The Coalition has struck a deal to pass all three of the Albanese government’s controversial migration bills, in return for minor safeguards on new powers to ban travellers from whole countries and tougher scrutiny of protection visa applications.
On Wednesday the shadow home affairs and immigration ministers, James Paterson and Dan Tehan, announced the deal with Tehan boasting that the Coalition are now “basically running the immigration system for the government because they have failed … to do it themselves”.
The trio of bills, expected to pass as early as Wednesday evening, create powers for the Australian government to pay third countries to receive non-citizens, criminal penalties for non-citizens who refuse to cooperate with their own deportation, and new powers to search for drugs and confiscate phones in detention.
Paterson called on the Albanese government to be “transparent” about which countries might be paid to receive non-citizens from Australia, but said that such deals should “happen immediately”.
“The government should be able to finalise agreements as soon as the legislation is passed. I assume and hope they’ve engaged in those negotiations already and they’re ready to go.”
The deportation bill also gives the Australian government power to ban new visa applications from countries that do not accept involuntary removals from Australia, which the Greens have labelled a “Trump-style travel ban”.
Paterson revealed that the Coalition had won two amendments from the government, which has agreed “to sunset the power” to ban applications from a removal concern country after three years, and that the minister should give a “list of reasons” for a decision to ban applications from that country.
Tehan said the Coalition had also pushed Labor to implement three recommendations of the Nixon migration review: requiring protection visa applicants to apply through a lawful provider; adopting a Canadian-style check for past criminality of protection visa applicants rendering them ineligible for merits review; and quicker merits review of rejected tourism and study visas.
“The government agreed that they will seek to pass them in this term of parliament,” Tehan said.
“If we come back in February, as the prime minister has said that we will, then we expect the government to have legislation ready on those.”
The Greens and advocates for detainees have lambasted Labor for legislating the phone ban, which it successfully blocked in opposition when Peter Dutton proposed the measure with fewer safeguards.
Paterson said the prohibited items bill was a “long-held objective of the Coalition” which it had attempted to legislate twice in government because “detention centres were becoming lawless places and the Border Force and other officials were being put in danger by immigration detainees using mobile phones … to run drug smuggling networks from inside”.
Asked whether the Coalition had pushed for amendments it had called for in May to the removals power bill to safeguard the best interests of children and prevent family separation, Paterson declined to comment, citing the confidentiality of negotiations.
Earlier, the Greens’ immigration spokesperson, David Shoebridge, said “the Albanese government is working hand-in-hand with Peter Dutton to push through the most extreme migration legislation since the White Australia policy”.
“Labor is giving Peter Dutton an early Christmas present with all these appalling bills wrapped up in a bow,” he said.
“The Coalition know they could never get away with passing these laws in their name, so they are teaming up with Labor to ram them through.
“The government is trying to be meaner to migrants and multicultural communities than the Coalition in the run-up to an election, in a futile effort to outflank Dutton on the right.”
Kon Karapanagiotidis, the chief executive of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said it will bring a challenge “as a matter of priority”, suggesting that elements of the bill supporting reimposition of ankle bracelets and curfews on those released from immigration detention were an “attack on the separation of powers”.
Karapanagiotidis said the bill allowed Australia to replicate the UK’s “failed Rwanda plan” and send non-citizens, including refugees, anywhere in the world.
“There’s nothing in this law that says you can’t send a gay person back to a country where it’s illegal to be gay.”
The independent MP Kylea Tink said voters could see “no difference” between the Liberals and Labor on human rights. Senator David Pocock called the laws “unnecessarily cruel” while senator Lidia Thorpe described it as “racist”.
On Tuesday the legal and constitutional affairs committee recommended the migration amendment bill pass, despite widespread concern that there is no requirement that a third country paid to take non-citizens must be a signatory to the refugee convention.
This objection was expressed by the Law Council, the Refugee Council, the Human Rights Law Centre, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees and the Australian Human Rights Commission, among others.
Home affairs department officials told a hearing on Thursday that Australia was “committed to its international law obligations” and may as a matter of “practice or policy” insist that removal countries would have to be signatories to conventions on refugee rights.
