Scott Morrison seeks legal changes to block asylum seeker appeals

The immigration minister, Scott Morrison, is pushing for major amendments to Australia’s asylum seeker laws that will head off a series of recent court decisions and coming legal challenges.

On Thursday, Morrison introduced a bill into parliament that make broad changes to immigration laws. The bill will introduce three-year temporary protection visas for asylum seekers and a new five-year temporary visa called a “safe haven visa” for asylum seekers to work in regional areas and potentially be able to apply for a future visa after that.

But many of the other changes in the act go directly to legal challenges in the federal court and high court, and would stymie future challenges relating to asylum seeker cases in several different areas.

In the strongest example of this, the changes proposed to the Maritime Powers Act go to the core of a looming high court case that is set to be heard in October over the government’s handling of 157 asylum seekers who were kept on board the Ocean Protector in July this year.

A key issue at the centre of the challenge is whether the commonwealth has the power to intercept and detain asylum seekers at sea in the manner in which the asylum seekers were detained on the Ocean Protector.

The bill seeks to suspend the application of natural justice for asylum seekers intercepted at sea, and would expressly allow asylum seekers to be detained at sea and sent directly to a third country at the personal direction of the immigration minister.

Joyce Chia, a senior research associate at the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, said the new laws sought to give the minister broad and unprecedented powers for these kinds of asylum seeker operations.

“It does give the minister this incredible executive power to determine what is to be done with the people on these boats, which the officers on board will have to comply with,” she said.

“The minister can have this incredible executive power to decide where and for how long people can be held. That’s incredibly concerning because it’s subject to no parliamentary oversight, and it’s only subject to the minister determining it is in the national interest.”

The bill also seeks to retrospectively declare that children born in detention in Australia are considered “unauthorised maritime arrivals” under the Migration Act if their parents arrived on asylum-seeker vessels.

This change would probably affect the outcome of a current federal circuit court challenge where lawyers are representing 26 infants born in detention. Even if the case were to succeed, the new laws would effectively nullify the court’s decision.

The application of the United National Convention of the Status of Refugees will also radically change to allow the government to forge its own interpretation of the convention in domestic law. The high court has recognised the role of international law instruments in domestic law, and the change is likely to further limit the range of potential appeals.

This would complement a new “fast-track” system in processing, which allows the minister to create “conclusive certificates” for some fast track decisions when he determines it is in the national interest. A conclusive certificate bars appeals of a migration decision to any court.

Clive Palmer has said he will support the passage of the bill, meaning the federal government is likely to succeed in passing the laws with the Palmer United Party senators.