When One Nation released a 22-page policy manifesto, the Albanese government’s immediate response was, ‘can’t be done’. What they really mean is, ‘we can’t do it, because we don’t want to’. The government have apparently forgotten – more likely deliberately reneged on – the foundational principle of our Westminster system: Parliament is sovereign.
It’s parliament that is the ultimate legal authority, not unelected judges and certainly not unelected bureaucrats. So, when the government allows both to tell it what to do, it’s a betrayal of our entire system of government. Worse, their institutional cowardice is a betrayal of the Australian people when it allows foreign criminals of the worst types imaginable to not just remain in the country, but sponge off the taxpayer for the rest of their worthless lives.
Here are just some of the latest selection of imported predators the Albanese government and the tilty-head judges are allowing to remain on our shores and prey on Australians:
The Albanese government took too long to scrap the visa of a migrant who performed an indecent act in front of a child, so he can stay in Australia, a court has ruled.
A Somali man known only as XMBQ – because of course the courts will go to any lengths to protect foreign predators – kicked a police officer in the face and performed a sex act in front of a 13-year-old girl on public transport. The Federal Court has now ruled the government took too long to cancel his visa, so he stays. Judge Christopher Horan decided an “unreasonable” delay between the tribunal’s decision and the visa cancellation rendered the deportation unlawful. Another precedent handed to every future offender who can drag out the process long enough.
Notably, Judge Horan didn’t offer to house the predator in his spare room.
Then there is Likumbo Makasa, the Zambian who at age 22 took part in the gang-rape of a 15-year-old girl and was jailed for two years. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal decided deportation would not be in the best interests of his children. The best interests of the child he raped, of course, rate nowhere.
Or consider YGTC, the low-IQ Sierra Leonean (I realise that that’s a tautology) refugee who sexually abused his nine-year-old niece. The Administrative Review Tribunal overturned the cancellation of his humanitarian visa because deportation would cost him NDIS support for his intellectual disability. Australia’s disabled children can wait – this particular offender’s taxpayer-funded care cannot be interrupted.
No word on whether ART Senior Member Margret Bourke is willing to let the consequences of her decisions live within cooee of her ivory tower.
Nor any of the dozens of other imported predators the ART has forced ordinary Australians to live next to: a Chinese wife-killer, an Ethiopian rapist, an obese homosexual Indian paedophile, an Iranian drug smuggler, a killer Sri Lankan driver and a Sudanese refugee who was jailed over the fatal stabbing of an Australian teenager.
The pattern repeats with SNZZ, another Zambian with nearly 100 criminal convictions, including indecent dealing with a three-year-old boy. He brandished a machete, threatened to behead an ex-partner’s boyfriend and committed domestic violence while drunk.
The child sex offender, 42, had his partner visa cancelled in May due to having almost 100 criminal convictions, but successfully appealed the decision at the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) in Perth on Thursday, where he was anonymised as SNZZ for legal reasons.
ART General Member Fraser Robertson […] wrote in his decision that because the child sex offence occurred more than 20 years earlier without repetition, and SNZZ’s risk of reoffending had been determined to be low for a sexual offence, the protection required by the community was “slight”.
Well, let’s see Mr Robertson put his money where his mouth is: house the predator in his spare room. The risk is only “slight”, after all.
But, no, this unelected tilty-head fool ruled that the violent paedophile would suffer “significant hardship” if forced to return to Zambia.
Well… yes. So he should.
These are not isolated blunders. They are the predictable fruit of Ministerial Direction 110 and its predecessors, instruments that force decision-makers to elevate family ties, children’s interests and ‘impediments if removed’ above the safety of ordinary Australians. Direction 99 under Andrew Giles produced the same results: Tony Burke’s version continues the farce. The High Court’s 2023 ruling against indefinite detention simply accelerated the release of more of the same.
Parliament could end this tomorrow. It could legislate clear character tests that cannot be second-guessed by tribunals obsessed with the offender’s welfare. It could restore the basic principle that those who come here and commit serious crimes against children and women forfeit the right to remain. Instead, Labor shrugs, the judges invent new procedural hurdles and the predators stay.
The only people who pay the price are the Australians forced to live with the consequences.
