Immigration row heats up as Coalition accuses Labor of botching asylum claims process

The Coalition has accused Labor of mishandling high numbers of onshore asylum claims in a further sign it intends to put immigration front and centre of its election campaign next year.

Shadow minister for immigration and citizenship Dan Tehan seized on the latest monthly figures of “onshore protection” arrivals to slam the Albanese Government for failing to get a grip on the asylum process at a time when houses are in short supply nationwide.

Fresh data from the Department of Home Affairs shows 1869 people applied for subclass 866 onshore protection visas in October, with China leading the way with 196 arrivals, followed by India with 174 and Vietnam at 123.

Although the number fell marginally from the previous month’s 2002, the opposition suggests that consistently high month-on-month figures reveal the visa category is being abused as a backdoor entry point to Australia that undermines the process for genuine asylum seekers.

“Since coming to power, Labor has rejected 39,392 asylum claims but deported just 370 failed asylum seekers,” said Mr Tehan, citing figures compiled from the home affairs department’s database.

“When Labor allows people to abuse the Protection visa process it undermines the integrity of our migration system and puts more pressure on our housing crisis,” added.

“Australia’s housing crisis is exacerbated by Labor’s failure to manage migration,” he said.

The onshore protection visa is designed to process people who arrived in Australia on a valid visa and who want to seek asylum, allowing them to live, work and study in the country and to sponsor eligible family members for permanent residence through the offshore Humanitarian Program.

But the Coalition is intensifying its narrative that the overall immigration system is being misused at the expense of skilled workers, including traders who could be key to helping resolve the national housing crisis.

A Home Affairs department spokesperson pointed to the announcement of a major package of reforms in October 2023 to restore integrity to Australia’s refugee protection system and remove incentives for non-genuine applicants to apply for protection.

This included increasing resources to reduce Protection visa processing times, and boosting free legal assistance for applicants.

“Most new Protection visa applications are now being decided almost eight times faster than in recent years,” the spokesperson said. “Protection visa decisions are at at an all-time high, and consistently outstripping lodgements.”

The department had also increased efforts to identify, detain and remove individuals who sought to misuse the system and those who had exhausted all avenues to remain were expected to depart.

The crackdown followed a move by Labor in early 2023 to instigate a rapid review of the exploitation of Australia’s visa system, commissioning former Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police Christine Nixon to assess and recommend how to fix vulnerabilities in the process and prevent the abuse of migrants.

The review, released in October 2023, uncovered “grotesque abuses” of temporary visa holders, including sexual exploitation, human trafficking and organised crime, which Labor claims flourished under the previous Coalition government.

The Nixon report found that immigration compliance staff were reduced from 380 in 2013-14 to about 200 in 2022-23, which then Immigration Minister Clare O’Neil said demonstrated a “lack of care, attention and basic interest”.

The government agreed, to varying degrees, with 24 out of 34 of the Nixon recommendations.

It vowed to expand its powers to cancel the visas of migrants who had been found to exploit other temporary migrants and to set up a new division of the department of home affairs, with an initial four-year budget of $50m, to focus on immigration compliance.

According to the University of New South Wales at the time, the process of sifting through valid and false protection claims had caused the time frame for a final decision on some applications to balloon to as long as 11 years.

The delays had a devastating impact on people with genuine asylum claims, it said, pointing to the Nixon conclusions that the time lag was “motivating bad actors” to take advantage of the system by lodging increasing numbers of “non-genuine applications for protection”.

The review recommended a requirement for applications for protection visa subclass 866 to be made through “a lawful provider of immigration assistance,” which the government “noted” for further consideration while respecting people’s rights to choose their own legal representation.

The Coalition has since accused Labor of “cherry-picking” from the report as it ramps up its offensive on the government’s immigration record ahead of the federal poll.

However, Paul Power, CEO of the Refugee Council, told the Nightly the situation had been worse under the previous Coalition government.

“The statistics over the past decade show that the issue that they are talking about grew dramatically during the time the Coalition was in charge and, in fact, the number of new applications over the past decade was at its highest when Peter Dutton was the minister for home affairs,” he said.

“It created the set of circumstances that the current government is trying to respond to.”

The latest opposition accusations feed into an increasingly acrimonious slanging match between the Coalition and Labor in a November parliamentary sitting that has been overshadowed by election posturing.

It follows a shock U-turn by the Coalition on Monday to block a controversial government plan to introduce caps for student enrolments at 270,000 from January.

Labor insiders concede the move took them by surprise and it has fuelled speculation that the opposition is trying to put Labor on the back foot over its efforts to convince voters it has brought more order to the immigration system.

Education Minister Jason Clare lashed out at the decision, labelling opposition leader Peter Dutton a “fraud” on tough immigration policies, adding he had “never in my life” expected to see the Greens and the opposition join sides on the issue.

However, in a statement, the shadow education minister, Sarah Henderson, along with fellow Liberals James Paterson and Dan Tehan, accused Labor of taking a “piecemeal approach” that did “nothing to address the structural issues it has created”.