Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Xenophon, for your question. The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship has advised that the government has long-standing facilitative immigration arrangements for international airline crew entering and departing Australia. The relevant legislative provisions have been in place in their present form since 1 September 1994.

Airline crew members are taken to hold a special purpose visa for 30 days after they disembark from the aircraft on which they travelled to Australia, provided they hold a passport that is in force and an airline identity card. Airline crew members are not permitted to work in Australia other than the work of a kind they normally perform in the course of their duties as an airline crew member. These provisions are supported by the crew travel authority, which enables airlines to register crew with the department in advance and facilitates their processing through our systems at both check-in and on arrival in and departure from Australia. This arrangement can only be used by foreign crew entering Australia as employees engaged in international air travel either as positioning crew or as operational crew.

Special purpose visa provisions were not designed for foreign airline crew to perform identifiably separate tasks from their international airline crew work in Australia. Specifically, it is not appropriate for foreign airline crew to operate in Australia on domestic sectors which have no reasonable connection to an international service. Any work performed in relation to a domestic leg of an international flight should be incidental to, and in no way separate from, the international sector.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship has clarified this expectation with the Qantas Group in a letter of 2 April 2012 and will also be communicating with industry more broadly. It may be appropriate to consider monitoring arrangements with airlines to ensure this expectation is met. It is anticipated that these matters will be further considered at a meeting between the department and Qantas that will be occurring shortly. (Time expired)