Five Labor MPs call for wholesale changes to their government's migration bill

Labor MP Josh Burns is the chair of the parliamentary human rights committee, which recommended sweeping changes to the migration bill. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)

Three federal Labor MPs and two Labor senators have joined calls for large chunks of their own government’s migration bill to be scrapped.

They say the bill, which would broaden the immigration minister’s powers to force deportations, limits “numerous” human rights.

The comments were made by the parliament’s human rights committee, which is tasked with scrutinising all bills to assess compatibility with Australia’s human rights obligations.

Labor has the casting vote on the committee and five of its 10 members: committee chair Josh Burns, Alicia Payne, Graham Perrett and senators Karen Grogan and Jana Stewart.

The committee said the government should not impose mandatory prison sentences on people who do not comply with deportation orders, one of several amendments it called for.

The bill is before the Senate, where it is separately being considered by a committee of senators.

That committee on Monday heard personal testimonies from people who feared deportation and calls from several human rights organisations to abandon the bill entirely.

What is the bill?

The bill would give the immigration minister new powers to force the hand of people who are difficult to deport.

The minister could issue legally-enforceable directions, for example, requiring somebody to apply for a passport in their country of origin against their wishes.

Failure to comply would attract a minimum prison sentence of one year, and up to five years.

The bill’s main target is a small cohort of non-citizens who have no legal right to remain in Australia, but who are refusing to comply with deportation and come from countries that do not accept involuntary returns, such as Iran.

The case of one such Iranian man, known as ASF17, was heard in the High Court on Wednesday.

The government wants to pass the legislation so that it has extra tools at its disposal if the High Court finds in favour of ASF17. Officials have said about 150 others may be in a similar position.

But the bill goes further than those 150. It also includes a cohort of about 10,000 non-citizens living in the community whose refugee claims were rejected in a ‘fast tracked’ assessment process the UN has called “defective”.

And as drafted, the powers could be extended to any visa category, including tourists, students and refugees.

The bill would also allow the minister to reverse refugee assessments, and to impose travel bans on countries if they refuse to facilitate deportations.

In March, the government tried to pass the bill through parliament in 24 hours, but the Coalition and the Greens voted together to refer it for more detailed consideration.

‘Disproportionate punishment’

The parliamentary human rights committee only has the scope to assess a bill against Australia’s human rights obligations.

It said the bill restricted those rights in several respects.

It found the mandatory minimum sentencing power was incompatible with the rights to liberty and a fair trial, and should be scrapped.

“Mandatory sentencing removes judicial discretion to take into account all of the relevant circumstances of a particular case and may lead to the imposition of disproportionate or unduly harsh sentences of imprisonment,” the report read.

The committee said there was a risk of “arbitrary detention”.

“Were a person to breach [the minister’s] direction by, for example, failing to fill in a passport application form in time, it may be that a mandatory sentence of one year in prison is a disproportionate punishment.”

It also said the bill should be restricted to a tightly-limited cohort of non-citizens who are actively involved in deportation efforts, rather than potentially to any visa holder.

And it said the scope of orders that the minister could give should be restricted, noting the current draft captured a “very broad range of conduct” and could be used to stop someone from attending a political protest or making a public statement, infringing the rights of free expression and association.

The committee determined the travel ban power largely fell outside its scope, since it is responsible for assessing human rights protections of people within Australia, and that power would largely affect people outside Australia.

But it noted it had the potential to disproportionately affect Australians of the same nationality as any banned country and recommended that travel bans be time limited.

The committee was satisfied the bill could be passed if these amendments were made.

But in additional comments, independent Senator Lidia Thorpe said it should be abandoned entirely.

The three Coalition committee members published additional comments noting the “extensive concerns” and expressing “alarm with the rushed process originally proposed by the government.”

The House of Representatives has already passed the bill in its current form, where the Coalition voted in favour. The bill is likely to pass the Senate with the support of both major parties.