The federal government is using drones to track former immigration detainees who have been released into the community as the furore over the government’s handling of visas for people with criminal records continues.
Embattled Immigration Minister Andrew Giles today vowed to scrap more visas for foreign-born criminals, saying he has cancelled eight and is reviewing dozens more.
“The first job is making sure that visas which need to be cancelled are cancelled,” Giles said today.
Thirty separate visas that had been cancelled were re-approved by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), and have since been put under review once again.
Today Giles confirmed that he already cancelled eight of the visas.
“These are cases with some serious offending – some really serious offending where the decision frankly does not meet my expectations,” he said in an interview with Sky News.
In that same interview, Giles revealed the government is using drone technology to track former immigration detainees who were released back into the community following a High Court decision.
“They are being monitored… there is a quarter of a billion dollars that we’ve invested in supporting our law enforcement agencies,” he said.
“That’s enabled things like using drones to keep track of these people. We know where they are.”
(The Sydney Morning Herald)
That has raised some concerns in New Zealand, which had pushed for Australia to stop deporting New Zealand-born criminals who had spent most of their lives this side of the Tasman before Giles’ decision.
“We do not want to see deportation of people with little or no connection to New Zealand, whose formative experiences were nearly all in Australia,” Foreign Minister Winston Peters said.