Senator Andrew Bartlett
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
 
Who is the longest serving detainee now that Peter Qasim is ‘Free’?
The welcome news came over the weekend that, after being locked up since 9th September 1998, Peter Qasim has finally been released on a Return Pending visa. Most Australians interested in migration matters would be aware of his case and I have written about him previously. The only things I would add now are:
(a) whilst it is good he has been released, that does not excuse the Government keeping him imprisoned for so long;
(b) Whilst the Return Pending Visa does give him rights to work, income support and Medicare (unlike the Bridging Visas which many other released detainees are existing on), he still has no security for the future;
(c) unless he chooses to be in the public domain, he should now be left alone to try to rebuild his life. After the initial euphoria of freedom, many long-term detainees suffer a form of post-traumatic stress which can take a long time to recover from. The lack of certainty over his future and the continued possibility (however remote) of deportation will not help, but neither would having his life continue to be under a public spotlight.

I expect attention will soon shift to looking at who now ‘holds the mantle’ of our longest imprisoned immigration detainee. When I visited Baxter with Parliament's Migration Committee, we were given information that said there were seven people who had been in detention since 1999. My understanding is that the longest detained amongst them is an Afghan asylum seeker, who has been in detention since arriving here with his family on 30th September, 1999. His wife and two children were granted protection visas and have since become Australian citizens, but he remains in detention. I met him a few weeks ago on a visit to the detention centre he is currently in.

His situation raises the vexed issue of how much weight DIMIA gives to anonymous ‘dob-ins’. His claim was rejected on the basis that he allegedly was involved in serious crimes as a military official of the former Afghan government. His appeal against this rejection failed in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. This finding of the AAT was overturned on appeal by a decision of the Full Federal Court, and it is now being heard again in the AAT. Why this has all taken nearly 6 years I'm not sure.

The finding and full reasons of the Court in quashing the AAT decision can be read here. I won’t go into all the details, as people can read it for themselves if they are interested, but I found it very disconcerting reading. Anyone who continues to believe that our visa determination process is fair and reasonable would find it very difficult to hold that view after reading this finding. Despite all the experiences I have had with hundreds of cases, I still find myself getting astonished that a person can be denied a visa on the basis of such flimsy and uncorroborated allegations, and does not even get the chance to know what the allegations are, let alone provide evidence to rebut them.

This case has wider implications than ‘just’ another migration matter. The AAT is the Tribunal that hears appeals regarding security matters, which has relevance to the current debate regarding the powers of ASIO and other security agencies. The way the AAT chose in this case to exercise its powers to deal with confidential evidence that was severely prejudicial to a person does not fill me with confidence.

Hopefully in this instance the man will now get a fair hearing from the AAT, but even if he succeeds, he will have spent 6 years locked up when he shouldn’t have, whilst his wife was left on her own and his children grew up without him. Yet another example of why the Migration Act needs reform.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, July 19, 2005 Permalink
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