Immigration Minister under fire over directive on deportations
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed a new ministerial direction will be issued to deal with cases of visa cancellations. The change comes after sustained criticism from the Federal Opposition.
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00:00Well, the Prime Minister says this new direction will put a bigger emphasis on community safety
00:06and protection.
00:08And this, as you mentioned, comes after the opposition has been highly critical of what's
00:13called Direction 99, which is something that maybe many people had never heard of until
00:18a few days ago.
00:20But essentially, Direction 99 requires bodies like the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to
00:28consider someone's family ties to Australia and how long they've been living in Australia
00:33before deporting them after criminal convictions.
00:38So the opposition has said this direction has had unintended consequences and has resulted
00:44in serious criminals avoiding deportation.
00:48Now the reason that this was introduced, it was introduced by Andrew Giles, the Immigration
00:53Minister last year.
00:54The reason was to ease concerns from New Zealand because the New Zealand government had long
00:59been angered by a scenario where New Zealanders who were born over there but had lived in
01:06Australia for the majority of their life and had long connections to Australia, after they
01:12had committed crimes, they were being deported back to New Zealand.
01:15And that was something that concerned the government there.
01:19So that was the reason behind it.
01:20But as I said, the opposition has been highly critical of how Direction 99 has been applied.
01:26And so they spent question time today and yesterday going through a series of cases
01:32that have been before the AAT and that have seen cancelled visas, had their visas, the
01:39cancellation overturned in the tribunal there and called on the government to apologise
01:45for that.
01:46Now Immigration Minister Andrew Giles told the parliament today that these decisions
01:50by the AAT, in his view, hadn't been using common sense.
01:55And so he says this new direction will ensure that the protection of the community outweighs
02:00other considerations.
02:03Some of the AAT decisions are very hard to reconcile with any sense of the expectations
02:10of the Australian community, nor frankly common sense.
02:14These are very concerning.
02:16That's why I've also rushed to consider cancellation submissions in respect of some of the cases
02:22that have been brought to light, and I've already cancelled six visas having done so.
02:28So Immigration Minister Andrew Giles confirming to the ABC's afternoon briefing just before
02:33that a number of those overturned cancelled visas have since been recancelled by the government.