David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pursuant to standing order 74(5), I ask the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs for an explanation as to why answers have not been provided to questions on notice Nos 57, 62, 66, 705, 706, 709, 710, 1,010, 1,011 and 1,012 asked during the 2024-25 budget estimates hearings of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee. The questions relate to the legacy case load and fast-track systems.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The answer, in essence, comes down to the sheer volume of questions on notice that are being asked in the Home Affairs portfolio. At the last round of Senate estimates hearings, more than 1,000 questions on notice were asked in the Home Affairs portfolio. There were 276 from Senator Hume, 264 from Senator Shoebridge, 170 from Senator Paterson and hundreds more from other senators. Of those questions, just under two-thirds have already been answered—672 have been answered, and 376 are unanswered.

The reason some of these questions remain unanswered is the unprecedented explosion in the number of questions on notice so far this term. We've seen repeated questioning from those opposite, for example, about what paper departments are using or what temperature thermostats are set to. They're asking the big issues.

As I said, more than 1,000 questions on notice were asked in the most recent Home Affairs estimates. By comparison, the numbers of questions on notice in the Home Affairs portfolio in the last term of parliament were 563 in 2021-22, 468 in 2020-21 and 109 in 2019-20, so there has been, essentially, a doubling of the number of questions on notice asked in that one portfolio alone. But I'm aware that ministers, ministers' offices and departments are actively working on the answering the remaining questions.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

There are a number of matters to say immediately to that. It is the job of the government, under the standing orders, to respond to the questions that have been asked. Each and every one of these questions relates to serious issues involving the human rights of some 7,000 people living in our community. To respond to them in the manner that the minister just did, to equate them to questions about paper supplies or thermostats, shows the utter disrespect this minister and the government have for the thousands of people who are having their rights abused because they're being denied under the grossly unfair fast-track system. To equate the lives and the unfair struggles of people under the fast-track system with issues about the temperature setting of thermostats shows the disrespect that this government has for people who are having their rights repeatedly abused by the broken immigration system the government is in charge of.

These questions that have failed to be answered related to questions related to issues such as the staffing allocation to the Immigration Assessment Authority. That's an authority that this parliament has passed legislation to abolish, and we want to know: Is it still operating? How many people are employed there, in a system that everybody agrees is grossly unfair and which we have collectively decided should be abolished? We wanted information about the number of people who have lodged applications for ministerial intervention. How many people have been refused a TPV or a SHEV? We wanted answers to basic questions—information that should be readily available to the minister at the touch of a button—about how many claims from this case load have been approved, granted or refused this year on information provided by Home Affairs. We wanted to know the information on the 375 children that have had their claims rejected by the unfair fast-track system. This is all critical information about a core human rights issue and it's information, I would suggest, this government doesn't want to provide, because it would show what an appalling state of affairs it is presiding over.

We're some 2½ years into this government that promised to do things differently to the previous government, and what they have done is continue to subject some 7,000 people who were failed by the coalition's appalling fast-track process to a system that every independent review says is unfair, biased and cruel. This government not only has not helped them but is now refusing to even answer basic questions about what's happening to those people. The Albanese government is preventing these people from rebuilding their lives and from stepping forward, and it's this waste of human potential that is just so criminal.

I was lucky to meet with three people yesterday—three bright, capable, engaging young people—who have been subjected to this fast-track system. I know that they would have met with any other member in this chamber. The offer was open to all of you to talk to these people, and their advocates, and to find out what's been happening in their lives. This isn't the first time I've met with these three extraordinary young people. I've previously met with them and many others in the cohort.

One of the people I met with was Elnaz, a brilliant woman with a PhD in cancer research. She is truly extraordinary. I would like to go into detail about her cancer research work—her study of genetics and how that can be particularly used to treat skin cancer, including melanoma—but, frankly, I don't understand it. She is an extraordinarily talented PhD recipient. Her work is internationally renowned. She has received repeated requests to speak to her research—her research which has been government funded, I might add, and which continues in a government funded agency to provide world-breaking cancer research on melanomas. She is repeatedly asked to make international presentations on her work, but she can't go because, if she leaves the country, she won't be allowed back in. She'll be refused a right to return if she leaves the country. So she can't share her research knowledge with other cancer researchers around the world. She can't even go to New Zealand, and some of the work she's doing is part of a co-production with New Zealand research authorities. She can't travel to New Zealand. Why? Because this government refuses to give her any kind of permanent visa.

It has her on endless, cycling bridging visas, with the constant threat that the next visa won't be granted or that her work rights will be removed or that her right to Medicare will be taken off. Every time, on this six-monthly cycle of bridging visas that she lives on, she waits to see if some unnamed bureaucrat in Home Affairs will take away her work rights and any ongoing study rights. Why are we doing that to Elnaz, this extraordinarily talented young woman who's contributing so much? I've got to be frank with you. As someone whose skin burns when I walk out on a 20-degree day that's overcast, I want Elnaz's work on melanoma and skin cancer to be complete. I'll be frank; I have a personal interest in it—as do many of my colleagues.

Why is this government doing this? Why is Elnaz still, a decade on, unable to build a permanent life here? Why is she refused the right to travel? Why can't she go and teach her research, give her research insights to other cancer researchers around the world? Because this government refuses to help. They refuse to deal with any of the 7,000 legacy case loads in the system. Not only that, Elnaz is here because she's an Hazara, who, we know, are currently being persecuted in Afghanistan for the simple fact of being Hazara. Imagine this: she's not just Hazara; she's an incredibly educated, articulate, capable Hazara woman. Does this government seriously say she has no refugee claim and that she can go back to Afghanistan and return to the Taliban? It's obscene on so many levels. Why won't the minister put in place a process that can see Elnaz get security?

The system is so arbitrary. When it comes to Elnaz, she and a number of her family members came here fleeing the persecution of the Taliban some 10 years ago. Other members of her family, close members of her family, had their refugee claims accepted, and, almost with exactly the same family history, Elnaz was randomly rejected—almost exactly the same facts. When you speak to Elnaz about what happened in the fast-track process, she will tell you that she put her application in after months of pulling together the documentation. It was a thick application that went in, supported by detailed accounts, supported by contemporaneous records telling the story of her persecution as a Hazara woman. She put it in at 10 o'clock one night, and she got the notice of rejection by the fast-track process at 10 am the following day. It was so obscenely disrespectful, so obviously unfair, so obviously a refusal to engage with the merits of her claim, or to even pretend to.

And, 10 years on, she's asking why the government is still doing this to her and so many like her. That's the question we haven't had answered from the minister today, and that's the question Labor refuses to answer. That base unfairness is why Labor's refusing to answer any of these 10 questions about the fast-track process, because they know what they're doing is so bloody wrong.

I could speak more about the unfairness in Elnaz's story, but I also met with Saroya. She's a young woman of Sri Lankan heritage who came here as a child and, again, was refused by the fast-track system, like pretty much everybody who came here with a Sri Lankan Tamil background. There's like a 93 per cent refusal, under the fast-track system, for any Tamil refugee claim. It's almost like, 'Computer says no', when anyone with a Tamil background puts in an application. 'Computer says no'; you will be rejected.

Saroya finished her HSC very recently in Sydney. She did incredibly well—proud parents—and enrolled in a short course at university because she had a bridging visa that, for that moment, gave her study rights. She paid some $17,000 for the short course, to get started, because the government refuses to give her and anyone like her—other young people who have spent the great majority of their life here going to schools next to our kids—any access to HECS or any subsidised access to university. So she paid $17,000 of her own money for the short course at a university in Sydney.

She starts it and is halfway through the three-month course, and then her bridging visa rolls over, and they took away her study rights. She had to be withdrawn from the course and she didn't get her money back. I think she got back half of her money that she'd paid for the course. She's a young woman with a refugee background and minimal financial resources who was looking forward to going to university and engaging in the next stage of her life, and not only does the government take away her study rights; they do it in the middle of a short course that she's paid for, and she's $7½ thousand to $8,000 in the hole.

Why are you doing that to Saroya? Why won't you let this incredibly bright young woman live to her full potential and go to university? Even if you won't permit or agree to extend HECS, why take away the study rights of this bright, young 18-year-old woman halfway through a course so she has to pull out of university? Why have that level of cruelty towards her? I can't understand it. Is it any wonder that we don't get answers from the government? Is it any wonder that the minister's gone—they've all headed out. They don't have an answer to this other than that they want to be crueller than the coalition, like we heard here in question time. We had the minister proudly say that you've rejected more visas under Labor than the coalition used to—that they're actually nastier and harder on immigration. The results of that exchange of rhetoric between nasty and nastier in this chamber is that people like Saroya have their lives turned upside down, have their study rights taken and their future stolen and live in this endless fog of uncertainty, where they have no permanency, no rights to go to university, no rights to settle down and live to their human potential.

Finally, I met with Malad who fled Iran a decade ago. He was a human rights advocate there, and he's a human rights advocate here. I've been with him at those Woman, Life, Freedom rallies, as have—I reckon—other members in this chamber and other members of the government and the opposition. I've seen him proudly speak about human rights and support those women who are standing up to the regime. He speaks about human rights publicly and proudly, and because of that he's targeted by the Iranian regime. He's targeted. He has a target on him. If he ever returned to Iran he would be arrested, potentially tortured and put through the most grossly unjust system. We all know that. Anyone from Home Affairs with a fair mind would know that.

But what does the government do in relation to Malad? Not only was he rejected by that unfair fast-track system; he's put on these endless bridging visas. One day he has study rights; one day he has work rights, and next day he doesn't. He can't get a mortgage, can't get a permanent home and can't get a permanent job. That's his life. But now they also say that he should be returned to Iran and that they don't accept his refugee claim. Malad, who's a human right advocate and has stood with members of parliament proudly challenging this government, this brutal murderous government—the Albanese Labor government says he should be able to be returned to Iran. What would happen if Malad got off the plane in Iran? He'd be arrested. He'd potentially be tortured, and heavens knows what would happen to his family.

How do you let this happen? There are some 7,000 people in this situation. What does Minister Burke say in relation to this? He says, 'I've met with some people, and when I meet with them one on one or I get a ministerial intervention, an individual, one-off ministerial intervention, then I may approve it.' What we know in terms of his ministerial intervention and the answer to this—for the one-by-one, bespoke justice applications to the minister—is that that will inevitably fail.

Between 2021 and March 2024, there were only some 1,100 people who were allowed to make a ministerial intervention, and of those only about 400 requests a year get dealt with. If the 7,000 backlog, the case load legacy of the fast-track system, is going to be dealt with by ministerial intervention at 400 cases a year, which is the government's apparent plan—that's why we wanted data—it'll be two decades before that's ended. Elnaz, Saroya, Malad and thousands like them deserve so much better.

Question agreed to.