5 hours Ago By Farid Farid
A Labor-led parliamentary human rights committee has joined cross-bench MPs, The Greens, rights groups and legal experts in raising the alarm over a bill that would allow Australia to pay countries to accept deportees. The bill has been scrutinised in a Senate inquiry on Thursday after it passed the House of Representatives following the Coalition agreeing in principle to push through the proposed amendments. They come after a landmark ruling found indefinite immigration detention was unlawful, triggering the release of some 200 non-citizens with varying criminal offences.
Released immigration detainees were strapped with ankle monitors and slapped with curfews, which the High Court struck down earlier this month, ruling it punitive and an over-reach by the government. In a report published late Wednesday the bipartisan committee said "detaining and removing non-citizens may limit several human rights". It also raised concerns about the amendments allowing the government to reverse previous protection findings for refugees and reimpose ankle monitors and curfews.
Committee member Greens senator David Shoebridge said Labor was engaging in a race to the bottom with the Coalition using refugees and migrants as scapegoats ahead of elections next year. "The only reason the Albanese Labor government has brought this bill forward is to have a fight with (Peter) Dutton over how cruel you can be to migrants," he told AAP. "One of the worst parts of the bill is how it allows governments to bribe foreign countries to take people who Australia is forcibly removing.
"We have already seen through the offshore detention regime on Nauru and Papua New Guinea that this does not work ...
it is sick and it needs to stop." The government has not detailed which countries it has been in discussions with. The bill was opposed by Teal MP Kylea Tink, who is also a member of the parliamentary committee.
"We are yet again here debating a government's rushed attempt to ensure they can continue to impose their own political will rather than abide by international law," she said in parliament. In its submission to the inquiry, the Human Rights Law Centre described the bill as a form of "unconstitutional punishment". "Warehousing people in third countries has never been, and will never be, an acceptable or effective response to political pressures," the centre said.
In the only other submission to the committee due to the hastily called inquiry, the National Justice Project lambasted the government's plan to block non-citizens from suing over their mistreatment in offshore centres. "Civil claims play a key a role and are the only effective tool to hold the government and its officials accountable," the project's CEO George Newhouse said. "After the changes are passed into law, no one will have any accountability for the harms caused to people held offshore.
" Constitutional law expert Anne Twomey said the bill would be legally fraught for the government with more High Court challenges expected at the expense of taxpayers. "If you're asking yourself if they (the Albanese government) put in something (that) is clearly constitutionally valid, the answer is no", she said..
