The senate must not pass this rushed and brutal deportation and surveillance bill.
The Government introduced a new bill to Parliament along with new regulations on 7 November 2024.
This Migration Amendment Bill 2024 and Migration Amendment (Bridging Visa Conditions) Regulations 2024, are a cruel and rushed attempt, in the last sitting week of the year, to give Minister Burke new and expanded powers to detain and deport non-citizens to unspecified third countries, and use punitive monitoring and surveillance techniques.
This bill reintroduce some of the punitive provisions contained in the Deportation and Entry Ban Bill, which was dropped earlier this year before the Senate due to public and community pressure, as it was likened to Donald Trump’s 2017 ‘Muslim ban’ policy.
If passed, the bill and regulations will:
- Increase the Minister’s power to overturn protection findings in order to remove people
- Allow the Government to pay third countries to warehouse refugees
- Allow the Government to deport people to those countries
- Put people at risk of human rights abuses, persecution and death
- Separate families, including Australian children from their parents, permanently
- Re-introduce punitive curfews and electronic monitoring for BVR holders
Amnesty expressed concern in a response when the bill and regulations were introduced.
For more detail please refer to the Human Rights Law Centre’s legal explainer here.