People-smugglers ‘to peddle lies’ on migration

People-smugglers could seek to exploit Labor’s emergency migration laws to promote illegal sea passage by telling prospective boat arrivals they will never lawfully enter Australia, Brett Sonter has warned.

Operation Sovereign Borders commander Brett Sonter. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

People-smugglers could seek to exploit Labor’s emergency migration laws to promote illegal sea passage by telling prospective boat arrivals they will never lawfully enter Australia, Operation Sovereign Borders commander Brett Sonter has warned.

He said people-smugglers were always monitoring the nation’s “political domestic environment” to fuel the lies they peddle to ­market their services to vulnerable people, and could select any ­element of the bill to articulate a message in a “non-truthful ­manner”.

He conceded to a Senate committee examining the proposed amendments to the Migration Act that three boat arrivals on the mainland in five months was “never what I hope to achieve”, but he said he believed strategic communication would combat the risk of another uptick.

“It’s not a new risk,” Rear Admiral Sonter said on Monday. “We know that people-smugglers monitor the Australian political domestic environment for key decisions or policy changes, whether real or perceived, to market to the unfortunate people that we see.”

Department of Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster defended the bill, which will hand Immigration Minister Andrew Giles powers to force non-citizens to return home when they’ve exhausted every avenue to stay, as measures of “last resort” that will “strengthen the tools” available to deal with a small caseload.

Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The legislation, which was introduced after a landmark High Court ruling known as NZYQ, triggered the release of about 150 non-citizens, has come under intense scrutiny with more than 100 legal, human rights and diaspora groups making submissions.

The department revealed the bill could capture 150 to 200 ­people in immigration detention, 152 non-citizens released following NZYQ decision, 99 people living in the community before the judgment and 4463 other people, with 1200 of those anticipated to resist efforts to remove them.

Ms Foster said the legislation would be applied only to those who were “already on a removal pathway”, and powers to bar citizens from entire countries that refused to accept returns from travelling to Australia would be used only under serious circumstances in the “national interest”.

Law Council of Australia president Greg McIntyre told senators the bill breached the nation’s obligations under international law and imposed minimum mandatory sentencing that had “no place in the Australian justice system”.

Mr McIntyre said provisions in the bill enshrining a minimum one-year prison term and a maximum of five years for people who refused to follow the minister’s orders to facilitate their removal, would “prevent individualised justice and fetter judges’ discretion to impose penalties that are proportionate to the offending”.

Australian Human Rights Commission president Rosalind Croucher said the bill was a “very blunt instrument and deeply ­problematic”.

“It’s just the extent to which they block treatment of people as evil, and then the excessive nature of the punitive regime that accompanies it,” she said.

Human Rights Law Centre acting legal director Sanmati Verma said the laws could be applied to thousands of non-citizens living in Australia, and there was no evidence it would coerce rogue states to accept returned citizens.

The UN High Commission for Refugees and UNICEF expressed concerns about the bill’s impact on human rights, with the refugee agency warning against “short-term reactions” to challenges faced in returning non-citizens.

The government faces a separate legal challenge from an Iranian man, known as ASF17, to be heard in the High Court on Wednesday, which could see more than 100 detainees released.