Immigration Minister Tony Burke has quietly won the power to more easily impose electronic surveillance and curfews on dangerous non-citizens released from detention.
Under the new rules, Mr Burke will have the ability to release non-citizens from immigration detention without the approval of the Supreme Court and impose strict conditions on them if they are deemed to pose a “community safety problem”.
The Albanian government hopes that these drastic measures will finally put an end to the political nightmare the Labor Party has been facing since the Supreme Court ruled in November 2023 that non-citizens who cannot be deported cannot be detained indefinitely, even if they have previously been criminally convicted.
This decision, along with other legal challenges that the Albanian government has lost, has resulted in murderers and child molesters returning to the streets, with dozens arrested for various crimes or violating release conditions.
Burke’s new powers are thanks to an agreement Labor struck with the opposition during the final week of this year’s federal parliament.
In addition to the discretionary power to monitor released prisoners, Burke will also have greater power to deport foreigners who have no right to remain in Australia.
The Albanian government’s previous attempt to impose curfews and surveillance on released prisonersas rejected by a separate Supreme Court ruling in November, which declared the measures “punitive” and unconstitutional.
The new legislation seeks to sidestep constitutional issues by introducing a new ‘community protection test’ to reintroduce ankle monitoring and curfew requirements.
Immigration Minister Tony Burke has been given sweeping powers to impose curfews and electronic monitoring on criminally convicted non-citizens. Australia cannot deport
Australian Lawyers Alliance and lawyer Greg Barns argued the new regulations violated the human rights of inmates, who had served their prison sentences and in many cases were not at high risk of reoffending.
“Rarely are such conditions imposed on an Australian citizen released from prison,” Mr Barns said The Australian.
The recently passed laws will also allow the government to impose travel bans on countries that do not accept their own deported citizens.
There is also more leeway to force foreigners to cooperate in their deportation.
An additional provision will allow the government to deport unlawful non-citizens to a third country for a fee.
Since taking over Andrew GIles’ troubled immigration portfolio, Mr Burke has also had to clean up a mess created by his government’s Direction 99 order.
A detainee has been released after the Supreme Court ruled last year that indefinite detention is unlawful
Ninette Simons, 73, who was allegedly beaten and robbed by a free immigration detainee in her Perth home
This was intended to moderate the deportation of New Zealand-born criminals back to their place of birth and was announced by Mr Giles in May.
Mr Giles asked courts and tribunals to consider a person’s links with Australia as a primary consideration when assessing their visa.
However, the order led to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal canceling the removal of dozens of dangerous offenders from Australian shores.
Labor has since revised the direction to take greater account of community safety.
During his busy reintroduction to the portfolio, which he previously held under the second Rudd government in 2013, Mr Burke has also flown to Indonesia.
He is believed to have asked the Indonesian government to crack down on asylum seekers leaving that country to come to Australia by boat.
A handful of illegal vessels reached the coast of northwest Australia earlier this year, threatening to re-raise the issue that Labor last time in power.
In one of the most shocking incidents to arise from the Supreme Court ruling in 2023, Perth grandparents Ninette Simons, 73, and her husband Phillip, 76, were reportedly robbed and attacked by a free inmate on April 16.
Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan, allegedly one of three men who beat the elderly couple, leaving behind terrifying images of a badly bruised Mrs Simons.