A second Aboriginal man has been released from immigration detention and another 23 cases are “under review” after the Australian High Court ruled that Aborigines are not aliens for the purpose of the constitution and cannot be deported.
“We are working through the cases that might fall within that remit,” Australian Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs Mike Pezzullo told the Australian Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on Monday.
“A number of persons have come forward and advised on potential claims” and the department is “working on it as quickly as possible,” he said.
There is a three-part definition of Aboriginality accepted by the high court in the Mabo cases: biological descent, self-identification and recognition of identity by a First Nations group.
The court said the tripartite test put indigenous Australians beyond the reach of the aliens power in the constitution.
The majority of the high court ruled that New Zealand-born Brendan Thoms was not an alien and that the commonwealth did not have power to deport him. He was released from detention early last month.
A further hearing is to decide if the second plaintiff, Daniel Love — who was born in Papua New Guinea — is a Gamilaraay man.
Both men were convicted of criminal offenses and served time in prison. When their sentences ended in 2018, they both had their visas revoked and were taken to immigration detention in Brisbane for deportation.
Department General Counsel Pip de Veau told the committee that another person in detention had met the test and was released last week, but “there is no one else in the visa stream close to establishing the credentials required.”
De Veau confirmed that there were 23 cases in which “negotiations are ongoing to establish evidence,” but they include “all possible indications of indigeneity, not those that ultimately might meet the threshold.”
“The bulk of those we already had information about prior to Love and Thoms, and a small number have self-identified since the decision,” she said.
Last month, Australian Attorney General Christian Porter said that the government was looking to legislate another way to deport the “not very large” group of Aboriginal noncitizens who had committed crimes.
“People who are born overseas, who aren’t Australian citizens, but may be able to show indigeneity and who are in Australia on a visa and commit an offense” would now “have to be treated differently from all other persons in the same circumstances,” because they could not be deported under existing law.
“And we’ll be looking into ways in which we might be able to effect that policy,” he said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion