August 22, 2024
KENNY HEATLEY: The Albanese government has been accused of going against departmental advice when issuing tourist visas for Palestinians fleeing the war in Gaza. Joining me live now is Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson. James. Appreciate your time this morning.
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning.
HEATLEY: A former deputy immigration secretary has told The Australian, the Albanese government should have created a special visa class for Gaza. And he also says the issue of tourist visas was politically motivated and done against departmental advice. What's your reaction this morning?
PATERSON: These are hugely significant allegations from Mr. Rizvi. Let's be clear, he's no fan of the Coalition. He's been very critical of us to in the past, and that just adds greater weight to what he has said. He said, number one, the government has departed from departmental advice. Number two, their decision was political. And number three, it's totally contrary to all past practice when evacuating people like this to hand out tourist visas to people fleeing a war zone controlled by a terrorist organisation. There is only one course of action that the Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, can take today to clear this up, and that is to release all departmental advice provided to his predecessor, Clare O'Neil, and the former Immigration Minister, Andrew Giles, so that the public can judge whether or not the department did in fact advise this course of action or advised against it, and whether the government made a political decision to ignore it.
HEATLEY: I've been watching Question Time each day this week. Are you targeting a group of people for political gain, like what the Prime Minister and Tony Burke is suggesting?
PATERSON: No we're not. What we're doing is holding to account a very bad government for its very weak performance on national security, community safety, border protection, and the rule of law. And every step of the way, they've given us reason to be concerned. If Anthony Albanese and Tony Burke wanted to shut this down, they could have shut it down two weeks ago. They could have said, we will never accept any Hamas supporters in our country. We will do all the necessary security checks like you did in Syria and Afghanistan, and we'll be transparent about it. But instead, at every opportunity, they have avoided the questions, they’ve provided misleading answers, or they have not engaged with the issues at all, and that has raised our concerns, not diminished them.
HEATLEY: What's different about visitor visas issued under former Coalition governments compared to visas issued to Palestinians under this government, including Iraqis, Syrians and people from Afghanistan? It's the it's one of the main points by the prime minister saying that you've done it in the past.
PATERSON: It's a really misleading comparison for two reasons. One, just let's just take the people from Palestinian territories. He says the 1,000 visitor visas granted in peace time over nine years, or the average of about just over 100 visas a year under the former government, compares to him handing out 3,000 visas in a little over six months from a war zone controlled by a terrorist organisation. They are obviously completely different in terms of the pace. But they're also completely different because we weren't using it as a tool to evacuate people from a humanitarian disaster so they could get onshore and then stay here permanently. What we did in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan and other conflicts, is we evacuated people to third countries before we granted them a visa. Face to face interviews were conducted, biometric screening occurred, and only then when we were confident there was no security risk did we grant them a humanitarian or refugee or other appropriate visa for them to come to Australia. So it's a completely different approach under this government, a hugely risky one and one being called out by a senior former departmental official today.
HEATLEY: Former deputy immigration secretary Abul Rizvi also says that Peter Dutton's call for a ban on, or a stoppage of all visas issued to Palestinians was against the Migration Act. Was it a step too far to call for that?
PATERSON: I don't agree with him, because all that Peter Dutton has said is that we should put a pause on these visas until we can put in place adequate security and vetting, and then we can again continue to assess people appropriately against the criteria under the Migration Act for refugee visas with adequate security clearances. That's all that Peter Dutton has asked for. That's perfectly consistent with the principles of the Migration Act. And by the way, no one's leaving Gaza at the moment anyway because the Rafah border is closed. So there are no visas being granted. So it’s perfectly consistent for Peter Dutton to call for this.
HEATLEY: James Paterson, thank you. Appreciate your time today.
ENDS
