Judges to have power to jail detainees under new federal laws

Save articles for later

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.

Judges will be able to order people released from immigration detention to be re-detained under new laws the federal government wants to enact this week, while demanding the opposition support the new detention regime.

The new laws are being introduced on Wednesday by the federal government in response to the High Court’s decision in the case brought by a Rohingya man, known as NZYQ, which found people could not be indefinitely detained, and are modelled on the High Risk Terrorism Offenders scheme.

Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil during question time on Thursday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The Albanese government wants the laws passed this week, which is the final parliamentary sitting week of the year.

The proposed laws would create both a community safety detention order and a community safety supervision order, which the minister for immigration would apply for and the Supreme Court would then rule on.

Individuals could then be ordered to be re-detained in jail if a court found there was a high degree of probability that the person posed an unacceptable risk of committing a serious violent or sexual offence.

Alternatively, a person could be placed under supervision if the court found on the balance of probabilities there was an unacceptable risk of them committing a serious violent or sexual offence. Breaching a supervision order would incur jail time of a mandatory one year and could be for up to five years.

The Albanese government lambasted the federal opposition last week for voting with the Greens against tougher criminal penalties, with ministers Clare O’Neil and Anika Wells accusing Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of protecting paedophiles rather than children. But the opposition argued the measures did not go far enough.

The Coalition has previously indicated support for a new preventative detention regime in response to the High Court’s landmark decision on indefinite detention, which overturned the 2004 Al-Kateb decision.

A government spokesperson said the opposition had spent a lot of time calling for a preventative detention model but failed to back tougher laws last week.

“Tough words and political stunts don’t make Australians any safer – strong, robust laws do. This bill, which already introduced a range of additional criminal offences for breaching certain visa conditions, will have a preventative detention regime added to it and the opposition has a chance to put their money where their mouths have been on this critical issue,” the spokesperson said.

“The government’s preventative detention and community safety order regime is closely modelled on the Coalition’s High Risk Terrorist Offender scheme.”

“If the Coalition thought this model was appropriate to deal with terrorist threats to our country, they must support this model for serious violent and sexual offenders, and work with the government to get this bill through the parliament urgently.”

Labor cabinet minister Murray Watt said on Sunday the new laws would make sure “that the worst of the worst of these people, who’ve been released into the community, are detained but that’s done so in a constitutional way that stands up in court”.

The current regime only applied to “a fairly small number” of people as it was focused on those who were the greatest risk to the community and the new laws would do the same, he told Sky News.

“That decision ultimately will need to be made by the court,” he added when asked how many of the more than 140 released detainees the laws would cover.

Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said the detention regime needed to be as strong as possible and apply to as many detainees as possible.

Tehan said the High Court has made it clear that if there was a real prospect that a person could be removed to a third country, they could still be detained.

“So we want tough, preventive detention laws and we want the government to get going again on trying to find countries to deport these detainees to,” he told Sky News.

with AAP

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.

Most Viewed in Politics

From our partners

Source: Read Full Article