Sydney, Australia – 17 August 2017
The Full Court of the Federal Court in Sydney this morning came down on the side of justice and threw another barrier in the path of Peter Dutton’s plan to take mobile phones off every person in immigration detention.
In February this year the National Justice Project won an injunction to prevent the Dutton, Minister for Immigration, from implementing a blanket policy of removing all mobile phones.
The government has been appealing the right of the court to hear the matter and appealed to the Full Court of the Federal Court. That Court today handed down its judgement that the Court did have jurisdiction. The result is that the injunction still stands and that the Minister is prevented from seizing the phones. The Government’s case was thrown out.
George Newhouse, Principal Solicitor at the National Justice Project and Adjunct Professor of Law at Macquarie University, today said, “The blanket removal of phones is part of the process of criminalising asylum seekers and this government ongoing policy of punishment and cruelty towards them. Peter Dutton claims that the use of mobile phones is linked to criminal behaviour but asylum seekers are not criminals. Mobile phones are a life line to the outside world that enables them to maintain their sanity and communicate with their families, their loved ones, the community and their legal representatives.”
“If the Commonwealth Government are concerned about the criminal actions of convicted criminals who are in the process of being deported then they should separate them from those who need to retain their phones and who have done nothing more than come to Australia to seek asylum”
“Any suggestion that land lines in the detention centres are adequate is a joke. It is virtually impossible for people to call into Villawood, for example”.
Jane Salmon for George Newhouse
