One in five former detainees charged with new crimes since release

During the committee hearing, Australian Border Force commissioner Michael Outram, who is leading authorities’ supervision of former detainees alongside the Australian Federal Police, said the agency did not keep a “running tally” of people who had been charged with state offences.

“What we need to know is whether there is somebody in the community who requires the visa
conditions to be applied or not,” he said.

“What they’re charged with, when they’re charged, when the state prosecutors change charges, which they do frequently, or drop cases or amend cases – we do not need to keep a running tally on all of that, and we don’t.”

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre principal solicitor Hannah Dickinson said people released following the High Court decision were subject to minimal support “subjected to invasive and distressing conditions and to alarming vilification by politicians and the media, a maelstrom which prevented many from accessing employment, housing and other vital supports”.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the community protection board makes visa condition recommendations based on individual circumstances but “beyond this, the management of state crimes is a matter for state jurisdictions”.

Giles is currently reeling from yet another detainee scandal after it emerged last week that a tribunal, acting partly in accordance with a ministerial direction he issued last year, had released a former detainee, Emmanuel Saki, who went on to allegedly commit murder.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal reinstated Saki’s visa on March 27, partly due to new rules introduced by Giles last year requiring the tribunal to consider the length of time spent in Australia when deciding if they would cancel a visa.

Known as ministerial direction 99, it was issued on January 23, 2023, to assuage long-held concerns from the New Zealand government that its citizens were being deported in high numbers even when they had stronger ties to Australia than NZ.

Home Affairs’ latest visa cancellation statistics show that, as of December 31, there was a significant reduction of visa cancellations on character grounds – particularly for New Zealanders – in the first six months of the 2023-24 financial year.

Home Affairs is yet to clarify the role of direction 99 in those statistics. Former top immigration official Abul Rizvi said the direction would have influenced the drop in numbers, adding he viewed it as a correction to the policy under the Coalition, which cancelled 1015 visas on character grounds in 2019-20, of which 50 per cent were New Zealanders. That number dropped to 244 in the six months to December.

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“I think what had happened under the Morrison government was a pretty extreme position,” he said. “If a person has grown up in Australia as a young child, it’s much harder to argue someone else should take them.”

Official figures also show the number of people in immigration detention on character grounds has fallen steadily since early 2022.

Following reporting by The Australian that the direction was used in determining a New Zealand child rapist should stay in Australia, opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan told reporters in Canberra on Monday the Coalition would scrap direction 99 if returned to government.