Tough migration laws giving government extensive powers, from deporting non-citizens to allowing sniffer dogs in immigration detention centres, have been supported by the coalition despite furious condemnation.
Independent MPs, the Greens, human rights advocates and refugees slammed the bipartisan agreement to usher in three rushed bills packaged together on Wednesday.
The Albanese government's Migration Act amendments include measures such as paying third countries to accept deported foreign nationals who have been convicted of crimes, confiscating mobile phones in detention centres and reversing protection findings for refugees.
Piume Kaneshan, a student refugee on a bridging visa who escaped Sri Lanka with her family, was dismayed how families on different visas could be separated under the laws.
"I came here when I was seven years old... there is thousands of other young refugees just like me... so why do you think it's fair to send them back forcefully with this bill to a country they don't even call home anymore?," she told reporters.
A parliamentary inquiry revealed more than 80,000 people may be affected, but the Department of Home Affairs maintains the legislation impacts about 5000 people on bridging visas and another 1000 in immigration and community detention.
The government has not said which countries it has negotiated with.
Independent senator Lidia Thorpe said the legislation moved was akin to the White Australia policy with its broad powers and impact.
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre CEO Kon Karapanagiotidis said the Labor government was indistinguishable from the coalition in its migration policies that ultimately penalise refugees and asylum seekers.
"The Labor Party... the party that once stood for multiculturalism... has moved to the far right," he said.
Liberal immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said the coalition negotiated with the government to bolster the bills in order to maintain community safety.
He was referring to the landmark High Court ruling in 2023, which found indefinite immigration detention was unlawful and unconstitutional.
It triggered the release of some 200 detainees with criminal offences who were strapped with ankle monitors and slapped with curfews.
"We are basically running the immigration system for the government because they have failed to be able to do it themselves," Mr Tehan told reporters.
"This is us setting the agenda when it comes to national security and immigration."
The bill would also grant immunity to government officials and those in third countries involved with the removals from being sued.
A second bill in the package would confiscate mobile phones from detainees and use sniffer dogs in immigration detention centres.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the powers were needed to end a "prison-like" culture, but Teal MP Kylea Tink countered "detention centres are not jails."
Australia's Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay flatly rejected Mr Burke's framing of the bill as a response to a commission report published this year sounding the alarm on drug trafficking and violence in detention centres.
"The Minister for Home Affairs has claimed that new laws expanding search and seizure powers... respond to 'calls for action'... let's be clear ... the bill goes far beyond what we recommended, and we do not support it," she tweeted.
But Liberal senator James Paterson also took credit for the government's stringent stance saying they "are longstanding coalition objectives", while criticising their mismanagement of immigration detention centres.
The third bill, which Labor first introduced in March, gives the home affairs minister unilateral power to ban visa classes for relatives of asylum-seekers from blacklisted nations that don't accept deportees.
People from Iran, Iraq, Russia and South Sudan had been floated as possible targets of the ban.
Greens senator David Shoebridge, who described the revived bill as a "Trump-style travel ban", maintained the government was surrendering immigration policies to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.
The package is expected to pass the Senate on Thursday before parliament rises for the year.
