Labor’s Gazan rush: it’s visa-vis safe politics

A former deputy immigration secretary says the Albanese government’s use of tourist visas for Palestinians was politically driven.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and Anthony Albanese in parliament on Wednesday. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

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A former deputy immigration­ ­secretary says the Albanese ­government’s use of tourist visas for Palestinians fleeing the war in Gaza was politically driven and ­almost certainly done against ­departmental advice.

Retired immigration official Abul Rizvi said the government took a “minimalist” approach to accepting people from the Gaza war zone when it should have created a special visa class, and it was now dealing with the fallout.

He said the decision had ­condemned Palestinians granted visitor visas since the start of the war to “grind their way” through the onshore asylum process, ­imposing higher costs on taxpayers while displacing other applicants from the nation’s capped refugee program.

Mr Rizvi said the government’s decision to use tourist visas defied decades of Australian ­experience of helping those fleeing war zones, and it would have been advised not to do so by the Department of Home Affairs.

He said “fear of the politics” of accepting Gazan refugees was likely behind the government’s decision, and it was now in “a very deep hole”, along with more than 1300 Palestinians stuck on short-term tourist visas.

“Home Affairs would have given them the advice that the ­humanitarian option is probably the better one,” Mr Rizvi told The Australian.

“It went down a path that it thought was politically safer, not the best policy path. And it has turned out it wasn’t the politically safest path, because the whole thing’s blown up now.”

Nearly 3000 Palestinians have been granted tourist visas since the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, while more than 7000 had their applications refused. The government is scrambling to ­devise a long-term plan for those who have entered Australia on the temporary visas, amid an expected surge in onshore protection visa applications.

Anthony Albanese, who has faced nearly a fortnight of opposition attacks over the government’s entry path for Gazans, confirmed for the first time on Wednesday that Home Affairs had cancelled 43 visas for Palestinian, and ­reinstated 20 on appeal. The Prime Minister told parliament he did not play any role in restoring any of the travel permits.

“There certainly has not been prime ministerial intervention,” Mr Albanese said.

He stopped short of saying whether any of his ministers had intervened.

Mr Rizvi said creating a special humanitarian visa class for Palestinians was “probably now beyond the realms of possibility” amid the furore over security checks sparked by Peter Dutton.

“These people will keep applying for asylum,” he said. “They will grind their way through the asylum system very, very slowly, and I suspect there’ll be a high ­approval rate for those who apply for asylum.

“And what that also means is, they will displace someone who would have come via the offshore humanitarian stream, because the total humanitarian program is capped.”

He said he was untroubled by the security concerns raised by the Opposition Leader, arguing anyone who made it out of Gaza since the start of the war had faced Israeli and Egyptian security ­assessments, as well as Australian visitor visa checks and potentially scrutiny by ASIO.

Mr Rizvi, who left the Immigration Department in 2007 after 16 years at senior executive level, also lashed Mr Dutton’s call last week for a blanket ban on entrants from Gaza. He said that, as a former immigration minister, Mr Dutton should have known the law required all visa applications to be assessed on their ­merits.

“If Mr Dutton, as immigration minister, rang up the secretary of the department and said, ‘I instruct you not to issue any visas to Palestinians’, the secretary would have had to say to him, ‘Minister, I respect your instruction, but I can’t do that because the ­Migration Act doesn’t give me that power’,” Mr Rizvi said.

He said Canada’s model was “more sensible” than the one adopted by Australia, offering 5000 humanitarian places for Palestinians with family connections to Canadians.

The Coalition’s approach to Ukrainian entrants after the ­­Russian invasion was also preferable, Mr Rizvi said.

“What the Coalition did for the Ukrainians was better, ­because when the Ukrainians have arrived in Australia on a visitor visa, they could immediately apply, fee-free, for (a special) ­humanitarian visa,” he said.

“Generally, our approach to conflicts is to provide a specific humanitarian visa. That’s what we did out of Afghanistan, that’s what we did when ISIS was rampaging through the Middle East. That’s essentially what we did when the Indonesians were attacking Dili and East Timor.”

Palestinian visitor visa approvals plunged by two-thirds after the Albanese government faced questions in February over concerns about security screening, which sparked reviews of “red flag” applications and individuals without family connections to Australia.

Approvals for tourist-class visas, which don’t require direct input by national security agencies unless requested, surged to 2127 by February 12. Over the six-months to August 14, there were only 865 visa approvals.

Between January and May, 416 of about 1300 Palestinians in Australia have lodged protection applications, which if successful allows them to stay in the country permanently.

Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said the government must confirm whether the slowdown in visa ­approvals was linked with stricter security processing.

“The Albanese government must explain why straight after October 7 they were fast-tracking Gaza visas, but once questions started to be asked in February, the rate of approvals dropped by two-thirds,” Senator Paterson said. “Did they quietly put in place more rigorous security checks that should have been done from the beginning? Did they finally seek advice from our agencies about the risks of rushing the process?”

Senator Paterson said Australians “deserve to know what (Home Affairs Minister) Tony Burke’s plan is for the almost 3000 tourist visa holders he has said can’t go home”.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said on Wednesday she did not have any further information in relation to a longer-term plan for Palestinian visa holders. Senator Gallagher said Mr Burke was “taking advice on all of these matters from his department”.

Mr Rizvi said the government’s reliance on visitor visas would disadvantage genuine Palestinian refugees. Gazan orphans with family in Australia, for example, would likely be rejected “because a genuine visit is not intended – the kids have nowhere to go back to”. The same children “would get priority” under a humanitarian visa class “because they have nowhere to go back to”.

Amid negotiations between Egypt and Israel on reopening the border crossing from Gaza, immigration officials are bracing for up to 1700 approved Palestinian visa-holders to travel to Australia.