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Recap: Haneef is the Muslim doctor suspected of aiding the planners of the recent bombing attempt in the UK, charged with "recklessly supplying resources" in the form of lending them a SIM card. The judge let him out on relatively low bail, but the Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, cancelled his Visa so he's been placed in an immigration detention centre.
Many of the news items I'm reading about Haneef's detention mention the Minister's powers, granted under the Migration Act 1958, specifically section 501. Having dealt with Acts of Parliament in my current job for over a year, it was the work of minutes to look up this Act online. It's true that section 501 is particularly nasty, and allows the Minister to "cancel a visa that has been granted to a person" (section 501(3)(a)) if "the Minister reasonably suspects that the person does not pass the character test" and "the Minister is satisfied that the refusal or cancellation is in the national interest." (Sections 501(3)(c) and (d).) The character test referred to is failed under a number of circumstances, one of which is "the person has or has had an association with someone else, or with a group or organisation, whom the Minister reasonably suspects has been or is involved in criminal conduct" (section 501(6)(b)). This power is granted to the Minister and the Minister alone; but most scarily, and something no media article I've read have mentioned, section 501(5) specifically denies normal justice to someone in this situation:
"The rules of natural justice, and the code of procedure set out in Subdivision AB of Division 3 of Part 2, do not apply to a decision under subsection (3)."
So the Minister is completely within his "rights", certainly within his power, to do this. It's written in an Act of Parliament; there's no legal recourse for Haneef to get out of detention unless someone wants to challenge the legitimacy of the Migration Act 1958. And all of this at the Minister's whim, a man who has seen the same evidence as the court judge but thought his bail conditions (reporting to authorities every two days) were not good enough. Rather ironically, Andrews was co-author on a 1990 paper entitled "Rights and Freedoms in Australia". Presumably the section covering those living here under a visa was very short.
Many of the news items I'm reading about Haneef's detention mention the Minister's powers, granted under the Migration Act 1958, specifically section 501. Having dealt with Acts of Parliament in my current job for over a year, it was the work of minutes to look up this Act online. It's true that section 501 is particularly nasty, and allows the Minister to "cancel a visa that has been granted to a person" (section 501(3)(a)) if "the Minister reasonably suspects that the person does not pass the character test" and "the Minister is satisfied that the refusal or cancellation is in the national interest." (Sections 501(3)(c) and (d).) The character test referred to is failed under a number of circumstances, one of which is "the person has or has had an association with someone else, or with a group or organisation, whom the Minister reasonably suspects has been or is involved in criminal conduct" (section 501(6)(b)). This power is granted to the Minister and the Minister alone; but most scarily, and something no media article I've read have mentioned, section 501(5) specifically denies normal justice to someone in this situation:
"The rules of natural justice, and the code of procedure set out in Subdivision AB of Division 3 of Part 2, do not apply to a decision under subsection (3)."
So the Minister is completely within his "rights", certainly within his power, to do this. It's written in an Act of Parliament; there's no legal recourse for Haneef to get out of detention unless someone wants to challenge the legitimacy of the Migration Act 1958. And all of this at the Minister's whim, a man who has seen the same evidence as the court judge but thought his bail conditions (reporting to authorities every two days) were not good enough. Rather ironically, Andrews was co-author on a 1990 paper entitled "Rights and Freedoms in Australia". Presumably the section covering those living here under a visa was very short.
