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Tony Burke, home affairs and immigration and citizenship minister, is again  that a 2023 landmark High Court ruling has limited his ability to lock up migrants and refugees.

That case ruled that indefinite immigration detention — Labor’s idea — was “unlawful and unconstitutional”. Further, it said people who could not forcibly be returned to their home countries could no longer be detained. Those who had been convicted of a crime and had served their sentence had to be released.

Importantly, it said indefinite immigration detention constitutes punishment.

This ruling upset the major parties’ racist policies, so they rushed through last November making it legal to forcibly remove asylum seekers to third countries while giving themselves immunity from being sued by those deportees who were harmed.

Labor expanded its power to revisit protection findings, meaning that even those deemed to be refugees could still be returned to their home country. It can also impose harsh visa conditions on people who stay.

Now, Burke says the to imprison someone are “more difficult to reach” and, as a result, community safety is “under threat”.

He has cited the case of a man released under a court’s direction, who subsequently attacked someone else, leading him to die.

Coalition spokesperson Andrew Hastie has seized on the opportunity to push Burke to enact new laws. Now, both parties want to make it easier to deport people they describe as “dangerous”. If they cannot do that, Hastie said, new laws are required. This is despite the fact that any attacker, if convicted, is likely to go to jail.

Despite politicians’ and corporate media lies, the majority of refugees held in detention have never committed violent crimes. The handful who did had served their time before being released.

Locking up refugees, particularly those who arrive by boat, helps justify the major parties’ systematic vilification of refugees for the legal act of seeking asylum.

The bipartisan demonisation of refugees, under the guise of “protecting the community”, is nothing new: Labor’s 1992 policy of mandatory detention was couched in this rhetoric.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised, before Labor was elected in 2022, to give permanent visas to 19,000 refugees on temporary protection visas and safe haven enterprise visas. Thousands more are still on bridging, or expired, visas.

But after three years, little has been done to address the plight of tens of thousands of people living in limbo for more than 11 years, because their claims were not properly assessed under the misnamed “Fast Track” process.

Frances Rush, from the , Labor’s refusal to help these people as “intentionally cruel and callous”. This  affects every part of a refugee’s life, including their ability to find work, start studying, access services and recover from trauma.

Labor has spent more funds on criminalising refugees than resettling them. According to the , the vast majority of funds that relate to refugees is spent on preventing people from seeking asylum in Australia.

While is being spent on the cruel immigration detention system, Australia has cut funding to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, making it nearly impossible for refugees from Gaza to seek safety in Australia, even as Israel continues its genocide.

Labor has also broken its promise to raise its humanitarian intake to a measly 27,000 people, which has remained at 20,000 places. This rich country has the capacity to take many more refugees and could easily provide an additional intake for Palestinian refugees.

No help has been sent to help refugees and people seeking asylum in Papua New Guinea, one of the government’s “third countries” for people it deports.

Labor has also abandoned its responsibilities to 12,000 Hazara refugees stuck in Indonesia, which is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention and therefore does not offer protection.

Hundreds of desperate refugees across Indonesia protested ahead of Albanese’s visit in May, to demand urgent action on their resettlement cases. Some have been waiting for more than 10 years to be reunited with families.

Now, as United States President Donald Trump  migrants in cages on a prison camp before trying to deport them, it should not be forgotten that he said he “admired” Australia’s offshore detention system.

Refugees, who arrived in Australia by boat a decade ago and expected to resettle in the United States, are now being affected by Trump’s freeze on .

A majority saw through the Coalition’s fear campaign and rejected Trump-like politics at the election. But Burke is not prepared to be outflanked by Hastie; after  a 61-year-old Palestinian woman’s visa, he now seems to be gearing up to introduce new punitive anti-refugee laws.

As we prepare to mark 12 years since former Labor PM Kevin Rudd announced the “Papua New Guinea solution”, on July 19, declaring that people who seek asylum by boat will never be settled here, all supporters of justice need to step up efforts to stop Labor’s cruelty.

For its part, Socialist Alliance will continue to call for an end to mandatory detention, here and in Nauru, for refugees in Indonesia to be bought to Australia and for permanent visas for those still in limbo.

[Chloe DS is a member of the  National Executive.]