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The Morrison government’s third attempt to pass “flawed” legislation that would grant the immigration minister more power to cancel visas and deport people has been labelled a “desperate power grab” by human rights lawyers.
Based on character or conduct alone, the immigration minister has sweeping powers to detain and deport people. Should the Migration Amendment (Strengthening the Character Test) Bill 2021 be passed, it would expose even more people to indefinite detention and deportation, the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) argued.
“The bill would lower an already excessively low threshold for the minister to be able to rip a person away from their families, lock them up in a detention centre and deport them to a country that is not their home, even when that person has lived in Australia for decades,” Mr Cosgriff commented.
“If passed, it would allow the detention and deportation of long-term residents for conduct that did not otherwise lead to significant criminal penalty.”
Mr Cosgriff said that instead of “flogging this dead horse”, the Morrison government must focus on fixing immigration detention failures. This should start with releasing the refugees that it continues to “spitefully detain in makeshift detention centres”.
“Parliament must reject this desperate power grab in the dying days of this parliamentary term,” Mr Cosgriff said.
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Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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