Time to end political point-scoring over freed detainees and crime

Nearly a fifth of about 150 former immigration detainees freed following the High Court’s landmark decision in November have since been charged with state offences. Just a third of 39 sex offenders released from detention were required to wear ankle monitors. One detainee went on to allegedly bash an elderly woman. Another detainee released under a different set of Labor rules has allegedly committed murder.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles is facing opposition calls to resign.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It’s a sorry sight for the Albanese government just a year away from a federal election, as it scrambles to respond to a slew of offences committed by those released from immigration following a High Court ruling last year that indefinite immigration detention was unlawful, overturning a 20-year precedent.

In November, the government acted swiftly to quell community safety concerns about the release of detainees who had served time for committing crimes, including some with serious convictions. Labor imposed curfews and employment restrictions and enforced the use of electronic monitoring devices in moves that left Opposition Leader Peter Dutton calling for more and tougher restrictions, while legal experts lambasted the human rights violation of non-citizens who had served their full sentences, plus the extra years of unlawful detention, and were now subject to more punitive and invasive measures.

Since then, two former detainees allegedly bashed an elderly woman, Ninette Simons, in Perth in April, including one offender released after the High Court ruling who was not required to wear a surveillance bracelet.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles now faces opposition calls to resign over his issuing of ministerial direction 99 in January last year, which required the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) to give significant weight to a person’s ties to Australia when deciding whether to cancel their visa and deport them. The directive was aimed at assuaging long-held concerns from the New Zealand government that its offending citizens were being deported in high numbers even when they had mostly lived in Australia.

It was in part an attempt to smooth over a relationship that had soured under the former Morrison government and a commonsense decision to stem the flow of Kiwis being deported despite having lived in Australia since childhood.

But Giles is now frantically rewriting this very rule after the AAT partly drew on direction 99 to reinstate the visas of a New Zealander convicted of raping his stepdaughter, a British man Charles William Davidson who attacked women on 26 occasions and Emmanuel Saki, a former detainee and Sudanese man who after his release allegedly committed murder.

The rewritten direction will ensure that community protection outweighs any other consideration on a deportation case of foreign-born criminals by the AAT. Giles has also cancelled the reinstated visas of some of the high-profile alleged offenders.

All of these events combine to create an image that Labor has mismanaged the detainee issue and has been careless about community safety, with the emergence of every new report on an offence committed by a detainee – including even those released under the previous Coalition government – putting Giles on the back foot.

Giles rightfully reconsidered the deportation of offending Kiwis who have lived most of their lives in Australia, but it is clear that he could have been more careful to monitor the progress of his directive to ensure that the AAT was making decisions that met his expectations.

The government should also not be blamed for bail and parole decisions made by judges in state jurisdictions.

A sober, balanced assessment of the problem that steers away from political point-scoring is what is needed now.

As chief political correspondent David Crowe highlighted this week, the tribunal has for years allowed convicted criminals to stay in Australia under both major parties, including when Dutton was immigration minister. Giles’ new directive was only a marginal shift from preceding directives introduced by the Liberals. He strengthened some of the wording and made the offender’s ties to Australia a primary consideration, along with the protection of the community, the interests of children and any history of family violence.

Dutton is playing a dangerous game in counting every new offence committed by a detainee as a strike against Labor.

Offenders released from detention when the Coalition was in power include Seyed Younes Tahami, the second man accused of the violent home invasion in Perth.

A political blame game over migration and crime sets a low bar for Australia’s political discourse, and it appears to be careening into ugly territory.

The Age is concerned about the increasingly polarising tenor of this nation’s political conversation and believes immigrants who have committed crimes and cannot be sent back to their country of origin should be treated with the same severity as Australians who commit those very same crimes.

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