Today’s high court verdict,
which dealt another blow to the federal government’s plans to
give asylum seekers temporary protection visas, set significant new limits on
Australia’s policy of mandatory detention. It will throw into doubt the
legality of detention of thousands of people in Australia, potentially spelling
the end for Australia’s mandatory detention regime as we know it.
In the unanimous decision handed down today, the court threw out
the federal government’s strategy of granting temporary visas to asylum seekers
through a legal loophole. Unable to get temporary protection visas through
parliament, the federal government had been granting other temporary visas
which blocked asylum seekers from applying for permanent visas, but today’s
case ruled against that practice.
More importantly, and for
the first time, the court clearly set out the constitutional limits on
immigration detention. It was previously unclear for what purposes the
government could detain non-citizens. The court has now clearly stated that the
government can only lawfully detain someone in three circumstances: to consider
whether or not to let someone apply for a visa; to consider an application for
a visa; or to remove someone.
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