The Department of Immigration and Border Protection says it supports its staff's right to strike, despite forcing the Community and Public Sector Union to can its planned industrial action.
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Strikes in Australia's airports scheduled for Monday were called off after the Fair Work Commission approved a federal government bid to suspend industrial action due to a possible threat to national security.
The CPSU will fight the interim order in a hearing on Tuesday, after the federal government lodged an urgent application to the industrial watchdog late on Friday to avert industrial action on national security grounds.
The injunction prevents customs and immigration staff from striking from 12.15am on Monday.
The CPSU planned the rolling strikes at the nation's international air and sea ports to break a two-year deadlock on pay and entitlement negotiations.
The union postponed strike action schedule for the Easter long weekend in the wake of the attacks in Brussels.
The order coincides with the resumption of flights from Brussels Airport, 12 days after suicide bombings in the airport's departure hall and a trail station killed 32 people and wounded 270.
But the department said the current action "poses an unacceptable risk to the community" and it is still committed to bargaining in "good faith" with the CPSU.
"There is real risk that over time the industrial action will affect the capacity of the Australian Border Force to protect Australia's border, increasing the likelihood of drug traffickers, child sex offenders, other criminals and persons who are national security risks such as returning foreign fighters, or harmful and illicit goods in cargo, getting into the country undetected," a statement from the Immigration department said.
Union officials and lawyers attended urgent hearings on Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Sunday to contest the application.
The CPSU said some of the proceedings were ordered closed after the Commonwealth sought to legally suppress some of the evidence.
"The CPSU will continue to vigorously oppose the Department's application and will keep you across new developments as they arise," the union said on its website on Sunday.
"We will also keep putting pressure directly on the Government to change its failed bargaining policy - which is the root cause of this dispute – and sit down with us and find a sensible solution."
