Immigration minister Andrew Giles is doing more backflips than a Romanian gymnast - but just can't nail his landing, writes PETER VAN ONSELEN

The theatre of the absurd continued today as besieged immigration minister Andrew Giles called a media conference to declare that Direction 99 is dead buried and cremated. 

It is being replaced by 'Direction 110' which will put community safety first, according to the minister. Details remain very scant. 

Which begs the obvious question why Direction 99 didn't do that to begin with. Because if it did it wouldn't need to be replaced. And the fact that it didn't should be enough to have gotten this minister sacked long ago. 

Yet there he was this morning, Andrew Giles announcing a new system to replace the botched and failed old one that he was responsible for. Both its design and its implementation. 

It was badly designed and poorly managed after its implementation.  

Direction 99 was introduced by the new Labor government over a year ago, purpose-built to appease concerns by New Zealand that too many of its citizens who committed crimes in this country were getting sent home. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was a proud advocate for it when he got to stand next to then-Kiwi PM Jacinta Ardern making the announcement. 

The only problem was that it didn't prioritise community safety as Direction 110 now will. It also applied to all overseas arrivals, not just New Zealanders. 

It resulted in a host of examples surfacing of criminals who didn't have their visas cancelled because Direction 99 did not prioritise community safety. 

Rapists, child sexual predators and domestic abusers one and all were permitted to stay rather than be deported. 

They were able to rely on their ties to family and the community to force the hand of Administrative Appeals Tribunal commissioners hearing their cases, forced to accept the construction of Direction 99 and allow them to stay. 

A Sudanese resident used ties to the local Aboriginal community to justify staying. Convicted domestic violence abusers used ties to family to stay. 

You couldn't make this up.  

The deputy head of the AAT, Stephen Boyle, was quite explicit in spelling out this reality when handing down his written reasons for some of his decisions. His hand forced by the stupidity of Direction 99.

At least it is gone and replaced by Direction 110 - if you can now have confidence in the same minister overseeing the new rules. 

It is utterly ridiculous that the same minister who presided over this mess - adding to it with inaccurate statements like perpetrators 'being surveilled with drones' - is now responsible for fixing it. 

Giles has been anything but contrite about his failures, using Question Time to try and throw insults back at the opposition rather than take responsibility.  

His inability has been all too clearly put on very public display these past few weeks. But because he's great mates with Albo and in the same faction, he has survived. 

Also because the PM was intimately involved in the introduction of this disaster of a policy. 

The PM didn't want to reward the opposition for complaining about Giles, putting stubborn political positioning ahead of doing the right thing. 

There should be no escaping responsibility for this mess, certainly not for Giles. The entire reason it has occurred is because of a change of policy Labor introduced. One they have now scurried away from and replaced.

Yet Giles won't take accountability, his boss won't act against him and they all are now playing the blame game instead. Giles says his department let him down. Albo says the Coalition had already made a meal of immigration when it was in government. 

That was more than two years ago now. The last election was in May 2022. At what point in time will this Labor government finally start taking accountability for what happens on its watch?