Immigration detention: High Court strikes down ankle bracelet, curfew conditions

Ankle bracelets and curfews imposed on former immigration detainees will need to be lifted after the Federal Government suffered another embarrassing defeat in the High Court.

The nation’s highest court on Wednesday ruled in favour of an Eritrean refugee who challenged the conditions on the grounds they breached the separation of powers.

The ruling comes almost 12 months to the day since the High Court’s bombshell verdict on indefinite detention, which forced the release of more than 200 detainees and sparked a months-long political crisis for the Federal Government.

Labor passed emergency laws to manage the freed cohort - which included murderers and rapists - by using tools such as ankle monitoring bracelets and curfews.

Some 150 of the 224 detainees were fitted with GPS tracker and 130 were subject to a curfew as of October 31, according to the latest figures from the Commonwealth’s community protection board.

But those conditions have now been ruled invalid, creating a new headache for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and new Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

In a statement summarising the majority judgment, the court said the imposition of the conditions was “prima facie punitive and cannot be justified”.

The Opposition described the loss as embarrassing and demanded the Government move immediately to act in response.

“This loss compounds the failure of the Albanese Government to use the preventative detention powers the Parliament rushed through almost 12 months ago to re-detain any high-risk offenders,” shadow ministers James Paterson, Dan Tehan and Michaelia Cash said in a joint statement.

“The Government should be ready to introduce legislation into the House of Representatives today in response to this ruling. The Coalition again stands ready to facilitate the swift passage of any legislation required to fix the Government’s mess and keep Australians safe.”

Even if new laws were put to Parliament on Wednesday, they could not be enacted until November 18 at the earliest because the Senate is not sitting this week.

The imposition of curfews and ankle bracelets were added to the NZYQ response at the insistence of the Coalition when the laws were rushed through Parliament last year.

But the shadow ministers sought to distance themselves from responsibility for the court’s decision.

“The Government repeatedly assured us that the amendments they drafted were constitutionally sound, and as recently as Monday in Senate estimates promised they had comprehensive contingency plans in place if they were unsuccessful in this case,” they said.

The community protection board advised the Government on which conditions should be imposed on the detainees based on an assessment of their risk to the public.

The board controversially recommended against electronic monitoring for ex-detainee Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan, who was later allegedly involved in the break-in and bashing of Perth grandmother Ninette Simons.