IMO weighs in as Anthony Albanese slams Coalition for teaming up with crossbench to delay deportation laws

Australia must look beyond the “politically hot” conversations on migration and recognise it is part of the solution to current and future challenges.

Amy Pope, the director-general of the International Organization for Migration and former senior advisor to US President Joe Biden, delivered an address to the National Press Club on Thursday, as the government’s own migration policy remains under the microscope.

Labor was left bruised on Wednesday, after their “urgent” bid to legislate new powers to jail non-citizens who resist being returned to their home country was sensationally delayed in the Senate, after the Coalition and Greens teamed up to send the Bill to an inquiry.

The proposed powers would force an asylum seeker who had exhausted all legal avenues to comply with efforts to remove them, such as applying for a passport from their home country, or face a jail sentence of up to five years.

It would also grant the minister the power to pause visa processing from countries that do not accept their citizens being involuntarily returned, such as Iran, Iraq, South Sudan and Russia.

After an address outlining the benefits of migration, Ms Pope was asked if she viewed the legislation as “cruel”.

She said every government “has the right” to set its own migration policies.

“So in a country like Australia you have a robust legislature, administration, and what system to evaluate whether those policies, whether that legislation actually meets your standards around human rights, around international law,” she said.

She said when governments were responding to political challenges, they didn’t always consider the unintended consequences of “responding in a very political way to a very narrow slice of the broader debate”.

“And when we are talking about detention or visa policy, even developmental assistance, we hear often governments have an interest in limiting engagement because of a particular political issue,” she said.

“What we encourage governments to do is take the broader view. What will be the impact of the policy on communities here in Australia? What will be the impact of such a policy on your economy or your ability to attract talent into the future?

“Those questions I can’t answer for you now, but it is what we are asking governments to do, rather than react politically, react from a more informed policy angle.”

She said she was concerned the “unprecedented” level of elections around the world this year would further politicise the issue of migration.

“In the long term, the impact on the economies that need migrants could be quite significantly negative. That’s why we are encouraging a move away from the very short-term temptation to vilify migration, or to cut off migration, and to take this broader, more strategic, more comprehensive view of how to leverage migration so that it works for more economies,” she said.

Her address came as the Prime Minister went on the defensive on Thursday morning, accusing the Coalition of playing politics by teaming up with the crossbench to delay the proposal until May.

“Everyone had time to scrutinise it, there was a full briefing given to the Coalition, the Coalition voted for the policy in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, and they voted about the politics of the issue with the Greens party on Wednesday,” Mr Albanese said on Thursday.

“To be very clear, this isn’t about refugees. This is about people who have not been shown to have any right to be in Australia … my government is orderly, my government rolls out policies in an orderly way consistent with what our program was that we were elected to implement in 2022.”

Mr Albanese also criticised the opposition for leaving the door open to recalling the parliament at a “great cost” at a later date to deal with the laws.

Coalition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said the opposition was not opposed to the Bill, but didn’t have faith the government had “dotted all the I’s and crossed all the T’s”.

“We want to protect Australians. We have led the way on this debate every step of the way, we have called on the government to act, they have been so slow (and) so incompetent (in) their responses,” he said on Thursday.

“But the last time they told us that there was urgent legislation needed to be rushed through the parliament it was the preventive detention scheme. That was passed before Christmas, now four months on … not one application for a preventive detention order has been made.”

Labor introduced the Bill just weeks before the High Court is due to hear a case involving an Iranian man, known as ASF17, who is refusing to return to Iran where he fears persecution because of his sexuality.

Iran does not accept citizens who have been returned against their will.

On Wednesday, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil refused to link the upcoming hearing to the laws but conceded the case showed “that it is important that we have these powers”.

Coalition senate leader Simon Birmingham said the government had not established “that there was valid urgency for this legislation”.

“The government has not suggested that it believes these laws could change the verdict of the High Court and certainly … officials from the department definitely resisted making any such suggestion. “

He labelled any suggestion the Coalition delaying the Bill could make it responsible should the High Court order the release of detainees “preposterous”.

Last year, the High Court caught the government off guard when the landmark NZYQ ruling ordered the release of 152 non-citizens from immigration detention.

Officials revealed 73 of the 152 people in the cohort were not required to wear electronic monitoring devices in a late-night hearing on Wednesday.

They could also not confirm whether any of the detainees’ seven convicted murderers, 37 convicted sex offenders or 72 convicted violent offenders were among that group.