Outsiders, Sky News, 16 February 2020
Tag Archives: High Court
High Court builds apartheid
High Court Ruling is a Low Blow to Equality and Democracy
Jennifer Oriel, The Australian, 17 February 2020
The High Court decision to introduce a race-based test for the differential treatment of criminals under Australian law is undemocratic. It transfers the authority to determine who enters Australia from millions of citizens and our elected parliament to unelected lawyers. It establishes race privilege — racism — as a right. It poses a threat to social cohesion by dividing Australians into racial categories and offering special protections to a minority. And it threatens the safety of law-abiding citizens by providing for a criminal class that cannot be deported.
The perverse incentive created by the High Court is that if a foreign national with indigenous status commits a violent crime in Australia, they won’t have to leave.
The two men granted special recognition by the High Court were facing deportation on character grounds because they committed violent crimes against people in Australia. New Zealander Brendan Thoms was convicted of a domestic violence offence. Daniel Love, a citizen of Papua New Guinea, was convicted of assault occasioning bodily harm. Neither of them has Australian citizenship.
Read on…
Creating apartheid
Radical High Court Divides Australia by Race, IPA – The Institute of Public Affairs
“The decision of the High Court today to exclude a specific group from the scope of the constitutional aliens power is the most radical instance of judicial activism in Australian history,” said Morgan Begg, research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs.
Today the High Court handed down its decision in Love v Commonwealth of Australia; Thomas v Commonwealth of Australia [2020] HCA 3. A majority of the justices decided that non-citizens who were descended from Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders did not fall within the scope of the Commonwealth’s power to make laws with regards to “aliens”.
“The High Court has created a new class of citizenship based according to identity which offends the basic moral principle of racial equality,” said Mr Begg.
“This decision has led to the absurd position that a person can be a non-citizen but not subject to Australia’s migration laws.” Read on…