The Federal Government has today announced a $160 million package of reforms which it claims will restore integrity to Australia’s refugee protection system.
It says the changes will help to provide a fair go to genuine asylum seekers and break the business model of people who seek to exploit the system.
“This is Peter Dutton’s legacy. While Mr Dutton was focused on marketing himself as a tough decision-maker on borders, his six years in charge of the immigration system has proved that he is weak, incompetent or both – overseeing record numbers of onshore Protection visa applications and a system that was not equipped to deal with them,” said Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Andrew Giles (pictured, right).
“Australians are rightly proud of our country’s generous refugee program which assists those who are fleeing persecution and need Australia’s protection. The Albanese Government will not stand back and allow people traffickers and other bad actors to exploit vulnerable migrants and undermine the integrity of that program.”
An investment of $54 million will be used to establish real-time priority processing of Protection visa applications to help break the business model of those who abuse the system and ensure a faster, fairer and more efficient protection system for those genuinely in need of Australia’s protection, he said.
An investment of over $58 million in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia will increase the capacity of those bodies to deal with significant Protection visa and other migration-related caseloads.
This investment will provide for:
- An additional 10 Members for the AAT. This is in addition to the 93 additional Members that the Government has announced recently. All of these additional AAT Members will transition to the new Administrative Review Tribunal when it is established.
- An additional 10 Federal Circuit and Family Court judges.
Further, the Government has committed over $48 million to boost essential legal assistance services to support applicants through the application process.
“Our protection system and the backlogs will take time to fix. But as a result of these investments, those in need of Australia’s protection will be provided certainty about their future sooner, allowing them to focus on building their lives in Australia, and those who are seeking to exploit the system and are applying simply to extend their stay in Australia will be swiftly refused,” said Mr Giles.
“The Government is committed to ensuring applications are assessed lawfully, fairly and reasonably, in line with our international obligations while continuing to secure our borders, combatting people smuggling and preventing the exploitation of vulnerable migrants.”
