It’s becoming a predictable pattern: activist judges or virtue-signalling politicians foist some “progressive” agenda, while swearing, hand on heart, that it won’t have any negative flow-on effects or kick off any slippery slopes. Yet, that’s exactly what happens. Open borders leads to a flood of “asylum seekers”. Gay marriage almost immediately leads to transgender legislation. “Medevac” opens the floodgates to unwanted chancers and country-shoppers who’d already been shown the door.
And now it’s happening again. It’s almost as if these sorts of “unintended consequences” are exactly what the “progressive” politicians and judges really intended but didn’t have the guts to put openly to the Australian people.
Home Affairs is examining the claims of 23 immigration detainees who say they should be released on the grounds that they are indigenous Australians, following a landmark High Court decision that ruled Aboriginal people cannot be deported.
They’ve certainly got front, these crims and illegals. And they’ve always, always got ambulance-chasing lawyers and useful-idiot activists behind them. Literally within days of the High Court’s passing what has been called “the most radical instance of judicial activism in Australian history”, the spivs and chancers were on to it. The father of AFL footballer Dustin Martin, Shane Martin, is a Maori bikie gang leader and convicted criminal who was deported back to New Zealand in 2016 and almost immediately tried to slip back into Australia with a lawyer in tow, claiming that he is “Aboriginal”.
Needless to say, Martin was sent packing, but that was just a taster of the sort of rank opportunism the High Court has invited.
The department’s general counsel, Pip De Veau, said in some cases those seeking release had only their assertions of indigenous ancestry to back their claims. Ms De Veau said the department was in talks with detainees’ lawyers to obtain “appropriate legal information’’ to establish the merits of their claims to indigenous heritage, and negotiations were “ongoing to establish evidence”.
“That spans all possible indications of indigeneity, not those that might ultimately meet the threshold,” she said. “The bulk of those, we already had information about prior to the (High Court) decision. There has been a smaller number who have self-identified since the decision.”
The High Court found in a split decision last month that people with indigenous Australian heritage — even those born overseas — cannot be considered “aliens” under the Constitution and deported on character grounds.
The 4-3 decision allowed two indigenous men — one born in Papua New Guinea, the other in New Zealand — to avoid deportation after committing separate violent assaults in Australia.
It was revealed at the weekend that a third man, a New Zealand criminal, was released last week in light of the decision.
Gee, thanks, High Court.
Naturally, where there’s some dodgy judicial activism, you’ll find the Greens sniffing around.
Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo[…]told Greens senator Nick McKim the department was taking legal advice on the implications of the High Court decision, which effectively created a third category of person who is neither “citizen” nor “alien”.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/immigration-detainees-claim-im-indigenous-after-high-court-ruling/
Should anyone be surprised by this? This is simply a rinse’n’repeat of “Medevac”, where wealthy green-left part-time politician Kerryn Phelps and her cronies swore black and blue that allowing rejected illegal immigrants to sneak in the country with a sickie note wouldn’t be abused.
Except that, as we quickly saw, dozens of unwanted rejects from Manus faked a stomach ache, snuck into the country, then miraculously got better.
I’d say that these idiot judges and pollies never learn, but in fact, I very strongly suspect that they have learned and they know exactly what they’re doing.
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