Ministers’ role in detainees saga has been indefensible

The bloodied, bruised face and swollen eyes and lips of Perth grandmother and cancer patient Ninette Simons, 73, is a painful reflection of the crisis over detainees that the Albanese government has bungled for months. Immigration Minister Andrew Giles and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil have ducked and obfuscated at every turn, but the truth is out. Mr Giles’s office admitted to Rhiannon Down on Friday that the minister’s own delegate signed off on the removal of an ankle bracelet from the former detainee who allegedly attacked Ms Simons and tied up her husband, Philip, in their own home. The approval from Mr Giles’s delegate, for which the minister must take responsibility, allowed Kuwait-born Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan, 43, to remove his ankle monitor just months before he allegedly bashed Ms Simons.

That admission came hours after Anthony Albanese criticised the Community Protection Board – which his government appointed – for allowing Doukoshkan to remove his ankle monitor. “I think that’s a wrong decision by that board, but they make the decisions,” the Prime Minister said. The episode shows he is out of touch on a major issue of increasing concern to voters. He now faces a decision about what to do about Mr Giles, his friend and factional ally. It beggars belief that Doukoshkan, a convicted drug trafficker, was on the loose at all. Paul Garvey reports Doukoshkan repeatedly breached his curfew conditions.

He left his home at 10.01pm – just one minute after the curfew began – and did not return for more than two hours. He then went on to break curfew a further five times, including leaving his home during curfew twice in the early hours of February 11, then again that evening between 10.20pm and 1.20am. He also ignored several federal police and Home Affairs warnings, prompting commonwealth prosecutors to raise concerns he could reoffend.

A fresh scandal also has surfaced that will add to community unease. Another detainee, Burundi-born Kimbengere Gosoge, appeared in the Midland Magistrates Court, east of Perth, on Thursday after being charged with breaching his curfew five times in as many days, as well as one count of failing to maintain a monitoring device. Gosoge had already been charged with one count of aggravated home burglary before he was arrested on the curfew breaches.

Apart from fixing the gross incompetence it has shown, the Albanese government must stop trying to maintain secrecy over the crisis. It was unprepared for the High Court’s ruling in November last year against indefinite detention and since then its handling of the problem has lurched from bad to worse.

Not a single preventive detention ­application has been made to deal with any of the 152 immigration detainees – including murderers, rapists and pedophiles – who were released after the High Court decision.

In December, parliament passed preventive laws to allow stateless criminals and others who could not be deported to be re-detained for up to three years, subject to annual reviews by the immigration minister, if a Supreme Court judge was satisfied there was “a high degree of probability that the person poses an unacceptable risk of committing a serious violent or sexual offence”.

Lack of transparency is also a big part of the problem. It is unacceptable that the public finds out what is happening only when individual cases reach court. Australians are entitled to know how many of the 152 detainees who were released last year are still at large and where. The Weekend Australian was told on Friday that 58 are in NSW, but where? It is not known how many are being monitored with ankle bracelets. The most recent information emerged at a Senate inquiry in late March, when officials revealed 73 detainees were roaming the community without an ankle monitor and that 79 were monitored.

Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson was correct when he said the Prime Minister had tried to “hide behind public servants’’ when he distanced himself from the Community Protection Board, which consists of Australian Border Force, Department of Home Affairs and former law enforcement officials. Mr Giles’s and Ms O’Neil’s handling of this saga has been indefensible.