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Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles were briefed on preventative detention laws a month before the High Court decision.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

“Should we lose,we were looking at a whole range of contingency options for what could be done to manage in the event that Al-Kateb was overturned,” Sharp told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday night,referring to the 20-year-old precedent of indefinite detention that ended with the NZYQ decision on November 8.

The Sydney Morning Herald andThe Age revealed on November 28 that the government was considering laws to lock up the worst offenders again,which were drafted and passed by both houses of parliament by December 6.

At the time,O’Neil said,“our government’s single-minded focus is keeping Australians safe”.

But Monday’s revelations prompted opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson to accuse the government of being remarkably slow to legislate the regime “given the department says it was preparing as early as September to do so”.

“There’s no excuse for those weeks of delays,or the months since that they’ve failed to use the preventative detention scheme to get even one offender off the streets to protect the community,” Paterson said.

Sharp said it had been necessary to wait for the High Court to hand down its written reasons into the decision on November 28,however,once that occurred,legislation was drafted quickly.

On Monday morning,it was revealed no detention applications had been made despite 18 former detainees having been charged with new offences by state authorities since their release.

Documents tabled in the Senate revealed thatof the 149 freed detainees,seven had previously been convicted of murder or attempted murder,37 of sexual offences,and 72 of assault and violent offending,kidnapping or armed robbery.

While the Coalition seized on the data to accuse the Labor of inaction,the government said it was unrealistic to expect detention applications to be turned around in the two months since the regime began.

Under questioning from Paterson on Monday night,Sharp also revealed legal advice ahead of the High Court decision flagged the conditions attached to the initial visas the cohort was released on were non-binding given the freed people couldn’t be re-detained.

“Once the orders had been made by the High Court,we knew we couldn’t put people back in detention,” she said.

In late November the government introduced legislation to apply strict visa conditions to the detainees,including a requirement to wear electronic monitoring anklets and report to authorities daily,with breaches attracting a one-year prison term after the bill was strengthened by the Coalition.

In late December,The Guardian revealed conditions had been eased for three former detainees who challenged their constitutional validity in the High Court.

On Monday,departmental officials said the government had faced a total of six High Court challenges over the visa conditions,five of which had been withdrawn after conditions were eased,but Sharp said it was a “correlation rather than causation” between the legal outcomes and the reduced conditions.

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