Clare O’Neil’s vow to catch ‘worst’ criminals exploiting migration system in $50m boost to Home Affairs

Clare O’Neil unveils a significant boost to Home Affairs, vowing to catch criminals committing the ‘worst crimes known to humanity’.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil has vowed catch offenders who are committing the ‘worst crimes known to humanity and abusing our migration system’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Asylum-seekers will have their claims processed faster, with the Albanese government spending $160m to hire more judges and public servants to make rulings on whether someone is an illegal immigrant or a genuine refugee.

The package includes $48m to fund legal assistance services for asylum-seekers to “help prevent the exploitation of vulnerable ­migrants”.

The government says the funding injection will discourage non-genuine applicants from exploiting extended processing times for asylum visas that can enable a person to stay in the country for between nine and 11 years.

Former Victorian chief commissioner Christine Nixon’s long anticipated review of the visa system, released on Tuesday, found that “gaps and weaknesses” in the migration system had allowed ­organised crime groups and human traffickers to operate with impunity.

The package will see $58m allocated to fund 10 extra members of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal – soon to be renamed the Administrative Review Tribunal – and 10 judges on the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia to clean up the backlog of ­protection visa applications under review.

It also includes a $54m funding injection to increase staffing levels at the Department of Home Affairs to expedite the processing of new visa applications.

Releasing the Nixon review on Monday, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil accused Peter Dutton of allowing rampant exploitation of the migration system to flourish in his time as minister in the Morrison government.

“It was lack of care, lack of attention and lack of basic interest in what is one of the most important things that the Australian government does,” she said.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has promised to crackdown on migration agents who are enabling the exploitation of vulnerable immigrants and exploiting the system. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

“The responsibility for a lot of these problems falls directly at Peter Dutton’s feet.”

Ms O’Neil and Migration Minister Andrew Giles committed $50m to bolster Home Affairs’ immigration compliance section, promised to increase regulation for migration agents and expand the multi-agency team, Operation Inglenook, investigating migrant exploitation.

Mr Giles said the government was also targeting migrant worker exploitation broadly as well as targeting predatory migration agents who were exploiting the system, adding that “bad actors have been getting away with it for too long”.

“It’s the compliance function that has been driving so much of the exploitation that’s endemic, and our focus on this will be laser like as we drive out immigration exploitation, whether it be workers or others, from Australia’s immigration system,” he said.

The government also unveiled changes to enable authorities to cancel the visas of migrants who exploited other temporary residents, empower the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority to impose conditions on migration agents and invest $27.8m to support biometric data collection.

The Opposition Leader defended his record as home affairs and immigration minister, accusing Labor of being “weak” on borders with 105,000 asylum-seekers entering the country in the past 15 months.

“I cancelled more than 6000 visas of bikies, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, child sex offenders; this government hasn’t done anything like that,” Mr Dutton said.

Opposition spokesman on immigration Dan Tehan said the government’s response was essentially a “re-­announcement” of funding from the May budget.