CATHOLIC lobby group, the Australian Political Ministry Network (PolMin), is stepping up demands for the Federal Government to change the laws relating to the treatment of asylum seekers following a ruling by the full bench of the Federal Court.
The ruling on April 15 found that the Government had no power to detain asylum seekers indefinitely before deportation.
The ruling means that asylum seekers who have failed to gain refugee status cannot be detained if they are willing to return to their homeland but are unable to do so in the reasonably foreseeable future.
It was made on a case involving Palestinian, Akram Ouda Mohammad Al Masri.
In August 2002, the Federal Court ruled in the Al Masri case that an asylum seeker whose application for asylum had been refused and who could not be deported to their country of origin or to another country, could not be detained indefinitely.
PolMin’s co-ordinator, James McGillicuddy, said that, before this case, the authorities held these asylum seekers in detention centres with no prospect of release.
