As the overall number of asylum seekers in Australia continues to rise and is now over 120,000, Shadow Immigration Spokesperson Dan Tehan regularly criticises the Labor Government for not doing enough to get control of asylum seeker numbers. But with a Federal Election just months away, we do not know what either the Coalition or Labor will do to get on top of the issue.
Knowing Peter Dutton’s abysmal record on immigration integrity, including allowing the biggest labour trafficking scam in Australia’s history, Tehan has to tread carefully. While Tehan says “Australians will be cynical that Labor is serious about addressing this problem”, he avoids mentioning Dutton’s record or what a Coalition Government should have done when it was in power or would do in the future.
Tehan criticises the number of asylum applications under the Labor Government but fails to mention the huge asylum seeker application record of just under 28,000 in 2017-18 was set when Peter Dutton was Home Affairs minister. That started the massive asylum seeker backlog that is the source of the current problems.
Tehan proudly says that the number of asylum applications in April 2022, the last month of the Coalition Government, was just 726. But he fails to explain that because international borders had only opened a few months earlier, and the number of temporary entrants in Australia was just starting to build, asylum application numbers were always going to be low in those first few months.
They were inevitably going to rise unless there was a response ready to be implemented. While Labor did not have a policy to deal with that in the lead up to the May 2022 Election, Tehan doesn’t explain why the Coalition also didn’t have a policy on this issue given it had been in government ever since the big labour trafficking scam started under Dutton.
Tehan complains that the total number of asylum seekers had increased to 105,000 by October 2023 but keeps quiet the fact that this number was already over 94,000 at the time of the May 2022 Election.
He also complains that under Labor only 167 failed asylum seekers had been removed from Australia but provides no equivalent data on asylum seeker removals under the Coalition. Instead, Tehan says “Labor has deported just 2,161 criminals and failed asylum seekers in a year compared to 6,352 deportations a year under the Coalition (average 2013-2019)”.
The trouble with this comparison is that only a tiny portion of the 6,352 Tehan refers to were actually criminals or failed asylum seekers. The vast majority were simply overstayers. The Coalition removed very few of the asylum seekers who were part of the huge labour trafficking scam under Dutton because processing of these was very slow and those refused were appealing to the AAT.
Tehan also deliberately uses an average removals figure because under the Coalition removals from detention fell sharply from a peak of 7,102 in 2017-18 to 1,034 in 2020-21. While this was partly due to border closures, a huge reduction in immigration compliance staff also contributed.
Finally, Tehan asks the really naïve question “does Labor even know where the failed 75,430 asylum seekers are living in Australia?” as if the Coalition Government did know where they were when it was in power or would implement a system to track these people in future.
The Murdoch press has taken to regularly interviewing Tehan on asylum seeker numbers – something it didn’t do when the labour trafficking scam under Dutton was at its zenith. At that time, the Murdoch press and Dutton were on boat arrival watch desperately looking to blame any Labor policy for an impending armada of boats. An armada that has never arrived since offshore processing became bi-partisan policy.
If Dutton had been looking in the right places, he may have noticed the huge ongoing labour trafficking scam while he was minister.
Three things the Murdoch press does not ask Tehan when it interviews him on this issue are:
- why did the Coalition allow such a huge labour trafficking scam to take place with zero response?
- why did the Coalition cut immigration compliance funding just when it was needed to investigate organisers of the huge labour trafficking scam?
- if the Coalition wins the next Election, what will it do differently in future to get on top of this issue?
The Labor Government has increased funding for asylum processing by $160 million over four years and immigration compliance funding by $50 million over four years. While this has stabilised growth in the asylum backlog at the primary level and at the Administrative Review Tribunal, it is clearly insufficient to slow growth in the number of refused asylum seekers living in the community. That would take many times the amount the Labor Government has allocated.
We do not yet know if either party will provide more money to address the issue.
Abul Rizvi PhD was a senior official in the Department of Immigration from the early 1990s to 2007 when he left as Deputy Secretary. He was awarded the Public Service Medal and the Centenary Medal for services to development and implementation of immigration policy, including the reshaping of Australia’s intake to focus on skilled migration, slow Australia’s rate of population ageing and boost Australia’s international education and tourism industries.