‘Tougher, crueller’: Labor accused of abandoning migrants

The government is hoping to pass its Migration Amendment Bill this week, which includes a suite of harsh new migration polices that would massively expand powers, strip back refugee protections and let it deport non-citizens to third countries with legal immunity.

The proposed laws have been condemned by lawyers, the national human rights watchdog and migrant advocates.

In a joint press conference with crossbenchers and advocates, Kon Karapanagiotidis of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said the government was not “dealing with the things that are actually concerning us” and instead trying to be “crueller” than the Coalition on migrants.

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre chief executive Kon Karapanagiotidis says the Albanese government is trying to be ‘tougher, crueller, more racist’ than the Coalition. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“A million plus Australians in poverty, a woman being killed every three days in this country, and a climate crisis that neither want to face into,” Mr Karapanagiotidis told reporters.

“And instead, today, the Labor Party, the party of my migrant parents, the party that once stood for multiculturalism and migrants and refugees, has abandoned them.”

He said the two major parties were trying to “show who can be tougher, crueller, more racist and more denigrating of migrant and refugee communities” in the hope of winning some votes in next year’s federal election.

Aside from legal questions hanging over the amendments, critics of the Bill have taken issue with the lack of scrutiny, accusing the government of trying to rush it through.

Some elements, such as the deportation of non-citizens to third countries, has been tested overseas.

For example, the UK tried a similar arrangement that would have let it deport detainees to Rwanda, sparking similar backlash.

Britain’s supreme court ruled the plan unlawful, and the former conservative government that announced the policy put it on hold.

The Albanese government struck a deal with the Coalition to get its migration Bill through the Senate. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The scheme – which had been inspired by the Rudd government’s offshore detention program – was ultimately scrapped by the Britain’s Labour Party after it came to power.

But the Albanese government’s proposal is expected to pass after Labor struck a deal with the Coalition.

Mr Karapanagiotidis vowed there would be a “legal challenge” as long as there were no basic safety assurances for deportees.

“There’s nothing in this law that says you can’t send a gay person back to a country where it’s illegal to be gay,” he said.

“Why would the government seek legal immunity from where they are sending people if they had any confidence in what they were about to do?

“You don’t see blanket indemnity … unless you know you’re going to be prosecuted because you’re about to engage in things that are tantamount to … grave crimes.”

If passed, Australia would pay third countries to take deportees.

The laws would also allow authorities to confiscate the phones of immigration detainees and impose blanket visa bans on countries designated a “removal concern country”.