Hastie warns government cannot afford to wait for NZYQ group to be deported, after alleged 'critical' assault

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6 hours ago

Shadow Home Affairs Minister Andrew Hastie warns the government cannot afford to wait for the outcome of a test case addressing the NZYQ cohort, after one former detainee allegedly critically injured another man in Melbourne.
A 43-year-old former detainee released after the 'NZYQ' High Court ruling was charged on Sunday over an alleged serious assault of a 62-year-old man, who was taken to hospital with critical injuries.
Mr Hastie says the Coalition supported the government to create powers that would allow people released from immigration detention to be re-detained, but the government is yet to make a single application.
"The reason why the parliament rushed through these preventative detention powers 18 months ago was to prevent exactly this sort of scenario, where an innocent person is [allegedly] harmed by a member of this cohort," he said.
"The question is: What is Tony Burke doing? Why didn't he exercise the preventative detention powers given to him by the parliament, and why is he being so passive in protecting the Australian community?"
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said in a statement yesterday separate powers that would see the NZYQ cohort deported were being tested in the High Court.
"The courts are setting the precedents right now on our laws," Mr Burke said in a statement.
"The government's principle is clear, if your visa is cancelled you should leave immediately."
The High Court heard a challenge yesterday by one of three former detainees who the government is seeking to deport to Nauru, in what is being seen as a test case for whether more of the group can be deported.
Another two appeals are before the federal court.
Even if the government succeeds against those challenges it would then have to negotiate the deportation of hundreds more people, many with serious criminal histories, to be accepted by another country.
Mr Hastie told the ABC the government could not afford to wait for that.
"We can't afford to wait, because we have just seen another innocent person [allegedly] brutally bashed by someone from the NZYQ cohort," he said.
"Tony Burke needs to explain to the Australian people why there hasn't been a single application made ... if they can't deport them they need to exercise the powers the parliament vested in the minister to prevent this from happening."
The alleged Footscray assault is the second known allegation of a serious attack by a released detainee, after a former detainee was charged over a home invasion and burglary where an couple in their 70s were assaulted.
In that case, the man had been released from their ankle monitoring conditions, a decision Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the time labelled a "mistake" by the Community Protection Board.
As at May 31, 85 of the 335 people on NZYQ-related bridging visas were subject to electronic monitoring and 46 were subject to a curfew, with the majority subject to no monitoring conditions.
The alleged assault has again brought the cohort of more than 300 released detainees who remain on bridging visas back into the spotlight.
The federal government has made several attempts to address safety concerns surrounding the 'NZYQ' cohort after a shock decision by the High Court in November 2023 to overturn a 20-year precedent that allowed the group to be indefinitely detained.
The court ruled that detention was unlawful because there was no prospect of the detainees being resettled, and that while many had committed serious offences, their time had been served and ongoing detention was an unlawful punishment.
Since then, the government has rushed multiple tranches of legislation through parliament gaining powers to impose strict conditions on the cohort and potentially re-detain them as a preventative measure — though the government has yet to file any applications to re-detain them.
And last year, the High Court again ruled legislation relating to the cohort was unlawful, throwing out the government's laws allowing it to impose ankle monitors and curfews to be imposed on the NZYQ group, resulting in a number of charges for breaching those laws being dropped.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke reintroduced rewritten monitoring rules the next day to reinstate curfews and ankle monitors, but those who were facing charges were not re-prosecuted.
Alongside that rewrite was a new tranche of legislation, this time allowing the government to cancel NZYQ-related visas and therefore immediately re-detain them if another country had accepted their deportation — as well as allowing the government to pay another country to receive the cohort.
Mr Burke in February announced Nauru had accepted three of the NZYQ cohort, in a test case of the new laws.
The Home Affairs minister warned detainees the government was focused on ensuring community safety.