A new age in Australian legal history is upon us and though he has not yet released a statement, I guarantee you Peter Dutton is fuming. What happened?
Yesterday, at 4:33 in the afternoon, on the case NZYQ v. Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, the High Court ruled that Indefinite Immigration Detention is illegal.
One of the last terrible legacies of the Howard government, which meant that over the last 2 decades, tens of thousands of people were held in conditions little better than a concentration camp and subjected to many gross violations of human rights for the crime of wanting a better life for their families, has been torn down at last.
No longer is it legal to treat people as less than human, no matter who they are or what they have done.
I fear this ruling comes too little too late however, for the 124 people who have spent unconscionable stretches of time (For one individual, 16 years) rotting away in those camps, forgotten by a nation lacking in empathy and by a political-legal system willing to ignore the Constitution and International Human Rights just to punish refugees just that little bit more.
The speed of this ruling shocked many, coming down in a three minute long speech after just 2 days worth of consideration.
The really good thing about this though? It's a rather potent 'up yours' to Dutton and the legacy of the Liberal party that he cannot ignore. The worm has turned and his poor decisions as a minister are coming under fire. You see, NZYQ happened under his watch.
In 2018, the Rohingya refugee was re-arrested immediately after being set free from prison, having completed punishment for his original offences.
(Which I will remind you are not the topic under discussion, a fact that the Daily Mail and Murdoch media in particular have unashamedly ignored, the question under discussion was, and I quote, "Whether provision for indefinite detention without judicial order infringes Chapter III of the Constitution")
He was held for 5 years unlawfully, denied rights to personal liberty and freedom from arbitrary detention. At any point in the first year, this could have and should have been fixed. The man in question was even willing to be sent to another country. Yet Dutton found it beneath him to do even that, because that would have meant that a refugee escaping the torture of the detention centres, and if there's one thing the Coalition have made abundantly clear in the last 2 decades, it's that they will go to any lengths to inflict more pain on the thousands who have been held at those camps.
This new decision by the High Court comes off the back of another case, Benbrika vs Minister for Home Affairs, only a few days ago, which in a 6-1 majority ruling found that ministers cannot deprive even a terrorist of their citizenship as this power is exercisable only by a federal court, and thus that Dutton acted illegally when he personally intervened to do so in 2020.
Will our wannabe Potato Dictator be brought before the law for any of this? Only time will tell. But he MUST be held accountable.
I'm not asking you to judge the character of those to whom these cases relate, both are reprehensible individuals. I'm asking you to judge a man who knew full well that what he and his departments were doing was both wrong and highly illegal on multiple counts, and went ahead and did it anyway.
If even the very worst of us are held in a separate light, a lesser class to whom the rights and freedoms due to every human being on this good Earth are not given, can we call ourselves a civilised people? A nation of law and justice?
Because if we can, then what's to stop you and I, people who have done no wrong, from suffering the same fate some day at the whims of an unjust system?
Nothing.
Share this petition widely, let Dutton know that our freedoms are non negotiable and that breaching them will attract justifiable scorn. Educate those fooled by Murdoch and his ilk on Equality.
Most importantly, have hope that eventually, this Enfante terrible of the Liberal party will one day face just consequence for his deeds, for there is now a light at the end of this tunnel we have walked for so long, in the High Court and their human approach to justice.