Giles says he’s using drones to track freed foreign criminals

Beleaguered Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has claimed the government is using drones to track former immigration detainees following revelations that murderers, sex offenders and domestic attackers released since last year’s High Court decision were not being electronically monitored.

After a bruising week of question time attacks, several caucus colleagues are privately discussing Giles’ future in the portfolio after a ministerial direction he issued last year was used by a tribunal to allow visa holders who had committed serious crimes to stay in Australia.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles is under fire for his management of the immigration detainee release saga.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

However, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has told colleagues that he places a premium on stability, does not want a reshuffle and will not let Opposition Leader Peter Dutton dictate terms.

Giles, a close factional ally of Albanese, has begun to ramp up his own attacks on Dutton’s handling of the Home Affairs portfolio when the Coalition was in government.

Labor’s move to rewrite ministerial direction 99 – which mandates the consideration of a foreign criminal’s Australian ties before cancelling their visa – prompted New Zealand to warn against deporting Kiwi citizens who had spent little time in the country.

While juggling that crisis as well as fresh Home Affairs figures showing three freed murderers and 26 sex offenders were not wearing monitors, Giles told Sky News the government had invested $250 million to boost monitoring through various means of the broader cohort released after the High Court ruled indefinite immigration detention was unlawful.

“And that’s enabled things like using drones to keep track of those people we know,” he said.

The claim has surprised security experts, who told this masthead that drone surveillance was unworkable.

Dr John Coyne from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said it would be an incredibly expensive and impractical exercise to watch people continuously with drones, adding it could require recruiting more than a dozen people a day to monitor one individual.

Human Rights Law Centre managing lawyer Sanmati Verma said such a measure was “extraordinarily invasive”.

“We should all be deeply concerned about our government unilaterally deciding who it may track via drones as we go about our daily lives,” she said.

Australian Border Force refused to comment on the use of drones, saying only that: “Under Operation AEGIS, ABF and Australian Federal Police are working closely with state and territory authorities and law enforcement to ensure community safety.”

This masthead spoke to seven Labor MPs on Thursday, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely, and they confirmed there was internal chatter about Giles’ future in the portfolio.

One scenario being canvassed is Agriculture Minister Murray Watt taking over the home affairs portfolio from Clare O’Neil, with O’Neil – who has an economics background – to take housing and small business from Tasmanian MP Julie Collins.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said his nation did not want criminals with little connection to the country to be deported to NZ.Credit: Getty Images

Giles would remain in the outer ministry but could be moved to a less contentious portfolio such as defence personnel and veterans’ affairs in a swap with Matt Keogh, though not before the winter break begins in July.

“Albanese places a premium on stability, he does not want a reshuffle. And we are just not going to let Dutton dictate our agenda,” one member of the cabinet said.

The Albanese government softened immigration laws as part of an effort to improve diplomatic ties with New Zealand, which had complained about the deportation of Kiwi citizens who had spent little time in the country.

Regarding deportation of non-citizens who have committed crimes, direction 99 states: “Australia will generally afford a higher level of tolerance based on the length of time a non-citizen has spent in the Australian community, particularly in formative years.”

After the government moved to scrap the ministerial direction, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, urged Labor not to send Kiwi criminals who had lived in Australia for most of their lives across the Tasman.

“We accept that Australia has the right to determine what level of offending by non-citizens is unacceptable. But we do not want to see deportation of people with little or no connection to New Zealand whose formative experiences were nearly all in Australia,” Peters said in a statement.

“We are engaging with Australia at a political level on this matter.”

During question time on Thursday, Dutton accused Albanese of putting his “close and sycophantic relationship with [former NZ prime minister] Jacinda Ardern ahead of the safety of Australians”.

Albanese said it was “absurd” and “completely wrong” for the opposition to allege that he decided to implement direction 99 after meeting Ardern, saying that was not how leader-level diplomacy worked.

Albanese also accused the Coalition of releasing 1300 “hardcore criminals” from detention during its time in office.

Giles said during a media blitz on Thursday that a new version of the direction would be released as soon as it was ready.

“I’ve been meeting with my senior officials of the department last night to ensure that the expectations that I’ve set out to the parliament are put into practice,” he told the ABC.

“We believe that these decisions [on whether to allow visa holders to stay in Australia] need to be guided by two clear principles, the protection of the Australian community and by common sense.”

The Coalition government cancelled 1015 visas on character grounds in 2019-20, of which 50 per cent had been held by New Zealanders. That number dropped to 244 in the six months to December 2023.

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