Anthony Albanese passes Donald Trump-style ‘mass deportation laws’, a political change no one saw coming

Anthony Albanese is resorting to Donald Trump-style tactics to deport non-citizens – while celebrating the passage of a series of tough new laws.

Labour’s Migration Amendment bills were passed late on Thursday evening, with coalition support, as 30 bills were passed on Parliament’s final sitting day of the year.

Under the new laws, nearly 80,000 people without a valid visa will be deported, while asylum seekers who resist deportation could face jail.

The latest development marks a major policy shift for the Prime Minister, who comes from the left-wing Labor faction – which has long been opposed to offshore detention.

Less than a decade ago, Mr Albanese expressed his opposition to refusing boat people entry to Australia.

But in an attempt to stay in power, the prime minister – who represents an inner-city electorate – is dumping his previous principles for political purposes.

His government is they discussed the prospect of forced deportations and the reintroduction of ankle bracelets for stateless criminals.

Human rights groups are warning that stateless people deported to a third country are at risk of being killed or violently attacked, while an asylum seeker group has described it as a ‘Trump-like bill’.

Anthony Albanese is now resorting to Donald Trump-style tactics to deport non-citizens with elections just six months away

Labor was reeling from a Supreme Court ruling last year that saw sex offenders and murderers released into the community.

Former Home Secretary Clare O’Neil introduced legislation in March that attorney Rachel Saravanamuthu of the Asylum Seeker Resource Center said was a “Trump-style bill.” [that] has no place in our democracy’.

Labor has traditionally been seen as weak on border protectionOh, if that means resorting to mass deportations — the kind of policies that helped Trump return to the White House — so be it.

As the next US president prepares to deport illegal arrivals from Mexico, Australia begins deportations of those whose visas have been revoked or expired.

Home Secretary Tony Burke announced new legislation three weeks ago to deport non-citizens to third countries, paying those countries to take in people Australia didn’t want.

His announcement followed the High Court’s ruling in the case of a stateless asylum seeker from Eritrea – known as YBFZ – who came to Australia at the age of 14 and was released from immigration detention in November 2023.

This was after the Supreme Court ruled in another case – NZYQ – that indefinite detention was unlawful and unconstitutional.

YBFZ had to obey a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. and wear an ankle monitor.

But the High Court ruled the curfew and ankle bracelet were unconstitutional – even though ordinary Australians had to adhere to a curfew in Melbourne during Covid lockdowns.

To get around this, Mr Burke announced bills to deport them rather than detain them indefinitely, and also announced that he would use his power as minister to reinstate the ankle braces into law.

As the next US president prepares to deport illegal arrivals from Mexico, Australia begins deportations of those whose visas have been revoked

A regulation allows a temporary decision to be made that takes effect immediately, without the government having to wait for parliament to vote on it before it becomes final.

“Regulations are now being finalized which will allow for an amended process for electronic monitoring equipment and the use of curfews,” Mr Burke said.

Labour’s plan to deport or electronically monitor non-citizens could potentially affect 75,400 people who do not hold a valid visa.

The Ministry of the Interior admitted this last week during a hearing of the Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in the Senate.

Labor now faces a Greens campaign in cosmopolitan inner-city voters. .

Josephine Langbien, deputy director of the Human Rights Law Centre, warned that asylum seekers forcibly deported could be killed under Labour’s plan to deport non-citizens.

‘We don’t know which countries will be included; we don’t know how the countries will treat the people who are sent there,” she told senators last week.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced new legislation three weeks ago to deport non-citizens to third countries, paying those countries to take people Australians didn’t want

“They may be arbitrarily detained, denied medical treatment, violently attacked or killed, or sent back to their country of origin.

“This is not far-fetched because all these things have happened to people who have been exiled abroad before.”

Ms Langbien warned against children being separated from their parents – echoing what happened at the Mexican border when Trump was last in power.

“It would allow the government to separate people from their families and send them into permanent exile in third countries against their will, with no way of ever returning to their lives in Australia,” she said.

“These people have been singled out for harsher treatment than the rest of the Australian community simply because of their visa status.

“It will affect thousands of people; any person removed from Australia could be sent to an unspecified third country.

“That’s every person – adult or child, refugee or tourist without any consideration given to their connections to Australia or even their connections to the country from which they will be removed.

“It is the people who cannot be returned to their countries of origin who are most at risk: refugees, stateless people and people who have fled oppressive regimes.”

John Howard’s coalition government sent asylum seekers to the islands of Nauru and Manus in Papua New Guinea from 2001.

But his Labor successor Kevin Rudd scrapped the Pacific solution only to increase boat arrivals from three in 2007-08 to 117 in 2009-10.

The number of asylum seekers rose from 25 to 5,327, according to figures from a Parliament House research paper.

Julia Gillard, who replaced Rudd in a party-room coup, tried to strike a people-swapping deal with Malaysia but the High Court rejected it in 2011.

Labor never recovered politically and Liberal leader Tony Abbott won the 2013 election in a landslide, appointing Scott Morrison as immigration minister who held the boats back.

Under Labor’s watch when Labor was last in government, 50,000 asylum seekers arrived on 800 boats between late 2007 and 2013.

More than ten years later, opposition leader Peter Dutton leads the government in the polls.

So was the former Queensland Police detective previously a tough-talking Home Secretary.

Ahead of the last elections in 2022, Mr Albanese suggested he was against offshore processing, but later clarified he was.

‘We will turn the boats back. Turning boats back means you don’t need offshore detention,” he told reporters in Cessnock in the Labor-held seat of Hunter.

In 2015, he told the ABC’s Insiders program that he did not personally support the idea of ​​turning back asylum seeker boats.

“Different people took different positions and that was the issue of reversal,” he said.

“For me, that was something I couldn’t support, but in the context of policy, I said earlier this week that you can be tough on people smugglers without being soft on humanity.”

Like Howard’s Albanian government, so despised, he has increased legal immigration to record levels and resorted to sending problematic asylum seekers abroad, talking tough and acting tough.