While it is highly likely net migration is now past its peak and declining, the data to this stage suggests it may only be falling gradually. (more…)
Category: Immigration
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Weathering the storm: support for multiculturalism resists politicians’ frenzied divisiveness
Reading the latest Scanlon Foundation social cohesion report makes you aware that there are two quite distinct images of Australia. One – totally dark and doom laden – is depicted in the mass and social media and the other – clear-eyed about both serious problems and opportunities – is depicted in the 2023 Scanlon Foundation annual Mapping Social Cohesion report. (more…)
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What’s happening with covid visa holders?
The covid visa stream of sub-class 408 was introduced during the pandemic when international borders were closed. It enabled temporary entrants who were unable to leave Australia to maintain their lawful status and keep working. They could apply for a 12 month covid stream visa and then apply for another one if they wished. (more…)
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Restricting onshore student visa hopping – harder than it looks
Onshore student visa policy gets relatively little attention as it deals with people who are already in Australia, but it is critical to how the overseas student program operates. (more…)
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Time running out for Albanese Government to fix asylum system
Despite its $160 million package to better manage asylum seekers, time is running out for the Albanese Government to get on top of the asylum seeker issue prior to the 2025 election. (more…)
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Reviving Australian Citizenship: What the government needs to do
Australian Citizenship should be revived as a positive unifying element in a cohesive multicultural society. The Australia Day citizenship ceremony controversy is just a sideshow. The real issue is the completely unacceptable waiting times for processing Australian citizenship applications. The Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government trashed the good work of previous Coalition and Labor governments by pursuing regressive citizenship policies. There is a big restoration job to be done. (more…)
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Tide turning on boat people bastardry
A day I have long prophesied, and for which I have been yearning may be at hand. It’s a pity that the Albanese government does not really deserve a place at any celebrations, and may indeed, try to frustrate them. (more…)
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If immigration must stay in Home Affairs, here’s how to fix the agency
The founding secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, Mike Pezzullo, was dismissed late last year for egregiously breaching the public service code of conduct. The man who lectured public servants they should live by that code, broke it in a manner no previous secretary in living memory had done. (more…)
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From Vietnam to Australia, a refugee doctor’s journey
On 23 November, a boatload of asylum seekers was dispatched to Nauru for offshore detention. They were found wandering the coast of Western Australia by Aboriginal people, three days earlier. This has been Australian policy for unauthorised boat arrivals since 2013; 10 arrivals in the past year. But there was a time when asylum seekers were welcome. (more…)
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Suffer the little children to come unto me…
Well, not so if they are Palestinian children that Israelis keep killing time and time again. It is part of what Israelis calls ‘mowing the grass’. (more…)
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Hysteria: Putting the 12 asylum seeker boat arrivals into context
While there is much hysteria from Peter Dutton and the Murdoch press associated with the 12 asylum seekers who recently arrived by boat (it’s a catastrophe apparently), there was less excitement about a new post-pandemic monthly record for primary asylum applications set in October at 2,322. That is now approaching the monthly record of over 2,700 asylum applications set when Peter Dutton was Minister. It seems asylum seekers arriving by boat are much more exciting than those who arrive by plane. (more…)
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Use of immigration detention needs to be dramatically curtailed
The use of immigration detention in Australia has expanded well beyond its original intended purpose. It has become a political tool, a convenient proxy for dealing with issues that should be dealt with in other parts of government and a vehicle for delivery of immense cruelty. There was a certain inevitability that the High Court would eventually stop governments from misusing it. (more…)
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Judicial activism overturns years of inhumane cruelty on immigration detention
It is, alas, far too early to proclaim the end of Australia’s barbarous and inhumane refugee management system. But a series of recent High Court decisions cutting back, on constitutional grounds, the arbitrary powers of immigration ministers and bureaucrats may well be later seen as the moment that the tide turned on a nightmare that has diminished Australia’s and Australians’ international reputation and citizenship, treated thousands of asylum seekers with deliberate cruelty to no good end, and, probably made us less rather than more capable of dealing with a continuing crisis of the movement of people from war, famine, climate change and ethnic violence. (more…)
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Have primary asylum applications peaked?
Primary level asylum applications fell marginally in September 2023 to 2,005 from a post-pandemic peak of 2,164 in August 2023. With the Government having announced a $160 million package to get the asylum system back under some control, can we now expect primary level asylum applications to have peaked? (more…)
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High court launches full frontal assault on indefinite immigration detention
Mandatory immigration detention is a policy that has caused indiscriminate harm, including death, and permanent incapacity. It has been rightly described as our national shame. On Wednesday November 8, the High Court of Australia found indefinite immigration detention constitutes punishment, making the relevant legislation unconstitutional. (more…)
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Record asylum caseload at Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT)
With announcement of a strategy to address Australia’s burgeoning asylum backlogs, it is worth looking at the asylum caseload at the AAT. Addressing the backlog at the appeals stage is often critical to getting the asylum system working, as it should to help genuine refugees while deterring the unmeritorious. (more…)
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Albanese government addresses coalition-era asylum seekers surge
After around eight years of policy paralysis and the biggest labour trafficking scam abusing the asylum system in our history, a scam that was largely neglected by Home Affairs Minister Dutton and his Secretary Mike Pezzullo, the Albanese Government has announced a $160 million package to “restore integrity to Australia’s refugee protection system”. (more…)
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Australia’s Department of Home Affairs announced a landmark Refugee Advisory Panel – but there’s a catch
Sounds great, right? Except that the job advertisement says the positions are unpaid. How can the government get things halfway right by recognising that lived experience matters enough to shape what they do, but not value it enough to pay it? (more…)
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Department of Home Affairs contradicts every sensible principle of organisation design
What a fabulous trove The Pezzullo Papers are. The hundreds of recently disclosed text messages sent by the Home Affairs Secretary Mr Michael Pezzullo to a person described as a “Liberal Party powerbroker” are morbidly fascinating. Poor Pezzullo – in a few days he attracted as much public commentary, most of it unflattering, as platoons of traditionally reticent departmental Secretaries would cop in their lifetimes and afterwards. (more…)
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Assange extradition: “something you might expect from a totalitarian regime”
Julian Assange may be only weeks away from being extradited to the US where he will face prosecution under the US Espionage Act that could see him imprisoned for 175 years, even though he is an Australian citizen, not a US citizen! With extradition so near, the campaign to save Assange has reached its highest pitch. (more…)
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Pezzullo departure should end the Home Affairs experiment
Creation of the Department of Home Affairs was a disaster for Australia’s immigration policy and administration. The impending departure of its architect, Secretary Mike Pezzullo, enables the Albanese Government to bring that experiment to an end. (more…)
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What the forthcoming migration strategy won’t address
The Government has foreshadowed that it will soon release its new migration strategy. Most of what has been leaked to date is sensible fine tuning of employer sponsored visas which will have little impact on net migration levels. But I fear the migration strategy will be largely silent on the big issue of net migration levels and how these are to be managed. (more…)
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Asylum seekers from Pacific Island Nations
In August 2023, there was another sharp increase in asylum applications from Pacific Island nationals (including Timor-Leste) to over 390. That is more asylum applications in August than from Chinese nationals (215) and Indian nationals (214) despite there being far more Chinese and Indian temporary entrants in Australia. (more…)
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Refugee goes on long walk to take Australia on a journey
On 10 September 2023, at the end of refugee Neil Para’s marathon 1014 kilometre walk from Ballarat to Sydney, it was made public that Neil, his wife, Sugaa, and two daughters, Nivash and Kartie, had been granted permanent visas (his youngest, Nive, was born in Australia, and she was made a citizen when she turned 10). But this fact is taken from the middle of this story. (more…)
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Will number of temporary entrants in Australia continue to rise?
At end July 2023, there was an all-time record 2.554 million temporary entrants in Australia. The crucial policy question is whether that will be a peak or whether the number of temporary entrants in Australia will keep rising? If the latter, what will that mean for the number of temporary entrants in ‘immigration limbo’ – unable to secure permanent residence and unwilling to depart? (more…)
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A new national agenda for multicultural Australia
The Australian Government’s current Multicultural Framework Review is looking at ways for government and the community to work together to support a cohesive multicultural society and advance a vibrant and prosperous future for all Australians. (more…)
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Toothless tiger: Human Rights Committee sits helplessly on the sidelines
In 2009, after receiving a report from prominent Catholic priest Frank Brennan which recommended it, the Rudd Labor government abandoned the quest for a national human rights act. Instead it established a parliamentary human rights committee which came into operation in 2011. But, as one might expect, this committee was dead on arrival. It is a toothless tiger with no capacity to hold governments to account for human rights. It has sat helplessly on the sidelines while governments and parliaments have continued to undermine fundamental rights in this nation. (more…)
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Mass killings of Ethiopian migrants by Saudi Arabia at Yemen border may amount to crimes against humanity
Saudi border guards have killed at least hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023. Saudi officials are killing hundreds of women and children out of view of the rest of the world while they spend billions on sports-washing to try to improve their image. Saudi Arabia should immediately and urgently revoke any policy to use lethal force on migrants and asylum seekers. Concerned countries should press for accountability and the UN should investigate. (more…)
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Australian multiculturalism: Our greatest achievement?
In a broad sense ‘Australian multiculturalism’ describes the cultural and ethnic diversity of Australia. Over a half of Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas. I contend that Australian multiculturalism is our greatest achievement, but it has always been fraught with tension. The challenge of immigration and multiculturalism has been and remains, do we stay comfortably as we are or do we risk something for a better future for ourselves and others? (more…)
