More than 80,000 people are susceptible to deportation from Australia to third countries paid to take them under Labor’s new bill which has been likened to the UK’s failed Rwanda deportation plan.
At a Senate inquiry hearing on Thursday, home affairs department officials confirmed that the migration amendment bill could affect far more people than those released from immigration detention by the high court but insisted it did not expand the cohort of those eligible for removal.
The bill gives authority to the Australian government to pay third countries to accept non-citizens on a removal pathway.
Michael Thomas, the home affairs department’s group manager of immigration compliance, revealed that those on a removal pathway included:
An estimated 75,400 people with no valid visa in the Australian community.
4,452 people on bridging visa E, so they can make “acceptable arrangements to depart Australia”.
986 people in immigration detention.
193 in community detention.
246 on bridging visa R, released as a result of the high court’s NZYQ ruling that indefinite detention is unlawful.
A further 96 people on BVRs that predated that decision.
Officials stressed that most of the 80,000 could return to their home country, and thousands did so voluntarily.
Earlier, Josephine Langbien, associate legal director of the Human Rights Law Centre, told the Senate inquiry the bill allowed people removed to be separated from their families “sending them to permanent exile in third countries against their will”.
“We don’t know which countries will be included. We don’t know how those countries will treat people who are sent there.”
“They could be detained arbitrarily, denied medical treatment, violently attacked or killed, or sent back to their country of origin.
“This is not far-fetched because all of these things have happened to people previously.”
Carina Ford, the chair of the Law Council’s migration committee told a Senate inquiry that there is “no requirement” in the bill that removal countries have signed up to the refugee convention.
“It’s probably very unlikely they would be, if you look at past history of deals that have been made not just here but in the UK, I think the best example in the UK is the failed Rwandan removal country – sometimes it’s easier to deal with countries [that have not signed up].”
Stephanie Foster, the home affairs department secretary, said Australia “does not return people to countries in respect of which they have been found to engage Australia’s non refoulement obligations”.
But Clare Sharp, the home affairs department general counsel, confirmed warnings of refugee and asylum seeker advocates that there are no limitations on which countries can be paid to take non-citizens.
She suggested 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.
Earlier this month the high court ruled that regulations imposing ankle bracelets and curfews on 162 people released from indefinite detention were unlawful.
The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, responded by remaking regulations to reimpose the visa conditions and introducing the bill to “strengthen the government’s power to remove people who have had their visas cancelled”.
“This government’s first priority is community safety … the first priority is not ankle bracelets or detention for these people, our first priority is: we don’t want them in Australia at all,” he told the House of Representatives.
On Thursday officials revealed that since Burke remade regulations to reimpose the conditions, just 48 people had been assessed under the new test and just 10 had ankle bracelets or curfews reapplied.
Thomas told the hearing that sex offenders and child sex offenders were among the 38 who had been reassessed but not had the conditions reimposed.
Officials insisted all BVR holders are still subject to other mandatory conditions on their visas, and pointed to a 66% increase in resources for operation Aegis which polices those released from immigration detention.
