It means that if the federal government can find a country to make a deal with to accept the NZYQ cohort, the government would then be able to put the group back into detention pending their deportation.
The new powers also enable the government to make payments to that country to receive deportees.
In question time, Burke said the government had enacted regulations to reapply ankle bracelets and curfews to people released by the high court and had introduced legislation “required to have all the full powers we want to be able to have” in relation to removals.
“This government’s first priority is community safety … the first priority is not ankle bracelets or detention for these people, our first priority is: we don’t want them in Australia at all.”
According to its explanatory memorandum, the bill authorises the government to pay a third country to accept unlawful non-citizens from Australia, such as the 224 people released as a result of the high court’s November 2023 NZYQ decision that indefinite immigration detention is unlawful.
The federal government is moving urgently to write new regulations to allow ankle monitoring and curfews for people released from immigration detention under the NZYQ ruling.
The High Court ruled laws imposing strict conditions on released "NZYQ" detainees were illegal.
As of September 30, there were 215 former immigration detainees in the community on bridging visas. Of them, 128 are subject to 10pm-to-6am curfews and 140 must wear an electronic monitoring device.
Gippsland's Indian community says hosting Diwali is an important way of maintaining cultural connections.
Friday’s ruling by the federal court that Senator Pauline Hanson racially vilified Senator Mehreen Faruqi when Senator Hanson told Senator Faruqi to “piss off back to Pakistan” on X is welcome and long overdue, especially for many people in the Australian Muslim community and other marginalised groups who have been racially vilified by Senator Hanson.
Senator Hanson has a long history of hateful and discriminatory speech, including inflammatory attempts in parliament to ban the burqa, wind back protection for transgender children and stoke anti-Asian hate.
Rather than being punished for these comments, Senator Hanson has been elected into local, state and federal parliaments. So it is not a surprise that it has taken decades for an Australian court to rule that what Senator Hanson has been saying is discriminatory.
In the quiet of his room in NSW’s Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, Carlos, an Ecuadorian asylum seeker, found a respite from the daily drudgery of “waiting for results, waiting for a visa, or just for information” - playing songs on a donated guitar.
Carlos, 51, who asked his surname not be used while he awaits permanent protection visa approval, spent several years in Villawood following an earlier visa cancellation, after a criminal conviction saw him serve jail time.
Philip Feinstein says guitars remain the most popular instrument among detainees, although there are often requests for regional instruments, especially from asylum seekers from the Middle East.
“The music for us was a way of escaping pressure…of feeling or expressing, actually, how we felt about the way we were living,” he said.
He’s one of many to benefit from instrument donations organised by Music for Refugees. The group’s CEO, Philip Feinstein, 76, has been running programs for asylum seekers since 2009 and is appealing for more donations.
Feinstein said he would like to see a more humane approach to Australia’s immigration detainees.
Leading construction bodies are urging the government to change its approach to skilled migration and bring in more migrants to ease the shortage of tradies.
The Taliban has extended restrictions on Afghan women's voices by banning them from praying loudly or reciting the Koran in front of other women.
The move — which comes after the hardline religious group in August forbade women from speaking in public — has sparked further condemnation from activists and rights organisations.
If student caps at current levels are to be made the dominant driver of student visa processing, the student contribution to net migration would remain well above pre-pandemic levels and well above Treasury forecasts for 2024-25. Students would be a major driver of net migration in 2024-25 which is likely to come in at around 350,000 to 375,000.
That will be completely contrary to Jason Clare’s recent assertion. Treasury is likely to confirm that when it updates its net migration forecast later this year and again ahead of the 2025 Election.
Jason Clare is wrong on net migration and student caps. By Abul Rizvi, Pearls & Irritations
When thinking of large Punjabi Sikh population groups, the small coastal town of Woolgoolga in New South Wales may not be the first place that comes to mind.
But with 25 per cent of the 6,000-strong population descending from India and the town having a rich agricultural and migration history, it boasts one of Australia’s largest Sikh communities.
The Punjabi Sikhs of Woolgoolga. By Sophie Johnson, ABC News
The struggle of a Thai migrant in a remote Western Australian mining town to pass Australia's citizenship test has sparked claims the exam is too hard.
Since the test's English standards were raised in 2020, the first-time pass rate has fallen by around 10 per cent, and it is taking people more attempts to pass.
I am one of the organisers of the 100-day refugee encampment in front of the Department of Home Affairs office in Melbourne. I am a refugee from Sri Lanka, a mother of two, a disability support worker and a proud union member. My family and I are part of the community in every way, except for our visa status.
Our protest was to demand justice for the 8,500 people who, like us, have been failed by the former Coalition government’s “fast track” asylum process. We have suffered 12 years of uncertainty because of an unfair system that has now been abolished. As victims of that system, we deserve justice and visa equality.
Last Tuesday night, we packed up our encampment and held a final, peaceful rally through the streets of Melbourne. There were about 700 of us, our families, our friends and supporters.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has rejected accusations from Beijing that his country is “plagued by systemic racism and hate crimes.”
Beijing spoke out after an Australian diplomat led a group of Western nations in making unsubstantiated claims about human rights violations in China.
Australian PM Albanese rejects Chinese claim his country is ‘plagued’ by racism. Morning Star
With asylum systems around the world facing ever-increasing backlogs and delays, it’s time for governments to rethink how they approach processing claims of people seeking safety.
Victorian police say they were forced to use capsicum spray on white supremacists after they gatecrashed a refugee rally. Organisers say the neo-Nazis chanted racist slogans, leaving many traumatised by the experience.
Neo-Nazis crash Melbourne refugee rally. SBS News (2.05 min video)
I am a lawyer and an international law scholar researching refugee cultural heritage protection. If people are forced to migrate or flee as refugees, I want to find a way for them to take their cultural objects along. I was drawn to international law because of its values. That we are all born with equal rights to life and freedom. Until I realised, we are not.
Neo-Nazis tried to disrupt refugee protesters’ 100th night demonstrating outside the Department of Home Affairs in Docklands but were pushed back by police who doused them with pepper spray. Police dispersed a black-clothed and balaclava-clad group near a refugee encampment on Tuesday night, sending them running as demonstrators cheered.
Neo-Nazis pepper-sprayed after attempting to disrupt refugee rally. By Cassandra Morgan, WA Today
The world is witnessing some of the highest levels of conflict in decades, with more than 110 armed conflicts occurring across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Europe.
The impact of these wars on children is vast and multifaceted. The trauma inflicted is enduring and will shape the rest of their lives — and by extension, the societies in which they, and we live.
As researchers who study how public policies can intervene to reduce adverse outcomes for children, we contend that wars are not bound by geography. Airstrikes terrorize children in conflict zones, while those living in the nations involved in these conflicts also experience trauma in the form of poverty, neglect, and discrimination.
With the latest escalation of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, history is again repeating itself. Lebanese citizens, primarily from Hezbollah strongholds in South Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, are seeking refuge in Syria, a country still grappling with its own economic collapse, violence and internal strife.
While the conflict on Lebanese territory has gone on for more than a year, movements into Syria only picked up in late September 2024 as people have become more desperate to flee.
590 Tahoe Keys Blvd, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96150