Federal police officers demand funds to watch released foreign criminals

Laws passed by federal parliament last week in response to the High Court decision include mandatory electronic monitoring and curfews for the freed non-citizens.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has warned more foreign criminals could be released from detention. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Federal police officers are demanding more funding to monitor dozens of foreign criminals released into the community under a landmark High Court ruling, as constitutional law experts declare it would take a referendum to have the cohort returned to detention.

As the federal government concedes there could be hundreds more prisoners released after the High Court quashed indefinite detention of non-citizens, Australian Federal Police Association president Alex Caruana said there were concerns about the AFP’s ability to manage the issue.

The AFP and state police will be tasked with overseeing laws passed by federal parliament last week in response to the High Court decision, including mandatory electronic monitoring and curfews for the freed non-citizens.

The criminals will be banned from going near children or contacting their victims, with those who breach the conditions facing mandatory sentences of a year in jail for each day they violate them.

Mr Caruana said monitoring people in this way was an “expensive and resource-intensive exercise”. “We know that the AFP is already struggling to service demands concerning its usual business,” he said. “What processes, activities or investigations does the federal government want the AFP to turn off to ensure that there are resources and funding to incorporate this detainee-monitoring exercise?”

The federal police union is furious AFP officers have only been offered an 11.2 per cent pay rise over three years by the Australian Public Service Commission.

There have been 93 criminals released since the High Court ruling, with Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil saying there could be implications for the 250 other people held in immigration detention when the court releases its reasons for the decision.

“What we know is that the people who are in the exact description of the complainant in the High Court matter have been released ... but the High Court will clarify exactly why it made its decision early next year,” Ms O’Neil told Sky News. “The 340 number is a group of people who have been in immigration detention for longer than a year. It is very unlikely that the High Court’s ruling will apply to all of them.”

Ms O’Neil revealed she had been erroneously advised by the Department of Home Affairs that the government was likely to win the High Court case. She said it was not possible to pass laws to force the cohort back in detention, as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton called for last week.

Ms O’Neil said there would be “refinement” of the legislation that passed parliament last week when the High Court hands down its reasons for the decision.

Constitutional law expert George Williams said it would take a referendum to legally return the 93 stateless criminals to detention.

“The High Court has struck down that detention so if a government simply sought to reimpose it, it would run counter to the High Court decision and again be struck down,” he said. “The High Court has the final say and the only way you could bypass that would be a referendum.”

Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson on Sunday would not back Mr Dutton’s claim that parliament could pass to laws to send the stateless criminals back to detention.

He said the government should consider expanding the high-risk terrorist offend-ers regime to detain the “highest risk among this cohort of now 93 people”. “That includes things like preventive detention orders, continuing detention orders, extended supervision orders and control orders,” he told ABC’s Insiders.

The Weekend Australian revealed Mongolian film professor Shaariibuu Setev had not been notified his daughter’s killer, Sirul Azhar Umar, had been released.

Professor Shaariibuu struggled for words when told Sirul, who killed his pregnant daughter ­before blowing her body up with military explosives, was now reunited with his son in Australia.

Documents released to the Senate last week showed that 27 of the foreigners committed “very serious” crimes against children or women, or high-level violent crimes; 35 are subject to ­adverse character rulings following “violent, sexual or exploitative offences”; 21 are subject to national security, cyber crime, ­organised crime or gang-related orders.