The Power to Deport.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18604, 1 February 1926, Page 8

The Power to Deport.

It as clear from a cable message from Melbourne -which ye printed on Saturday that the Federal Government is going to make another attempt to give itsfilf the power to deport undesirables. The Crimes Act Amendment Bill which has already been introduced is said to provide for deportation penalties in certain cases, "along " similar lines to those provided in the " Immigration Act," besides forbidding the establishment of associations having for their object the overthrow of constitutional government; and most of our readers will hope that what the Immigration Act failed to do the Amended Crimes Act will at least make possible. For those people even who would have been most sorry to see the power to deport freely used would not argue that Parliament should never possess such a power. But it is really very difficult t$ believe after the High Court's decision in the Walsh and Johnson cases that Parliament will be able to give itself power to deport men who are not comparatively recent arrivals in the Commonwealth. To laymen it is a little unfortunate that the Court's reasons for ordering the release of Walsh and Johnson were given not jointly but severally, and filled quite four columns of the newspapers. But there is not much doubt that the flaw in thp Immigration Act was its assumption that Commonwealth legislation respecting immigration could be mado to apply retrospectively to citizens of the Commonwealth who had acquired domicile before the consummation of the Australian Union. It is not quite certain that there is any power to deport persons who have acquired domicile within the Commonwealth subsequent to federation, but the High Court had no doubt at all that to order the deportation of a citizen (except for a criminal offence) who had domicile in one of the States before it federated is beyond the present power of the Federal Legislature. The purpose of the new Bill, which has been introduced by the new Attorney-General, is of course to make men like Walsh and Johnson criminals, and liable therefore to the penalties attaching to criminals of the usual type, but Parliament may hesitate to sanction such a change in the law, and it is conceivable that even if the amendment is carried it will again be overruled. For it will not be disputed that what one of the Judges called " the base of "thesocial structure of every British "community" is liberty, and that the initial presumption of the law is always in favour of liberty, and that the Courts as well ""as the public will always be very reluctant to strike that foundation from under any citizen's

feet. In any case so far .as those citizens arc concerned who were in Australia before Federation, it is clear enough that they carried over into the Commonwealth all such rights and liberties as were not express!} 1 * or by necessary implication surrendered, and that seems to mean that tjie new law, if it is passed, will not be truly effective for another generation.