Locke Keith: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:649;Page:17708] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I would like to speak to Vote Immigration because the immigration bill to be debated in the House soon when it comes back from the select committee is often promoted as streamlining processes and saving the public money. To some extent that is true but there are other procedures that will cost the taxpayer a lot of money and I just want to spend time on a couple. One relates particularly to the situations of Iranian Christian converts from Islam where the taxpayer has had to bear the cost of their spending long periods in jail—nearly 4 years for Amir Mohebbi and around 2 years for Thomas Yadegary and Ali Panah. 
These people are now either accepted in society or are out on bail with their cases being further considered. At least it is good they have bail because it then does not cost $65000—or whatever—a year to keep those people in a penal institution and it is quite unjust when those people the Christian converts from Islam generally have not actually committed any crimes. But if the changes to the bill go through in this Parliament when someone like Thomas Yadegary comes before the judge for a bail application the lawyer for him will not be able to claim exceptional circumstances such as that the person has been in jail for say 2 years. Essentially the bill tries to construct a code to restrain judges from giving bail. It is not only costly to the State but very unjust and to me it seems to offend against at least the principle of habeas corpus. One could say the detention is legal but when it is indefinite it will be essentially indefinite detention for people who have committed no crime other than in the case of the converts from Islam of not signing a passport application to be sent back to Iran where in the present circumstances they are likely to be persecuted in one way or another. The Iranian Parliament is discussing a law for the death penalty for apostasy—for those not being loyal to Islam the religion of their birth—and recently there were people sentenced on other charges to be stoned to death. Of course the situation varies from one part of Iran to another but it is a dangerous place for a Christian convert from Islam to go back to. So the Greens are quite concerned about that. 
In spite of the streamlining of appeal procedures in this bill it sets up a greater structure for the use of secret and classified information. It allows 14 different Government agencies to claim that their particular information is classified; the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries the Ministry of Corrections the Police or whatever can all claim information is classified when under the old legislation it was essentially intelligence from intelligence agencies and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security that was involved in the process. 
I think this can lead to greater injustice because what worse injustice is there than having one’s whole future affected in an immigration sense without knowing the details of the charges against one? Sure there is a requirement for the most part for people so affected to be given a summary of the accusations against them but for fairness they need to have a whole lot more information than that not just a summary of the allegations. Even though there is provision in the bill for a special advocate to be appointed to advocate on behalf of the person that special advocate cannot talk to the person he or she is defending after the special advocate is in receipt of classified information; communication can be in writing via the judge. If that situation were translated to a normal criminal trial it would be like the defence lawyer being able to communicate with the defendant only through the judge—a very unsatisfactory procedure. Information critical of the procedure was given to the select committee by Stuart Grieve who was the special advocate in the only case where there has been a special advocate so far—the Ahmed Zaoui case.