Federal Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has been subject to widespread criticism from the opposition and the media over decisions relating to the use of so-called ‘direction 99’ powers.

This all started with a man named Emmanual Saki. His visa was cancelled after he received an 18-month jail sentence for, among other things, choking his mother and daughter.

He was set to be deported but he was allowed to stay thanks in part to the use of direction 99, which requires the tribunal to consider length of stay in Australia in any case it is used on.

Less than three weeks after Saki was released, he was charged with the murder of a 22-year-old man in Brisbane’s north, a sequence of events which has sent the opposition into a fury.

‘Direction 99’, introduced in early 2023, requires the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to consider how long a migrant has lived in Australia and the connection they have developed here when considering whether to deport them.

While it doesn’t require that migrants with criminal sentences to be kept in Australia, it does make it much harder to deport those who have been here a long time.

This measure came about due to pressure from the New Zealand government, which is one of the destinations where deported migrants can end up.

They have long argued that they shouldn’t have to take responsibility for crimes committed in Australia, and direction 99 is the Albanese government’s attempt to address this.

The opposition argues that the government’s policies are enabling dangerous people to roam free in the community and want Giles to resign as Immigration Minister.

This is all in the context of a recent high court decision which found the government was holding hundreds of migrants in detention illegally and required their release, further fueling the opposition’s narrative.

Giles is a friend of Albanese and a key member of the Labor Left faction, and the government doesn’t want to deal with a potentially destabilising reshuffle in the middle of a migrant crisis, so a resignation doesn’t look likely any time soon.