Immigration Minister Tony Burke has quietly built up the power to more easily impose electronic surveillance and curfews on dangerous non-citizens released from detention.
Under the new rules, Burke will have the ability to release noncitizens from immigration detention without Superior Court approval and impose strict conditions on them if they are deemed to pose a “community safety concern.”
The Albanian government hopes these radical measures will finally stop the political nightmare that the Labor Party has faced since the High Court ruled in November 2023 that non-citizens who cannot be deported cannot be detained indefinitely even if they were previously criminally convicted.
That decision, along with other legal challenges lost by the Albanian government, has seen murderers and child rapists return to the streets and dozens arrested for various crimes or for violating release conditions.
Burke’s new powers come courtesy of a deal Labor reached with the opposition during the final week of this year’s federal parliament sitting.
In addition to the discretion to monitor released detainees, Burke will also have more power to deport foreigners without the right to remain in Australia.
The Albanian government’s previous attempt to impose curfews and surveillance on released detainees was was overturned by a separate High Court ruling in November, with the measures called “punitive” and unconstitutional.
The new legislation seeks to sidestep constitutional issues by introducing a new “community protection test” to re-implement ankle check and curfew requirements.
Immigration Minister Tony Burke has been given sweeping powers to impose curfews and electronic surveillance on non-citizens convicted of criminal offenses that Australia cannot deport.
The Australian Lawyers Alliance and lawyer Greg Barns argued the new regulations breached the human rights of detainees, who had served their prison terms and in many cases were not at high risk of reoffending.
“Such conditions are rarely imposed on an Australian citizen leaving prison,” Mr Barns said. The Australian.
Under newly passed laws, the government will also be able to impose travel bans on countries that do not accept their own deported citizens.
There is also more scope to force foreigners to cooperate in their deportation.
An additional provision will allow the government to deport illegal noncitizens to a third country under a remunerated agreement.
Since taking over the troubled immigration portfolio from Andrew Giles, Burke has also had to clean up a mess created by his government’s Directorate 99 order.
A detainee released following the High Court’s decision last year that indefinite detention is illegal
Ninette Simons, 73, allegedly beaten and robbed by a free immigration detainee at her Perth home.
This was intended to moderate the deportation of New Zealand-born criminals to their place of birth and was announced by Giles in May.
Giles who asked courts and tribunals to consider someone’s links to Australia as a primary consideration when reviewing their visa.
However, the order led the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to cancel the removal of dozens of dangerous criminals from Australian shores.
The Labor Party has since revised leadership to more seriously consider community safety.
During his eventful reintroduction to the portfolio, which he previously held under the second Rudd government from 2013, Burke also flew to Indonesia.
He is believed to have called on the Indonesian government to crack down on asylum seekers who leave that country to reach Australia by boat.
A handful of illegal vessels washed up on Australia’s northwest coast earlier this year, threatening to reignite the trouble that dogged the Labor Party the last time it was in power.
In one of the most shocking incidents arising from the High Court decision in 2023, Perth Grandparents Ninette Simons, 73, and her husband Phillip, 76, were allegedly robbed and assaulted on April 16 by a free detainee.
Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan, who was allegedly one of three men who beat the elderly couple leaving disturbing images of a badly bruised Mrs Simons.