Detainee disaster: Clare O’Neil hits back at calls to resign as released criminal asylum seekers face new charges after being set free – including a convicted pedo who allegedly contacted children

Home Secretary Claire O’Neill has responded to calls for her resignation after three detained asylum seekers, including registered sex offenders, were arrested and charged following their release following a landmark High Court ruling.

Australia’s High Court ruled on November 8 that indefinite detention of immigrants is not constitutional unless there is “a realistic prospect” that deportation will become “practical in the reasonably foreseeable future.”

This decision led to the release of at least 148 detainees, including several dangerous criminals, whose detention met this condition.

Among them is Afghan refugee Aliyawar Yawari, 65, who was charged on Saturday with indecently assaulting a woman at a South Australian hotel.

Mohammed Ali Nadari, 45, was recently arrested on drug charges in New South Wales.

On Monday, Emraan Dad, 33, a registered sex offender who was the head of a child exploitation ring, was arrested in Melbourne on suspicion of contacting minors on social media and breaching his reporting obligations.

Ms O’Neill was confronted by Sunrise presenter Monique Wright, who asked: “On this program you said your job was to keep Australians safe.

“Now the three detainees have been re-arrested on new charges. Should you resign as the Coalition says?”

O’Neill, who has come under criticism in recent days for her low public profile, hit back and said she was doing everything she could to try to protect the community.

That included joining with the opposition to push through a new preventive detention law that would put some recently released detainees back behind bars, she said.

“If it had been up to me, all these people would never have been released from custody.”

Wright continued to put pressure on the minister further.

“Claire, looking back now, two of the three people arrested were sexual predators.

“Now that you look back, would you like to be at the forefront? “Could you have done something earlier and tried to get these laws passed preemptively?”

Ms O’Neill responded: “Some of them are very bad people who have done very bad things and that is the exact reason why, when I had the opportunity to keep them in custody, I would have done so.

“I have three children, like I want these people walking down the street.

“The Government’s job is to make sure we can provide ways to protect the public under the new laws passed by the High Court of Australia. That’s exactly what we do.”

Yesterday Ms O’Neill took steps to implement preventive detention legislation usually applied to terrorists and spies, with the aim of re-jailing some detainees.

The preventive detention laws were approved by the Senate on Tuesday night and will be discussed in the lower house later on Wednesday.

But Coalition senator Jane Hume said the government should have prepared the legislation before the High Court ruling, so it was prepared to act as soon as the ruling was made to prevent the release of any detainees.

“First of all, you could have made a much better application in the High Court, but you failed,” Ms Hume told the minister on Wednesday.

“Then you released all these detainees, although you said you needed to release one. You didn’t wait for the High Court’s decision.

“This means that you were unable to resort to the measures of pre-trial detention that you could have done several months ago.

“Instead you blamed your department, you blamed the High Court. You blamed the Coalition, you blamed Peter Dutton. But that’s on you.

“You owe the Australian community an apology and if you are the responsible minister, you should also resign. This is a test for the prime minister. He should fire you.

Hume accused the minister of not answering questions on the issue.

– We didn’t see you, Claire. Where have you been the last few days? Australians are under threat because of the decisions you made and went into hiding.

Ms O’Neill responded by saying she was taking responsibility on air “right now”.

“I’m not sure what you can complain about,” she told Ms Hume.

“We are now actively engaged in political debate. I talk to you about these problems and take responsibility for them.”

The Government says it was hampered by a High Court decision which ordered the release of detainees in the same situation as the original applicant, NZYQ.

Because of the ruling, it was impossible to pass legislation to detain the entire cohort, Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said, offering to show the opposition legal advice from the attorney general.

“Given the decision of the High Court and the reasons in the NZYQ case, it is legally impossible to pass a law requiring the detention of all persons affected by NZYQ for reasons of public safety,” he wrote in a letter tabled in the Senate.

Any delay in releasing affected detainees could expose the government and individual officials to false imprisonment lawsuits, he added.

The opposition is pushing for tougher demands from ministers who have ticked the box for the release of detainees, calling for reasons why they should be released.