Labor appears set to criminalise the breach of bridging visa conditions as the first plank of its legislative response to the high court’s decision that indefinite immigration detention is unlawful.
Misused millions: Top spy’s secret report slams Home Affairs. By Nick McKenzie and Michael Bachelard, SMH
A classified inquiry by ex-spy chief Dennis Richardson has provided a scathing assessment of how Australia’s Department of Home Affairs managed hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for the offshore asylum seeker processing system.
Whistleblowers also confirmed that Richardson said he would pass their details to the National Anti-Corruption Commission after they raised allegations of graft and crime during his Albanese-government commissioned inquiry into contracting under the so-called Pacific Solution.
The revelation that the review is highly critical of the way the department managed Australia’s offshore processing procurement regime was confirmed by official sources who have read Richardson’s still-secret report but are not permitted to discuss it publicly.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil received Richardson’s report weeks ago but declined to answer questions about whether it would be released, stating only it was under review. “The Richardson inquiry is currently under consideration by government,” a spokesperson for O’Neil said.
It comes amid fresh corruption concerns surrounding controversial contractor Paladin, which was paid hundreds of millions of dollars to run the Manus Island detention centre.
This masthead has obtained documents, including court files and financial records, that show Paladin made suspicious payments to a businessman with links to both the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang and to allegedly corrupt officials in Papua New Guinea.
According to Paladin paperwork, payments of at least $3 million were made to the businessman’s offshore account which Paladin expected would secure backing from PNG politicians as it sought to overcome resistance to its delivery of its Home Affairs contract on Manus Island.
A former Paladin director, Ian Stewart, has also revealed he reported the offshore Paladin payments “externally to agencies as suspected bribes”.
Separately, a Manus Island clan leader and former Paladin business partner has alleged in court documents that the Australian firm may have defrauded him while paying millions to the family of a powerful PNG politician who then “dished” it out to others.
The classified report by Richardson, a former director general of ASIO, examines how Home Affairs engaged with contractors such as Paladin and Brisbane firm Canstruct, along with the dozens of subcontractors, that were paid billions of dollars to run Australia’s offshore processing system.
Richardson’s inquiry was ordered by the Albanese government in July after this masthead and 60 Minutes revealed in the Home Truths investigation detailed allegations that firms contracted for offshore processing may have been corrupted, with suspect payments funnelled to foreign politicians in Nauru and PNG.
The official sources with knowledge of Richardson’s findings said his report concluded that serious failures within Home Affairs had led to the engagement of contractors and subcontractors with alleged links to dubious business dealings or foreign officials.
Richardson found Home Affairs did not conduct adequate due diligence on some contractors, a problem exacerbated by information sharing failures between departmental officials and agencies such as the Australian Federal Police.
The sources said Richardson closely examined the decision of Home Affairs to continue to contract with a company closely linked to Australian businessman, Mozammil Bhojani, after Australian authorities charged Bhojani with bribing Nauruan officials to gain mining favours.
Home Affairs retained Bhojani’s company in Nauru even after he was convicted, court and departmental files show.
Richardson also interviewed former Paladin employees about their concerns about the way the company operated in PNG.
Home Affairs paid Paladin $530 million in taxpayer funds to run the detention centre for just over two years between 2017 and 2019 but from the beginning, the company had difficulty with PNG officials in obtaining visas and work permits.
An ongoing investigation by this masthead can reveal that Paladin paid at least $3 million to an offshore account in 2018 and 2019 to get the backing of senior PNG officials.
In a statement to this masthead, former Paladin director Ian Stewart described the payments as “very likely” to be bribes paid to ensure Paladin could obtain visas and work permits. He said he had reported his concerns to Australian law enforcement agencies.
Payment records show the funds were sent to the Singapore account of a Chinese-Malaysian businessman with interests in Queensland and PNG and who entered into a business arrangement with Paladin that Stewart now alleges was a sham.
The businessman is now at the centre of a federal police investigation involving Paladin and allegations that some of the $3 million paid by Paladin was used to get favours from PNG officials close to the businessman.
The Chinese-Malaysian businessman, who this masthead is not naming for legal reasons and who did not respond to efforts to contact him, has a chequered history that has also been unearthed by this masthead.
His home was recently shot up in an alleged outlaw bikie drive-by and detectives subsequently alleged in court he had business dealings – that had soured – with a company owned by a bikie and which police claimed is controlled by the Comancheros motorcycle gang.
The issue of offshore processing remains a sensitive one for the Albanese government, which wants to avoid accusations from the opposition that it is soft on asylum seekers who attempt to travel to Australia by boat.
Other payments Paladin made in PNG are separately under scrutiny.
Rodney Pokapin, a Manus Island clan and business leader who partnered with Paladin to manage security on the island’s detention centres, claims the Australian firm did not pay his companies millions of dollars it earned running Australia’s offshore processing system.
Pokapin said in an affidavit filed in court that Paladin had instead “paid a lot of money in millions to” another company it partnered with to run offshore processing and which is controlled by the family of a powerful and still serving PNG politician.
“Funds from the [unnamed politician’s family] company were dished out to any person or event without proper recordings,” Pokapin’s statement alleges.
It also claims that in May 2019, the politician “was seen and filmed dishing out cash” they had earned through partnership with Paladin. This masthead is not suggesting that Pokapin is corrupt.
The Richardson inquiry is the second investigation into Home Affairs that remains confidential, after the government separately commissioned former Public Service Commissioner Lynelle Briggs to investigate the conduct of suspended Home Affairs chief Michael Pezzullo.
Pezzullo oversaw much of the Home Affairs offshore contracting as the department’s chief, but the Briggs inquiry is limited to examining his private dealings with lobbyists.
‘None’ of 81 people released from immigration detention arrived during Albanese government, Labor says. By Paul Karp, The Guardian
On Tuesday Dutton claimed the government should not have released people from immigration detention on the basis there was “another” – unspecified – “option available” to prevent their release and still comply with the court ruling.
Asked if those released were in “taxpayer funded accommodation”, Giles responded that detention was also “taxpayer funded” and defended expenditure of commonwealth funds as an important measure to “maintain community safety” because it gave “some control over where an individual lives”.
VIDEO: Community safety remains top priority as 80 unlawfully held asylum seekers released into the community. ABC News
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles says the Commonwealth had argued against the outcome but is prepared for their releases, with the AFP and Border Force involved in the process.
Eighty people already freed from Australia’s immigration detention since landmark high court ruling. By Paul Karp, The Guardian
On Monday Andrew Giles sought to allay community concern about the releases, which have included Malaysian hitman Sirul Azhar Umar, by saying “all [80] are on appropriate visa conditions” including regular reporting.
The home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, and Giles have said the government “is considering other measures that may be appropriate to ensure community safety”, but have not said what regulatory changes might be on the table.
Legal experts, pyschiatrists and refugee advocates are celebrating a High Court decision which has found indefinite immigration to be illegal. Presented by Ruth McHugh-Dillon, SBS News
Dr Ghezelbash (Deputy Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW ) says international precedents show Australia can protect the community without resorting to indefinite detention.
"The principles at play here - they go beyond an individual case, and go beyond the immigration detention context. I think it's general principles of justice we should all hold dear. One of them being that, no one should be able to be detained indefinitely, regardless of their visa status, at the whim of the government."
Australia offers refuge to Tuvaluans as rising sea levels threaten Pacific archipelago. By Pauline Rouquette, France 24
Australia’s offer to host its South Pacific neighbours marks a new step towards the recognition of climate change refugees.
Where did the Afghan refugees go – and where next? By Sadiq Amini, The Interpreter/Lowy Institute
High court launches full frontal assault on indefinite immigration detention. By Mary Crock, Pearls & Irritations
It was not always like this. Before 1994, persons suspected of unlawful immigration status could be arrested and detained by migration officials. However, they had to be brought before a magistrate within 72 hours and thereafter every 7 days until their status was determined. Incarceration had to be for a purpose relating either to determination of their status or their removal from the country. This is the regime that should be restored. If individuals pose a threat, they should be dealt with under the criminal justice system. This already allows for preventative detention, release on condition and intensive oversight through control orders and the like.
Mandatory immigration detention is a policy that has caused indiscriminate harm, including death, and permanent incapacity. It has been rightly described as our national shame.
The landmark High Court ruling that's left Anthony Albanese in a political pincher. By Brett Worthington, ABC News
This isn't a problem of Albanese's making but it is his government's to resolve. Handled poorly, it could have catastrophic consequences for the first-term government.
In just three minutes, the High Court on Wednesday dismantled a legal precedent of almost two decades.
The landmark ruling came quicker than almost anyone expected and while human rights campaigners were celebrating, the government was caught flat-footed and left scrambling to treat an almighty political headache.
To understand the moment, we need to go back.
The High Court has decided indefinite detention is unlawful. What happens now? By Eoin Blackwell/AAP, The Conversation
This week, the High Court of Australia ordered the release of a Rohingya man from immigration detention where he had been for the last five and a half years.
Commentators and human rights groups have been celebrating this decision, which indicates the court will overturn a 20-year-old precedent.
The court has stated it will release its decision at a later time. It is important to wait for that judgement to determine the full implications of the decision and how it may limit the government’s power to detain non-citizens.
But here’s a brief rundown on the background of the case and some considerations of what could happen next.
Australia to immediately begin releasing people held in indefinite immigration detention. By Paul Karp, The Guardian
The Albanese government will immediately begin releasing people from indefinite detention after Wednesday’s landmark high court ruling, after receiving a flurry of demands from long-term detainees to be set free.
On Thursday the director of Human Rights for All, Alison Battisson, said the government was wrong to claim it needed to wait for the full reasons for the court’s decision, and could be liable to pay compensation for failing to immediately release people who it is not possible to deport.
New Australian university consortium to help world’s refugees access higher education. Australian National University (ANU)
The Australian National University (ANU) has announced the creation of a new university consortium to help build pathways to higher education for refugees from around the world.
Australia releases stateless man on ‘strict conditions’ after indefinite immigration detention ruled unlawful. By Paul Karp, The Guardian
The Greens senator, Nick McKim, queried why the government had not already released other stateless people from detention since they also have no real prospect of removal to another country.
Labor’s Murray Watt said to his knowledge so far only the plaintiff, NZYQ, had been released and “none of the other people to whom it may relate have been released”.
Watt argued that the government “cannot act on that decision” until the reasons of the court are received and before it gets legal advice as to “how that decision relates to the other people involved”.
Indefinite immigration detention unlawful: High Court rules. Human Rights Law Centre
Quotes attributable to Professor Jane McAdam AO, Director of UNSW’s Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law:
“Indefinite detention has always been arbitrary and unlawful under international law. We welcome the High Court’s decision today, which will mean that Australia can no longer detain people for years on end. For decades, Australia’s approach to detention has been completely out of step with that of other democratic countries. As a result of this significant decision, this will now have to change.
“This is an important and long-awaited victory for human rights.”
Indefinite immigration detention unlawful: High Court rules. Human Rights Law Centre
Indefinite immigration detention ruled unlawful in landmark Australian high court decision. By Paul Karp, The Guardian
The home affairs department believes the result could trigger the immediate release of 92 people who cannot be returned to their country of origin, including refugees and stateless persons, with the detention of a wider cohort of 340 people in long-term detention also in doubt.
Stories from the "dark underbelly" of Australia's long-term refugee prisons. By Rachel Pannett , The Washington Post
MELBOURNE, Australia — Reeta Arulruban put in a video call to her son, Dixtan. Today they were making kesari — a sweet, spicy semolina dish. For a moment, they forgot their situation: A mom on the outside. A son locked up by the country he chose as his refuge.
Arulruban’s face glowed as she described the recipe, putting on a brave face although inside she was aching. Dixtan, now 26, held up the saucepan to show her the finished dish. “Yummy,” he declared.
That September afternoon marked 12 years since Arulruban arrived in Australia, fleeing persecution on a crowded boat. And four years since Dixtan was put in immigration detention here. After the call ended, she lay on her bed staring at his picture on her phone. It is like having a plate of your favorite food in front of you and being told you can’t eat it, she said. Each week she drives an hour across Melbourne for a brief, supervised visit.
Australia has one of the strictest regimes for undocumented migrants in the world. The “Operation Sovereign Borders” program — which recorded its 10-year anniversary in September — has been cited as the inspiration for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plan to “stop the boats” crossing the English Channel in search of a better life.
Similar conversations are happening across Europe. In Italy, the far-right government is increasing powers to detain and deport migrants.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has vowed to continue the military-led operation that turns back boats attempting to travel here. In a video posted on a government website in August, navy commander Rear Adm. Justin Jones implored people not to attempt the perilous boat journey. “You are wasting your time, your money, and ultimately your life,” he said.
Australia’s migration laws allow the government to indefinitely detain a noncitizen who does not hold a visa — including those who lawyers say have legitimate claims of asylum. Housing a person in immigration detention costs upward of $250,000 a year. But the cost of appearing “soft” on border control has helped topple governments here, and the hard-line system is rarely questioned, even when it catches out people who thought they were Australian.
More than 1,000 people are in immigration detention and 127 have been detained for five or more years, a group whose ranks Dixtan will soon join. The average stay is 709 days, and the longest-held has been there 16 years, according to official figures. Many are afraid to speak for fear of jeopardizing their cases. But several agreed to share their stories with The Post, providing a rare glimpse of life behind the barriers.
A shocking decision
In 2009, Arulruban’s husband was killed when Sri Lankan forces shelled a market where he was buying groceries. She learned after his death that he had been providing intelligence to the Tamil Tigers, a guerrilla group that fought for an independent state in northeast Sri Lanka during a 26-year civil war that ended with their defeat that year.
When Sri Lankan soldiers came to question her, she was sexually assaulted, she said, as Dixtan cowered in the next room. She fled the country, leaving Dixtan, then 15, with his grandmother. She did not know where the boat was taking her. She just needed to escape.
Arulruban planned for Dixtan to follow as soon as it was safe. But it didn’t work out that way. In 2013, the government made it effectively impossible for boat arrivals to bring their families here, relegating visa applications to the bottom of a backlogged immigration system where they stood little chance of ever being processed.
Dixtan and his grandmother were frequently harassed by officials demanding to know his mother’s whereabouts. When his grandmother died, life became even more challenging. In 2019, Dixtan flew to Sydney on a fake passport provided to him by a migration agent. The first his mother learned of his plans was when she received a call from border officials who’d detained Dixtan at the airport.
In June — just days after Arulruban, now 55, was granted a visa allowing her to stay in Australia permanently — Dixtan was given a deportation notice.
‘One of the darkest chapters in Australia’s history’
Policing Australia’s vast ocean borders has long been a hot-button political issue here, akin to debate over migrant crossings of the southern U.S. frontier.
In 2012, Australia hardened its defenses amid a growing exodus from places such as Myanmar and Afghanistan — reopening offshore detention centers on remote Pacific islands where undocumented migrants were housed while their asylum claims were processed. The policy provided the inspiration for the U.K. plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. (The legality of which is being tested in court.)
What is not widely known is that many of the world’s vulnerable people are locked away in plain sight, in repurposed hotels and immigration facilities in major cities, like Dixtan in Melbourne, as well as behind razor-wire fences in the Outback. The detention of tennis star Novak Djokovic for breaching coronavirus restrictions brought Melbourne’s Park Hotel briefly into the spotlight. Conditions inside have progressively worsened, making them “factories for mental illness,” according to medical experts.
“There are so many places in Australia you can hide people,” said Pamela Curr, a longtime refugee advocate. “We’re supposed to be this easy laid-back country where everything is hunky-dory. There’s a dark underbelly.”
Unlike the United States and most liberal democracies, Australia has no Bill of Rights guaranteeing liberty and the right to be treated with humanity. Successive efforts to fight the incarceration of immigrants in federal court have been thwarted — with brief legal victories capped by new legislation, or, on several occasions, challenges settled out of court when it looked as if the government might lose, according to lawyers. A new challenge will test the legality of indefinitely detaining refugees in the High Court this month.
“This is genuinely one of the darkest chapters in Australia’s history,” said Nick McKim, an Australian Greens lawmaker. “We need to hold people to account. We need to make reparations to people. And we need to make sure it never happens again.”
From one prison to another
Like Arulruban, Jhaidul, who goes by one name according to Bangladeshi tradition, had no favored destination in mind when he paid a people smuggler to ferry him to safety in 2012.
He had just spent nine years in a Bangladeshi prison for a murder he didn’t commit. The charge was pinned on him in an apparent retaliation for an episode years earlier when he defended his sister against an acid attack by local thugs. When he was eventually pardoned and released, he was forced into hiding. “I could not show my face in the area,” he said.
His boat was intercepted by Australian authorities, and Jhaidul was placed in immigration detention, where he earned the nickname “The Master” because of his chess skills. At night, he sang — recording Bollywood hits and Bangladeshi songs on the karaoke app, StarMaker.
Ten years and one day later, Jhaidul was released. He was 46 and had spent more than a third of his life locked up. An official letter, viewed by The Post, said he was permitted to remain only until his visa expired in May this year. Jhaidul got a job welding parts for the mining industry. He got his driver’s license and bought a car. But four months after his visa expired, he received a call asking him to come into the city for an appointment.
“I’m very scared to meet immigration, but I must go,” Jhaidul said over a lunch of fried chicken and rice in mid-September. He called later that day, his voice shaky. He was skipping work that evening, he said. In his anxious state he didn’t think he could operate dangerous equipment.
His original plan had been to find a place to settle and sponsor his family to join him. But while he’s in immigration limbo, reuniting with his family — a son, and a daughter he has never met as his wife was eight months pregnant when he fled — remains impossible.
Alison Battisson, a human rights lawyer, said Jhaidul’s asylum claim is strong. She suspects his release, along with a handful of other long-term detainees, is a tactic designed to prod them to return to places where their lives are at risk.
“Detention didn’t work. So they’re trying something else,” she said.
When the former corporate lawyer started acting pro bono for refugees, it was rare to find people who had been detained for more than five years. Now, eight years is a starting point for Battisson getting involved in a case.
“Detention really has been incredibly normalized, and it’s very worrying that the U.K. and others are trying to follow this philosophy,” Battisson said. “It’s a race to the bottom.”
Broken boy soldier
Battisson said many people have been caught out by the word “permanent” in their visas, unaware they could be canceled under laws tightened to make it easier to deport migrants on character grounds. Like William Yekrop.
On bad days, Yekrop has flashbacks to the day his father, a soldier in the South Sudanese civil war, was killed in front of him. He was five years old. Yekrop was taken to a rebel camp to be trained as a child soldier.
Eventually he made it out, with his mom and siblings, to a refugee camp in Egypt. At 16, he was granted asylum in Australia. But without any counseling to help deal with his childhood trauma, he turned to alcohol and drugs. That led to bouts of jail time; the longest 13 months.
In 2014, Australia canceled his visa and Yekrop was taken into immigration detention. A refugee tribunal that year found he had a “well-founded fear of persecution” in South Sudan. The tribunal has the power to review some visa decisions, but it is the country’s immigration minister who gets the final say in a system advocates say gives them “godlike powers.”
Yekrop left South Sudan before the war-torn country became independent and has been told by officials there that he has little prospect of regaining citizenship. The decision to cancel his visa leaves him effectively stateless, and in limbo, like the others. His family, including a 14-year-old daughter, live here. But that doesn’t stop Australian officials from routinely asking him if he wants to go back to North Africa.
In prison, Yekrop undertook drug and alcohol counseling. He cleaned up his act. He worked in the prison kitchen. In immigration detention on Christmas Island, a remote Australian outpost in the Indian Ocean, he was locked up 22 hours a day, surrounded by razor-wire fences bordered by jungle. In September, authorities flew him in handcuffs to Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Center in the Western Australian wheat belt.
Yekrop’s only escape from the Outback haze is exercise. Approaching 40 with the figure of a young man, Yekrop wakes at 6 a.m. for cardio and dead lifts, and runs boot camps. “I’ve been locked up for 10½ years now. If not for the exercise, maybe I’d give up long ago.”
Australia asked six countries to resettle stateless Rohingya man after he began high court challenge, lawyer says. By Paul Karp, The Guardian
The Australian government asked six countries to resettle a stateless Rohingya man three years after his visa refusal was finalised and after he began a high court challenge against the legality of indefinite detention.
Australian women and children in Syrian refugee camp lose legal bid to return home. By Matthew Doran, ABC
The reasons for the ruling will remain confidential for seven days.
Mr Tinkler said he was devastated by the outcome, and Save the Children's lawyers would consider whether there were grounds for appeal.
Lawyers welcome government’s decision to settle negligence case of refugee infant detained on Nauru. By Mostafa Rachwani, The Guardian
The child became sick in 2018 when two years old, but it took a court order to fly her to Australia for treatment.
“The condition and treatment of children in immigration detention is a national shame. That the commonwealth had to be taken to court to ensure this child received medical care is astounding.”