Josephine Langbien, a lawyer with the Human Rights Law Centre, told a forum organised by the Refugee Action Collective (RAC) on March 3 that Labor’s anti-immigrant laws are the “harshest” in decades.
Labor teamed up with the Coalition to pass last November.
It followed the 2023 High Court decision that indefinite detention was illegal, which led migrants and refugees who had been indefinitely detained to be freed.
Langbien said Labor had “capitulated” to fear mongering by the right.
She explained the key points of the new laws. Australia will pay other countries to accept deportees who may include people who cannot be sent to their countries of origin for various reasons, including refugees who have been recognised as having a justified fear of persecution.
So far, Nauru is the only country to agree to accept such people.
The new law allows people to be jailed for one year for refusing to cooperate with their deportation. Travel bans can be imposed on an entire country if it refuses to accept the involuntary return of its citizens who have been living in Australia.
The new law makes it easier for the government to take away any protections that had been given to refugees. It allows curfews and ankle monitors to be used on former detainees, now living in the community, which the High Court previously found to be unconstitutional.
It enables the banning of mobile phones in detention centres, meaning that detainees are cut off from lawyers, friends and family members.
Langbien said there is a fight back against the laws, through legal challenges, protests and public education.
Rathy Barthlote, a Tamil refugee from Sri Lanka, described how Tamils were driven from their land by war and persecution.
A genocidal massacre in 2009 led to many Tamils fleeing their homeland, including to Australia. Today, the Sri Lankan army and police continues to repress Tamils, including with arrests, abductions, torture and sexual violence.
Barthlote said 9500 refugees on temporary visas live their lives with uncertainty and fear. They are demanding permanent visas.
Barthlote helped organise a march by refugee women from Melbourne to Canberra in 2023, as well as a 100-day round-the-clock protest last year in Naarm. She is currently helping to organise protests at the offices of Labor MPs. “We will not give up”, she said.
Kieran Magee, speaking for RAC, said that 70,000 prisoners are released from jail after serving their sentences every year. The concocted fear over 220 people released from immigration detention, after serving their time, was fear-mongering.
The fact that the refugees were re-detained amounts to double punishment, he said, which not only undermines the rule of law, it denies people the chance of rehabilitation.
He said it was hypocritical for Labor to send supposedly dangerous people to Nauru, a country already devastated by colonialism and the phosphate mining.
Magee said the laws needed to be fought in the courts and on the streets, and by voting for parties that oppose the inhumane treatment of refugees and immigrants.