Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The current immigration system is frustrating, complex and inaccessible. I regularly hear from community members who have been separated from their loved ones for years at a time due to delays and rejections of their visitor and partner visa applications. This means many miss crucial events in close family members' lives, like anniversaries, weddings and birthdays. They are left without seeing their partner, and their relationships suffer, or they aren't able to receive the help and care they need if they fall sick and need critical health care.

Visitor visa rejections, in particular, seem to be only increasing. Almost every day my office is contacted by a constituent whose loved one's visa application has been repeatedly denied on the basis of seemingly unfounded departmental suspicion that they would illegally overstay their visa. There is no evidence that this would occur, and their loved ones have always duly followed the rules when they have visited in the past.

I'd like to share some of their stories. One community member contacted my office almost nine months ago. At this point, he had been married to his wife, a senior nurse in India, for eight months. While they waited for the processing times for her partner visa application, which grew to over 32 months, the newlyweds hoped to be reunited, at least for a short visit. His wife has now had her visitor visa rejected three times, at immense financial and emotional cost. The department provides no further explanation for these rejections, other than their belief that there is insufficient evidence that she plans to return to India, despite her going to considerable effort to provide more and more evidence on each application. It is disgraceful to see the department continually separate young couples such as this one. It is unfounded to believe that these individuals would break the law and illegally overstay their visa when they have demonstrated nothing but compliance and are simply trying to navigate a long-distance relationship.

This story is far from unique. Another constituent of mine, who works as a paediatrician, and whose wife is an ophthalmologist, wants his brother to receive a visitor visa so that he can travel alongside his elderly parents to visit, after years apart. However, his brother's visa was also rejected by the department, on the basis that his brother might not return to India. They've spent years apart from his brother, who is also a medical professional and who has no intention of leaving his home, but the broken immigration system will not even allow him to spend a few weeks here to reunite with his family.

Another community member contacted my office, desperately seeking approval for a visitor visa for her 68-year-old sister so that she could attend her niece's wedding. Her sister is a retired professor of physics and lives in Lebanon and has visited Australia twice before, complying with all of her visa requirements. She had two visitor visa applications rejected due to insufficient evidence and spent six months anxiously wondering if she could reunite with her sister and attend her niece's wedding. It was only through my office's advocacy that she was actually able to secure a visa, just weeks before the marriage.

These are just a few examples of people who have been let down by a completely broken immigration system. There are countless other examples: people who have been unable to see their families while undergoing surgery, or to meet their grandchildren; people going years without seeing loved ones; and distressed families who have been forced to pay multiple excessive application fees, only to have them rejected and with no chance of appeal.

The extraordinary delays in processing impact the physical, emotional and mental health of these families, and they are forced to navigate an overly-complex system. The department has an extensive backlog of applications and appears under-resourced. Though we are 10 months into this new government—and I appreciate that, every time he has met with me, the minister has assured me that they are doing work to handle this—the department seems to refuse to handle the gravity of the situation that is before us.

The way that the Labor and LNP governments have managed immigration matters is shameful. The Greens are fighting for systemic change to these processes. Again I call on Minister Giles to ensure that our immigration system treats citizens and noncitizens alike with the respect, timeliness and compassion that they deserve.