An end to visas must not signal an increase in boats

The personal stories of asylum-seekers stuck on temporary protection visas for years are emotional and sometimes heart-rending. Across time they have been used effectively by advocates – and politicians – to make the case to the Australian electorate that TPVs should end. Now, as the Albanese government makes good on a poll promise to drop the visas for those who came here before 2013 and open the way for about 19,000 refugees to stay permanently in Australia, it’s important for the Prime Minister to communicate the nation’s policies clearly to people-smugglers and their potential clients.

The three-pronged deterrent approach, used very effectively by the Morrison government, involved offshore processing, turning back the boats and TPVs. Removing one of those legs (along with the Safe Haven Enterprise visas) will be welcomed by many on humanitarian grounds but risks leaving Australia in a more precarious position in terms of border policy. Indeed, it has emerged that the government was warned by its own experts in the Department of Home Affairs against dropping the visas. It is thus incumbent on Anthony Albanese and his ministers to ensure that an end to visas does not mean increased trade in asylum-seekers.

The Prime Minister says the electorate has given Labor a mandate for the abolition of TPVs, though they remain on the statute books and technically could be revived. The government believes removal of the TPVs will not challenge Operation Sovereign Borders, but in the end it will live or die on the numbers and its ability to manage any surge in the people-smuggling trade by turning back the boats and sending people who do land back to their point of departure or home countries or to offshore centres.

Our country has seen more than 20 years of complex – and, it must be acknowledged, divisive – debate on border security. The human cost, both in terms of those who have lost their lives in the effort to arrive here by boat and those who have spent years in detention or in limbo on TPVs, has been great. No Australian seeks to return to the years when consensus seemed impossible and refugee policy became a political game in which there were few winners. But we must not forget the lessons learned through those long years when politicians struggled to navigate the realities of porous borders and the genuine desire of Australians to stop the pain of people fleeing from harsh social, political or economic conditions.

Those lessons were forged in an often febrile political context but remain true at a time when much of the heat has gone out of refugee discussion. The central lesson is that, as an island nation, maintaining a strong border means making it very difficult for people to arrive by boat and then to stay in our country.

We learnt too that abolishing TPVs is fraught. Fifteen years ago, in 2008, Kevin Rudd, then prime minister, dumped the visas that had been introduced by John Howard. As a result, some 50,000 people made their way here, among them 1200 who died at sea. It was a catastrophe and forced the reinstitution of the visas by the Abbott government in 2014.

Now another Labor government understands that it cannot afford a repeat of that disaster. The Prime Minister has delivered on a promise to release those who have been operating in limbo for more than a decade. His challenge now is to deliver on his promise that it will not lead to more asylum boats.