Trump would love these terrifying laws. Why are we passing them without proper debate?

The Albanese government has followed Donald Trump’s ugly and dehumanising example in rushing through the most extreme and harmful Migration Act amendments in a decade, possibly the past 30 years. What’s more, it has done it in the last sitting week of parliament, dodging proper consideration, debate and scrutiny.

Under the three new laws, the government can impose Trump-style travel bans, barring citizens of certain countries from entering Australia. This will mean it will be official Australian government policy to make blanket assumptions about entire communities of people based only on where they are from.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson Credit:

But the laws don’t just discriminate against those hoping to apply for a visa. They also threaten the lives and safety of up to 80,000 people already living in Australia. Despite the well-documented cruelty and extreme expense of Australia’s offshore processing regime, the Albanese government has just expanded it. The government now has unprecedented power to send people to unspecified third countries, regardless of those countries’ human rights protections.

Many of those now at risk of deportation have lived in Australia for years: you may know them, work with them or live with them. The most vulnerable are families and individuals left in limbo by other cruel government policies. They are people the lawyers at the Refugee Advice & Casework Service (RACS), the non-profit I lead, have spent more than a decade helping find safety in Australia.

The new laws are silent in many crucial and chilling respects. They are silent as to what basic rights the third countries must offer. There are no safeguards around what the removal process may look like or what conditions refugees will face when they get to these countries. There is no requirement that the third country is a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention or other human rights treaties – despite Australia being a signatory for decades.

Nothing in these laws protects children being separated from their parents. This approach harks back to Trump’s infamous – and defeated – policy of taking children from their parents at the US-Mexico border.

The outcomes are crystal-clear in their brutality. The new laws explicitly contemplate that someone can be sent to a third country from Australia even if they may be detained there, face harm there due to innate personal characteristics or not be granted a visa. Failing to co-operate with their own deportation – even if they fear for their lives there – now means a person can be sentenced to up to five years’ imprisonment.

Outrageously, these laws give the Australian government immunity against any claim arising from the removal of a person to a third country – a clear attempt to absolve the government of accountability for harm caused to those sent offshore.

It is all the more disappointing to see the Albanese government mirroring Trump’s policies when UK Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently delivered on his party’s promise to scrap the former Conservative government’s offshore Rwanda policy. Rather than learn from our allies, by ramming these laws through, the government has decided to race to the bottom.

The final aspect of these laws is perhaps the most heartless: giving the government sweeping power to ban almost any item in immigration detention facilities, including mobile phones. Labor has previously opposed attempts by the Coalition to pass a similar law. It would be unthinkable for the average Australian to have their phone taken away simply because a politician thinks they might cause a risk to “order”. And yet refugees in immigration facilities can now lose their lifeline to their families, lawyers and loved ones if this vague criterion is met.

Trump, in his second term, will be subjected to checks and balances built into the US political system. But as the only liberal democracy in the world that does not have a national bill of rights, Australia is in a precarious position. The bill was set to pass with Coalition support on Thursday.

We rely on our politicians to govern with humanity and abide by the basic human rights obligations that Australia has committed to. This shall be remembered as a moment in which Anthony Albanese and our government did neither.

Sarah Dale is centre director and principal solicitor at the Refugee Advice & Casework Service (RACS), a non-profit providing legal help to people who have fled persecution to seek safety in Australia.