Immigration Minister blames Home Affairs for drones mix-up

Mr Giles again blamed Home Affairs bureaucrats as he endured another round of political attacks in Parliament on Monday, saying: "I rely on the advice provided by my department."

In what appears to be an increasingly desperate bid to restore faith in his position, Mr Giles has been releasing tallies of the visas of non-citizens he has cancelled.

He prefaced his media statement confessing to the drones error with an update that he had cancelled 30 visas "in the national interest" over the last week.

"In an interview on Sky News, I stated that Operation AEGIS was using drones," Mr Giles said in the statement.

"I relied on information provided by my department at the time, which has since been clarified."

During question time, Mr Giles repeated the same answer when asked if he would release the departmental advice that led him to say drones were being used, saying only he had relied on such information.

Operation AEGIS is the Australian Border Force effort to safeguard the community after the High Court's NZYQ ruling that indefinitely detaining foreign nationals who cannot be deported was unlawful, resulting in the release of 153 non-citizens with serious past criminal convictions.

Opposition Home Affairs spokesman James Paterson told ABC radio on Monday evening: "It's a truly bizarre thing to invent a fictitious secret drone surveillance program operating in Australia, and it just shows this government has no idea."

Mr Giles had told Sky on Thursday the government had invested $250 million to monitor the NZYQ cohort.

"That's enabled things like using drones to keep track of those people we know," he said.

"We know where they are."

A transcript of the interview, which was not emailed to journalists as per usual procedure, appeared on the Home Affairs website on Monday.

Mr Giles' office said there was "no specific reason" for the delay.

The Immigration Minister has also been under intense scrutiny over the overturning of visa cancellations of non-citizens with violent criminal histories by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in accordance with his Direction 99, which requires a person's ties to Australia to be taken into account.

On Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was asked to address a Sky News report that, following his 2022 meeting with then-New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, his department had "directly instructed the Home Affairs Department to attempt to find a way to stop the deportation of so many New Zealand citizens, and to 'fix the problem'."

"Prime Minister, is this true?" Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley asked during question time.

Mr Albanese replied, "Sky News occasionally don't get things right", before deflecting with a statement: "I haven't sworn myself into multiple portfolios, including to Home Affairs, including the Treasury. I'm also not the Health Minister. And what we do is we have ministers who have responsibility for doing their jobs."

Asked about the same meeting, Mr Giles said while he could speak to "meetings that the Prime Minister had with any other prime minister ... what I can say is that I did the work for Ministerial Direction 99 with my office in our national interest".

Mr Giles' admission of error comes after the Albanese government spent the weekend trying to deflect scrutiny of the claim, which instantly set off alarm bells among intelligence experts who said the use of drones would be "impractical and resource intensive" and inappropriate for continuous surveillance.

On Sunday, Agriculture Minister Murray Watt was asked about the drones on ABC's Insiders, saying he believed they were being used to determine if former detainees were complying with requirements to, for example, not live near a school.

"You could use Google Maps to find out whether someone's house is too close to a school. Are drones seriously being used for this?" Senator Watt was asked by host David Speers.

He replied: "That's my understanding."

In his statement, Mr Giles described a process similar to using Google Maps when he explained what Border Force was doing.

"Operation AEGIS draws on information from a range of sources using different technologies including aerial open-source and other imagery through their work with state and territory law enforcement bodies," Mr Giles said.

Mr Giles said former detainees in the NZYQ cohort could be subject to electronic monitoring, curfews, financial reporting, spot checks, random home visits, "as well as the other mandatory conditions which means the location of every individual is known".