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Labor MPs raise community fears over deportation bill
Labor backbenchers have raised fears within the party over the Albanese government’s rushed deportation laws as MPs on both sides of politics warn against overreach by banning entire nationalities from travelling to Australia.
Party sources say that, during a caucus briefing on Tuesday morning shortly before Immigration Minister Andrew Giles introduced his tough bill, Bennelong MP Jerome Laxale questioned the impact of provisions blocking visa applications from countries that don’t accept the return of their citizens.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has suffered an embarrassing defeat of his government’s rush deportation bill.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Leaders from Australia’s Iranian and South Sudanese communities said they were in shock this week, adding they could be cut off from extended family and friends if the laws were enacted, with a coalition of Iranian organisations releasing an open letter condemning the bill.
Liberal backbencher Keith Wolahan, who has a large Iranian population in his north-east Melbourne electorate of Menzies, said the upcoming Senate inquiry into the legislation was critical.
“Legislators need to hear from community representatives and legal experts to consider potential overreach and unintended consequences,” Wolahan said, a day after opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said multicultural communities needed to be consulted by the government.
The bill, which also empowers judges to jail people fighting deportation and allows the government to reconsider protection findings, was deferred on Wednesday to a six-week inquiry, in a humiliating defeat for Labor after it tried to ram through the measures in less than two days.
Bennelong MP Jerome Laxale raised concerns in a caucus meeting this week.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
It was the third tranche of legislation hastily introduced into parliament to work around the High Court ruling last November that overturned indefinite immigration detention, triggering the release of 152 people, many of whom had served jail sentences for serious crimes that include murder and rape.
While Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has ducked questions over the urgency, the bill would help deport people affected by an approaching High Court challenge over whether the government can continue to detain people unwilling to return to their home countries.
According to Labor sources who spoke to this masthead on the condition of anonymity, Laxale was the only MP to speak up with concerns over the bill during Tuesday’s caucus meeting. Laxale, who also represents an Iranian community and holds the metropolitan Sydney seat by a margin of less than 1 per cent, declined to comment when contacted.
Comment has been sought from Giles, who told the caucus meeting there were significant safeguards contained in the bill.
Liberal MP Keith Wolahan said communities should be heard during a Senate inquiry.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
An open letter released by cultural groups including the Australian Iranian Community Alliance, AusIran, and Woman Life Freedom Australia, said November’s High Court decision had given Australia an opportunity to overhaul a migration system that had cost people years of their lives.
“Instead, the government’s chaotic and punitive response will define its term, but for very different reasons,” the letter reads. “We urge the government to repeal this proposed bill and seek a more humane and considered approach to immigration.”
One MP who declined to be named said they understood the “stick approach” in threatening to block entire nationalities unless their government overturned their own repatriation policy. “But don’t stop families seeing each other over Christmas because they’re from a country run by a delinquent fringe regime.”
Sources said several MPs had also raised concerns over the speed of the bill’s passage, with one describing the process as arrogant.
Another source said: “The first rule of using a battering ram is making sure it goes through the wall.”
But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a press conference in Muswellbrook, NSW, on Thursday that parliament had been given time to scrutinise the bill.
“The Coalition voted for the policy in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, and they voted about the politics of the issue with the Greens Party on Wednesday,” he said, adding the opposition had received a full briefing and a two-hour committee hearing to grill public servants about the bill on Tuesday.
“To be very clear, this isn’t about refugees, this is about people who have not been shown to have any right to be in Australia, be it refugees or be it family reunion status or anything or any other measures,” he said.
But Opposition Leader Peter Dutton described the process as “absurd”, adding a Senate inquiry was now needed after Home Affairs officials were unable to convince opposition and crossbench senators of the bill’s urgency this week.
“I think the longer inquiry now will answer some of the questions that the officials and the ministers refused to answer initially, and we’ll be in a better position to know whether this is going to start boats again or not,” Dutton told 2GB radio host Ray Hadley on Thursday.
During another parliamentary committee hearing on Tuesday night, Home Affairs official Michael Thomas revealed 73 of the 152 people released as a result of last year’s High Court decision were not wearing electronic monitoring ankle bracelets, one of the harsh conditions applied to the cohort after their release.
Agriculture Minister Murray Watt, standing in for O’Neil in the hearing, said the decision to remove an ankle bracelet was based on the advice of a board of experts in the justice system that was formed to deal with the cohort.
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