Former top spy says Palestinians’ sympathy for Hamas shouldn’t automatically rule out visas

Australia’s former top spy says Palestinian refugees who may support militant group Hamas should not be automatically excluded from Australia, as the Coalition warns of the risks of offering permanent residency.

Dennis Richardson’s intervention comes a week after this masthead reported Labor was preparing new avenues to permanent residency for 1300 Palestinians, some of whom are struggling to make ends meet as their temporary visas block them from work and social security.

Former director-general of ASIO and defence secretary Dennis Richardson says some visa security checks, including for those with dual citizenship, will be easier than others.Credit: Andrew Meares

They were given three-month visitor visas, and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said on Sunday that no country would force them back to under-siege Gaza.

The Coalition has used the visa issue to question whether Labor is overlooking concerns about religious extremism in its attempts to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The dispute adds to the national security issues on which the Coalition has accused Labor of weakness, after months of attacks on the government’s handling of last year’s High Court NZYQ ruling that led to the release of more than 150 immigration detainees. A new High Court case testing the legality of monitoring the former detainees began on Tuesday.

Richardson, who led ASIO and the defence and foreign affairs departments, urged strict security checks for Palestinians who wanted to stay in Australia. Some assessments, including for those with dual citizenship, would be easier than others, he said.

“Because you have sympathy with the terrorist group [Hamas] doesn’t mean to say that you will commit violence against someone,” Richardson said in an interview.

“When you talk about sympathy, ultimately that’s a professional judgment for ASIO or someone to make as to how far that goes, how deep it is, how strongly entrenched, how emotional it is.”

On Sunday, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton claimed the prime minister had failed to “take the pulse of the nation” on the visa question. Australians were compassionate towards refugees but wary of reckless intakes, Dutton said.

“You can’t be taking people out of a war zone. In some cases, the government has approved a visa in one hour, in other cases, in 24 hours. We need to make sure that biometrics tests are undertaken. We need to know who is coming to our country,” he said.

Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said earlier this year that the government should be taking much greater care in granting visas.

“How can they possibly assure themselves there is not one Hamas supporter among them?” Paterson said in February.

In a column at the weekend, Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, now a News Corp columnist and Sky News presenter, called the refugees “likely Hamas supporters” and accused Burke of being focused on winning votes in “Labor seats with large Muslim populations by posing as the humanitarian saviour of Gaza”.

Referencing this masthead’s reporting that Abbott’s government granted permanent visas to 12,500 Syrians fleeing the war-torn country in 2015, she said a key difference was that the Coalition took in persecuted, mostly Christian, minorities.

“Not people who would likely bring to Australia the religious and ethnic hatreds of their homeland,” the conservative commentator wrote.

A June poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, reported by Reuters, showed support for Hamas within Palestine was rising and had reached 40 per cent, double that of the more moderate political party Fatah.

Hamas militants attacked Israeli towns on October 7, killing 1200 people and abducting 250. In its campaign since, Israel has killed more than 39,363 Palestinians and wounded almost 91,000, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.

The Albanese government has struggled to show it is on top of the difficult immigration portfolio since the NZYQ High Court case, and in December rushed through controversial laws mandating curfews and ankle bracelets for 153 released detainees.

A 36-year-old stateless refugee under the pseudonym YBFZ is challenging the constitutionality of the laws. His lawyers argue the rules represent “a restriction on liberty” and were therefore punitive – which means they are designed to inflict punishment and are unconstitutional as only the courts, not the government, can punish.

Lawyers also argued the enforcement of ankle monitoring “involves interferences with the fundamental rights of bodily integrity and privacy” and said in written submissions: “There is no rational connection between the monitoring power and the purpose of protecting the community.”

However, the government argued the legislation was not a form of punishment but instead an alternative response to managing non-citizens who could not be deported.

The panel of six High Court judges reserved their decision.

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