Dutton calls overstaying international students ‘the modern version of boat arrivals’

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has described foreign students trying to extend their stays in Australia as “the modern version of the boat arrivals” in comments that inflame a political clash over immigration, even as Labor knocks back student visas at the highest rate in two decades.

The federal government’s rejection of more than 20 per cent of student applications in the past 14 months has provoked a growing number of people – now about 2100 a month – to challenge their visa refusals in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and thereby prolong their stay in Australia.

Peter Dutton at the Perth Royal Show on Thursday.Credit: Hamish Hastie

As Dutton’s comments evoked former prime minister Tony Abbott’s 2013 campaign vow to “stop the boats” in gearing up for an election fight on migration, Labor fought back against the narrative it was weak on borders and pushed the Coalition on how it had fuelled the system’s issues.

Dutton told radio station 2GB on Thursday that “people have found a weakness in the system, they are exploiting the weakness” when host Ray Hadley asked him about the 700,000 international students in the country and a growing number appealing their visa cases.

“They obviously will be getting advice from lawyers in this space and others who have tested the system and found success, and ultimately have stayed in Australia, or they have extended their stay,” Dutton said.

“I just think when you look at the detail, this is the modern version of the boat arrivals.”

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Tony Burke said he made “no apology for reversing the rorting and exploitation that the former government allowed to flourish in pockets of the higher education sector”.

“A direct consequence of that is [Labor] rejecting a higher number of student visas,” he said.

“Unfortunately we are not only battling a broken migration system but also inherited an [appeals tribunal] irreversibly damaged as a result of the actions of the former government, that was beset by delays, mismanagement, and an extraordinarily large backlog of applications.”

The stern words indicate both parties will defend their immigration records as the Coalition seeks to make it an election issue, particularly as the federal government is on track to miss its targets for 2023-24.

Burke became immigration minister at the peak of boat arrivals in 2013, when more than 4000 asylum seekers were arriving a month, although new regional resettlement policies brought those numbers down soon after.

Kon Karapanagiotidis, chief executive of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said Dutton’s comments were “from a predictable playbook – one of division and fear and is out of touch with the community”.

Former immigration bureaucrat Abul Rizvi said the Coalition had itself turbocharged foreign student numbers and the appeal backlogs, which had been years in the making, would take many more to resolve.

“Dutton should remember it was the Coalition that put in place unrestricted work rights for international students. It was the Coalition that established fee-free student visa applications, which turbocharged the numbers,” he said.

“It’s reasonable for Dutton to argue that Labor was too slow to turn off the taps, which they were. But to say it’s nothing to do with them is nonsense. Both major parties have been at fault on this.”

There have been a soaring number of appeals lodged with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal since the Albanese government started cracking down on student visas in the past two years. Labor rejected 20.2 per cent of student visa applications last financial year – the highest refusal rate in at least two decades.

The refusal rate so far this financial year, for July and August, is 20.4 per cent.

More than 3000 migration appeals have been lodged with the AAT each month since May, with 70 per cent of those cases in July and August relating to student visa refusals.

New migration cases in the AAT are up 241 per cent in the first two months of this financial year, compared to the one before, which has created a backlog of cases that now sits at 27,710.

More than half – 15,271 – of those are student cases: people who would have arrived in Australia on visitors or working holiday visas, and sought to stay longer by studying, or existing students seeking an additional visa who had been knocked back.

A new Administrative Review Tribunal will replace the AAT next month.

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