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The fourth arrest comes a day after Emran Dad,33,who once ran a child sex ring in Victoria,faced court after he contacted children online,and two days after violent sex offender Aliyawar Yawari faced an Adelaide magistrate on two charges of indecent assault. Another ex-detainee was charged with possessing cannabis.
Nearly a month after the court overturned the 2004 Al Kateb case and ruled it was illegal to indefinitely detain a person in immigration detention,the federal government has been scrambling to deliver a legislative fix that will send the worst of the released detainees back into custody. The cohort is made up of non-citizens who cannot be deported.
Thecourt’s decision on November 8 was made in a case brought on behalf of a stateless Rohingya man who had served time for raping a child found that detainees could not be kept in indefinite immigration detention if they could not be deported.
The new laws were due to be passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday,but instead MPs were told on Tuesday that the matter would be introduced on Wednesday night.
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Greens leader Adam Bandt said Labor was engaged in a “kneejerk reaction to a dishonest fear campaign run by Peter Dutton”,whilecrossbenchers slammed the government for the rush in which it wanted to pass the laws.
Under the new laws,a non-citizen would be re-detained if,after an application from the minister,a judge found with a high degree of probability that they posed an unacceptable risk of committing a serious violent or sexual offence.
Giles has repeatedly refused to say how many criminals could return to custody.
He said Commonwealth officials were working with the states and that “we’ve already begun applications to ensure that we can do all that we can as quickly as we can,noting that this will require detailed engagement with the states and possibly territories as well”.
“This proposed preventative detention regime would allow for a court to detain the worst of the worst offenders,” he said.
Giles was asked repeatedly how many of the 148 detainees released so far the government would try to lock up again but refused to answer the question. He also refused to say what their crimes were or how soon applications would be made to send them back into detention.
In addition to the preventative detention laws,the government is expecting on Thursday to pass separate laws that would strip terrorists of their dual Australian citizenship.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil defended the government’s handling of the High Court fallout during a press conference with Giles and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus,noting the government had no choice but to obey the court’s decision,and added that “if I had any legal power to re-detain all of these people,I would do it immediately”.
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At that point,Dreyfus stepped in to reprimand Sky News reporter Olivia Caisley for asking if the government owed an apology to people affected by the reoffending former detainees.
“I will not be apologising for upholding the law. I will not be apologising for pursuing the rule of law and I will not be apologising for acting ...”
Caisley tried to interrupt with a follow-up question – a common practice for reporters – and Dreyfus snapped. “Do not interrupt! I will not be apologising ... for acting in accordance with a High Court decision. Your question is an absurd one,” he said.
O’Neil could then be heard muttering:“OK,I think we will move on here.”