I just don't think that's acceptable and I don't really understand why the government wasn't ready for this ruling and didn't have a plan B ready to roll, just as they weren't ready when Benbrika won his High Court case more than a week ago now, that his citizenship could not be stripped of him and he will be released into the community in a number of weeks if something is not done. But on national security, this government is often very slow to act.
ADSHEAD: What will you do? You said that, of course, the lower house of parliament comes back next week. What will you do? What can you move in terms of motions through the Senate or anything to try and sort this out?
PATERSON: Well, the first thing I'll be doing is asking the government what their plan is. Hopefully they have an answer for that. The second thing I'll be doing is asking them for information about these people and what their circumstances are and what offences they've committed. And thirdly, if the government doesn't act, well, then the Opposition will have to look at all the options available to us. We must be exploring all lawful options. The High Court has done what it will do and there's nothing we can do to change that. But we do have the power as the Parliament to legislate other solutions to this problem.
ADSHEAD: Bit of a mess, isn't it?
PATERSON: Sure is.
ADSHEAD: Okay. Well, thanks for that. We'll keep in touch and see how it plays out. Appreciate your time.
PATERSON: Thanks, Gary.
ENDS
