Some Australians might agree in principle with much of Angus Taylor’s recent speech on immigration. Few, for example, would object to the Australian values that visa applicants are required to sign up to. But similar to Pauline Hanson, Taylor provides few details on how he would implement his ideas, the cost of implementation, legal obstacles and likely effectiveness. Is showing he can outdo Hanson’s immigration rhetoric the main objective?
Australia’s existing character test is already extraordinarily broad. It gives the immigration minister almost godlike power to refuse and cancel visas. It already bans people with serious criminal convictions and members and supporters of Hamas, Hezbollah, Hizb-Ut-Tahrir and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. While it doesn’t explicitly ban members of the Israel Defense Forces who have also been accused of committing war crimes, it does ban people who would vilify parts of the Australian community or incite discord. That has led to some prominent Israelis having their visas refused.
The crucial test of Taylor’s ideas on refusing or cancelling visas of people who do not adhere to Australian values is how these would differ from people who are already refused or cancelled on the basis of the existing character test. It would be helpful if Taylor could provide some hypothetical examples of statements people might make that would be a breach of Australian values but not a breach of the current character test.
For example, one of the Australian values in Taylor’s plan is respect for the rule of law. In the past week, there has been much commentary on the prosecution of Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith. Some people have argued he should not be prosecuted because he is an Australian war hero, and that he should be exempt from international war crimes legislation that has been incorporated into domestic law.
Under Taylor’s new approach, would visa holders who express such disrespect for the rule of law have their visas cancelled for a breach of Australian values? Would there be an army of government officials who monitor the social media accounts of migrants to check they aren’t saying things that breach Australian values? How many such officials would be needed given the many millions of visa holders in Australia at any point in time and the fact we process over 500,000 visa applications per month?
Taylor says he will create a new taskforce incorporating intelligence officers, law enforcement and visa processing. But wasn’t that the objective in creating the Home Affairs portfolio that brings together Asio, Australian federal police, immigration and other agencies? Why is there a need to duplicate that, or is Taylor saying the Home Affairs experiment has failed?
Like Hanson, Taylor also wants to resurrect temporary protection visas (TPVs). Australia has experimented with TPVs for over 40 years. We have learned that these add significant costs to the visa system and do very little to deter either boat arrivals or other asylum seekers. Almost every TPV holder has now become a permanent resident. Many are Australian citizens with Australian citizen children and grandchildren. TPVs have become totemic for the Coalition even if they achieve very little that is positive.
Similar to Hanson and Donald Trump, Taylor also wants to implement a mass deportation program. The target of this mass deportation would include people who arrived in Australia from 2015 as part of the biggest labour-trafficking scam in our history. Most of the people who arrived under this scam have now been refused a visa but remain in Australia without legal status. It makes sense to address this situation. But Taylor gives few details on how he would do this. Just copying Trump’s mass deportation program with its massive costs and blunders and a relatively small increase in actual deportations from the interior makes no sense.
Taylor is right to say that in 2022-23 there was an unprecedented surge in net migration to around 540,000. Taylor would know this surge was almost entirely due to unprecedented policy settings for students and working holidaymakers that the Coalition put in place at the end of Covid lockdowns. Policies such as unrestricted work rights for students, the option of a third working holidaymaker visa, fee-free visa applications and the special Covid visa.
While Labor was slow to tighten these policies and needs to tighten further, for Taylor to blame Labor for the surge rather than the policies the Coalition put in place when he was a senior minister is taking the Australian public for mugs.
Abul Rizvi is a former deputy immigration secretary
