A well-placed source with knowledge of the arrangements confirmed multiple people living in the community under such arrangements and with no convictions were subject to the new restrictions.
This masthead on Tuesday revealed the federal governmenthad also sought legal advice on the prospect of using preventative detention-style laws to send back to detention those foreigners who had served jail time for serious offences such as rape and murder.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has backed preventative detention measures.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton,who has been pushing to re-detain the whole cohort,said the government should have contemplated new preventative detention measures earlier.
“We’ll support further tightening up or further legislation,which is going to stop more people from being harmed,but this is a government that’s created a real mess,and unfortunately,as always,the Australian public will pay the price for that,” he said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Independent MP Allegra Spender accused the government of rushing last week’s legislation and preventing proper scrutiny over the fresh measures.
“If the government is considering further changes,it must give parliament adequate time to scrutinise the legislation and examine whether the changes are proportionate to the actual risks to community safety,” she said.
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According to Home Affairs data tabled in the Senate last week,21 people captured by the High Court decision were already living in community detention,including 16 put there by the current government.
The detailed list published by the High Court on Tuesday included a man fined $2000 after being charged with indecent assault in 2012,who was placed in community detention by the Coalition in February 2022.
A man jailed in Saudi Arabia for eight years for murdering another man is also residing in community detention.
Home Affairs compiled the list of what it labelled the “more serious offenders” whose deportation wasn’t reasonably foreseeable on October 18,in the lead-up to the decision earlier this month.
The list contains some people who have been released,including the Rohingya man convicted of raping a 10-year-old boy whose legal challenge brought on the High Court ruling,as well as Sirul Azhar Umar,a Malaysian bodyguard sentenced to death in his own country for murder.
It also contains Kellisar,who has been in immigration detention for four years after a 22-year sentence for murdering his wife,Svetlana Podgoyetsky. He tried to cover up her 1997 death by driving her body from Melbourne to Sydney and dissolving her body in a bin of acid.
The list also includes a man sentenced to a maximum 11 years’ jail for people smuggling in 2015;a man convicted separately of both murder and sexual intercourse with a person between the ages of 14 to 16;and a person detained for 13 years with no criminal convictions,but of interest to ASIO.