ALHR Statement in response to the Migration Amendment Bill 2024 (Cth) and Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Regulations 2024 (Cth)
Australian Lawyers for Human Rights (ALHR) joins the many expert voices condemning the Albanese Government’s Migration Amendment Bill 2024 (Cth) and Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Regulations 2024 (Cth).
The new measures seek to drastically expand the Federal Government’s powers, allowing it to warehouse people in third countries, reverse protection findings made for refugees, and continue to impose punitive visa conditions on those who remain here.*
These regressive measures undermine Australia’s ability to comply with its international legal obligations. When governments choose pathways that dispense with the inherent dignity and worth of one group of people in return for perceived political gains, they undermine the rules-based international legal order that signatories of international conventions are bound to uphold. ALHR urges the Albanese Government to recall that the Refugee Convention and the core United Nations human rights treaties were drafted in the wake of WWII, reflecting States Parties’ commitment to the minimum values that governments must nurture, respect and protect for all people regardless of their background.
Pursuant to our Constitution, the High Court of Australia plays a vital role in protecting the people by ensuring that the parliament, government and executive are accountable under the law and restrained from behaving unlawfully and enacting laws that are unconstitutional and therefore invalid. The Albanese Government has responded to a High Court ruling that it cannot unjustifiably punish people by immediately trying to circumvent it. ALHR is concerned that the Bill’s proposed test for the imposition of punitive curfews and ankle bracelets on Bridging “R” Visa Holders continues to place decisions about whether such restrictions are necessary in the hands of the Government, and therefore, subvert the separation of powers explicitly set out by our constitutional drafters and upheld by the High Court in YBFZ v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs [2024] HCA 40.
We call on the Albanese Government to reconsider its rushed, brutal, cruel and unnecessary Migration Bill that would immediately subject many recently-released individuals to re-detention, ongoing punishment and risk their illegal refoulement. Many of the people who would be impacted by these measures have been legally recognised as refugees in Australia and have already endured protracted immigration detention. If any person in Australia is believed to be a risk to community safety, our law enforcement services already have significant powers to apply for the supervision and control of such people.
We urge the Albanese Government to reflect on the opportunity it now has to show some courage, change course and end decades of politically motivated cruelty, brutality and human rights violations targeted at migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. It’s time to ask what kind of society we wish to be. Australians deserve governments that respect, protect and uphold human rights and the principles, values, checks and balances that form the core of our democracy.
* See The Human Rights Law Centre’s Explainer: Labor’s brutal Deportation and Surveillance Bill for further detail on the measures proposed within the Bill and the joint media release issued by the Refugee Council of Australia, The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, the Human Rights Law Centre, and the Refugee Advice & Casework Service on 8 November 2024.