The Coalition and Labor have clashed over new figures revealing international students are flooding into Australia at record levels, threatening to make immigration a thorny election issue.
Nicola Smith
The High Court threw the Albanese Government another curveball this week, almost a year to the day since its last. The political and legal shockwaves will be felt for years.
Katina Curtis
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has urged the Coalition to back new laws allowing the Government to pay countries to take former immigration detainees and a workaround for the latest High Court ruling.
An emergency fix should make sure former immigration detainees are still subject to curfews and monitoring while satisfying the High Court but Tony Burke won’t say how many are being tracked now.
Australian Border Force officials insist patrols of the northern waters are on track to increase despite falling in the last financial year.
Outgoing Border Force commissioner Michael Outram said Australia was still failing to grasp the threats to our border and warned a failure to spend now to protect it would cost much more in the long term.
Jake Dietsch
Nearly 300 so-called ghost colleges have been shut down or put on notice amid a government crackdown on vocational providers offering international students visas but no education.
Australian Border Force has confirmed it picked up four boats off WA’s Kimberley coast on Tuesday as part of a crackdown on illegal foreign fishing in Australian waters.
Border protection authorities have reportedly picked up several boats over the past 24 hours off WA’s northern coast.
A total of 160 people have now been released from immigration detention as a result of the High Court’s ruling on the NZYQ case.
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Visa cancellation decisions are still being overturned under Immigration Minister Andrew Giles’ controversial direction 99 — while he scrambles to issue new guidance.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has been forced to concede he was wrong to say former detainees were being monitored with drones, blaming his assertion in an interview on his department’s information.
GAME OF DRONES: Last week Andrew Giles said drones were being used to monitor criminal non-citizens. Today he’s admitted that’s not true.
Sarah Blake
Police were originally against extending bail for Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan when he faced court for allegedly breaking his curfew but ended up deferring to prosecutors who said they would not oppose it.
Drones are being used to photograph and map the areas where former immigration detainees are living to make sure they are not near schools or other forbidden areas — but not tracking individuals.
Scott Morrison has warned that governments fiddle with immigration laws “at your peril” as Andrew Giles races to alter a ministerial direction that led to a tribunal overturning visa cancellations for criminals
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has conceded the emergency laws passed last year do not allow Border Force to electronically monitor every person released from detention after a High Court ruling.
Katina Curtis and Dan Jervis-Bardy
Police have charged 29 of the non-citizens released from immigration detention after a High Court ruling with at least 69 State and Territory offences.
Andrew Giles will personally review dozens of convicted criminals who had visa cancellations overturned by an administrative tribunal as the Opposition accused the Government of a ‘catastrophic mistake’.
Katina Curtis and Jessica Evensen
The Coalition will lean on students who have finished their courses and failed asylum seekers to leave the country as it seeks to cut migration numbers drastically.
When he was opposition leader, Bill Shorten faced Coalition criticism for attacking ‘the top end of town’, a phrase he used in his 2019 budget reply.
Michelle Grattan
Just 68 of the 153 detainees released after a High Court decision are subject to curfews and only 76 have ankle monitors, the first monthly report from the Community Protection Board shows.
The High Court has ruled the Government is within its rights to keep people with cancelled visas locked up if they refuse to co-operate with efforts to deport them.
Michaelia Cash has questioned why the Attorney-General has not used his powers to direct Commonwealth prosecutors about how to handle cases involving alleged breaches of visa conditions by non-citizens.
