‘Where is the Prime Minister?’: Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley reaffirms calls for Albanese government to apologise for High Court fiasco

The Liberal Party has continued its push for the Albanese government to make an apology for the legal and media firestorm trigged by a High Court ruling that indefinite detention is unlawful.

The decision triggered the release of 148 detainees, leaving Australians at risk as many of the asylum seekers were convicted criminals – four of whom have been arrested after allegedly re-offending.

The federal government passed down new laws on Wednesday night after a late parliamentary sitting to allow for detainees to enter detention again if they have been convicted of a crime with a sentence of at least seven years’ prison time, and if the individual poses “an unacceptable risk of committing serious violent or sexual offences”.

Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley described the late-night sitting as “emblematic of the chaos under this government with every single aspect of these detention laws.”

She also took aim at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for his lack of commentary on the issue, with Immigration Minister Andrew Giles and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil repeatedly acting as spokespeople for the government on the topic.

“The question now is, the laws are in place, how will the government use them to protect Australians – particularly women and children – some of whom are very anxious because predators are being released by this government. What we need today is clear information from the government, how many of these predators, these criminals will be locked up before Christmas because these laws need now to actually work,” Ms Ley told Sky News Australia host Danica de Giorgio on First Edition on Thursday morning.

“I want to hear this from the Prime Minister. We keep hearing from the hapless immigration minister, the hopeless home affairs minister and yesterday they added the Attorney General to the mix.

“There’s a lot of work to do for this government but I say again where is the Prime Minister? He is completely missing in action on this.”

Ms Ley said the government needed to apologise in response to the release of the detainees into the community and the “chaos” that followed.

“They have created chaos about this from the beginning – not even to have the laws ready for preventative detention. If they had those laws ready, we might not have had these people – at least two of them arrested – because they might have been put back behind bars where they belong,” she said.

“In fact remember it’s the government who released them. These ministers lost the high court case, they then released the detainees into the community, they then lost one of them. They’ve now had a series of pieces of legislation through the parliament – the first one that we had to fix.

“Now we see the chaos in the parliament last night. Yes, the laws have passed, but critically now the test for this government is: what are they going to do to make sure woman and children in Australia are safe?”