By Angus Thompson, Olivia Ireland and Rebecca Peppiatt
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has delivered a veiled swipe at a government-appointed panel of experts hours after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the board made the wrong call by allowing a former detainee’s ankle monitor to be removed before he allegedly committed a home invasion.
In a statement released by his office on Friday evening, a spokesperson for Giles distanced the minister from decisions made over the visa conditions of former immigration detainees, as the government faces mounting questions over its accountability for 150 people released into the community after the High Court’s November ruling that indefinite detention was illegal.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles’s office put out a statement late on Friday evening.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“The Community Protection Board is there to provide experienced and expert advice but the expectation is that they will always be mindful of community views and the objectives of government policy,” the spokesperson said. The board makes recommendations on conditions that must be signed off by the minister, Giles, or a delegate.
The statement followed accusations by the Coalition that the minister was in hiding. Monthly “community protection” reports promised months ago are yet to be published, and justice experts paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by taxpayers to advise on visa conditions have either declined or not replied to requests for comment.
The scrutiny comes as another former immigration detainee faced a Perth magistrate on Thursday, charged with an aggravated burglary that he allegedly committed in March, while under the watch of the federal police and while wearing an ankle monitoring bracelet.
Giles, who this week apologised to the Perth couple who fell victim to the April 16 attack, is looking into the community protection board’s advice. The opposition intensified calls for his resignation on Friday after his office initially refused to respond to Albanese saying the board had failed.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the Community Protection Board made the wrong decision on removing an ankle bracelet.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
“I think that’s a wrong decision by that board, but they make the decisions,” Albanese told Seven’s Sunrise program on Friday, repeating a previous assertion that the board was independent.
Half of the eight members of the board are Australian Border Force and Department of Home Affairs employees, including its chair, ABF assistant commissioner Sandra Jeffery.
Three of the non-departmental members of the board have refused to speak to this masthead: former Victoria Police commissioner Graham Ashton; former Queensland Police deputy commissioner Peter Martin; and youth advocate Carmel Guerra. Comment has also been sought from clinical psychologist Dr Monique Phipps.
Guerra and Martin deferred all questions to Border Force, which also refused to comment.
Opposition Home Affairs spokesman James Paterson said the board made recommendations the minister was under “no obligation” to accept. He said Giles should stop “hiding behind public servants”.
“It’s time for him to front the media and answer for the Albanese government’s litany of failures on community safety,” Paterson said. “Unless minister Giles can explain why he let this detainee back into the community without an ankle bracelet, he should resign.”
However, Giles’ spokesperson said that as decisions about visas issued to this cohort “are extremely likely to be the subject of legal challenge, and as such it is critical that they be informed by independent, expert advice – these decisions are delegated to officials within the department, at arm’s length from politicians.”
Giles conducted one interview this week with ABC Radio National’s PM program, in which he declined to talk about the circumstances of the alleged incident involving former detainee Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan, 43.
“We are continually looking at everything that we can do that will assist us, and our law enforcement agencies in particular, to maintain the safety of the community,” he said.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil gave an interview to Seven’s Sunrise on Wednesday in which she refused to discuss the details of the alleged assault, but she did express her sympathies for the victims, Ninette and Philip Simons.
“Every Australian is entitled to feel safe in their own home, and the fact that this occurred within someone’s home I think just makes it all the more violent and horrendous, and I really do express my deepest sympathies to them,” she said.
Both O’Neil and Giles were contacted for comment after the prime minister’s criticisms of the Community Protection Board.
The prime minister also said that a Friday meeting of the state and federal attorneys-general would discuss detainees.
It was revealed on Thursday that at a February Federal Court hearing over curfew breaches allegedly committed by Doukoshkan, the prosecutor had raised concerns he could commit further offences, but did not oppose bail.
Albanese told Sunrise that if it were up to him, “I assure you that there wouldn’t have been bail granted in that case.”
“I am just as upset about that decision as you are. I think that lacks common sense,” Albanese said.
The curfew charges against Doukoshkan were withdrawn on March 22 because of a Commonwealth bungle over invalid bridging visas. However, the former detainee, previously jailed over drug offences, allegedly went on to stage the home invasion with two other men.
Doukoshkan also faced court on February 21 and April 10 for state offences of driving without a licence and trespassing, for which he was fined a total of $400 just days before the alleged home invasion.
Warning of years of legal upheaval following the High Court’s November ruling on indefinite detention, the government in March broadened the remit of the board to also consider any new issues arising from legal uncertainties about immigration detention.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has slammed Albanese and Giles for failing to protect the community, saying the government needs to change its approach to managing the released detainees.
“The minister [Andrew Giles] has responsibility here. The first charge of the prime minister of our country is to keep people safe, not to make them, not to put them in harm’s way. And that’s what’s happened,” he told Nine’s Today show on Friday.
“People are right to be angry about it and upset. This could be anybody’s grandmother or mother and the prime minister’s office [is] going out there telling people, you know, lies is just not acceptable.”
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