Given the catastrophe they inherited from the Coalition Government, Labor’s immigration record over two years is actually quite good. Huge improvement is still required. They will remain seriously hampered by the Home Affairs portfolio construct and must eventually restore a freestanding Department of Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs. Andrew Giles has been unfairly criticised for his handling of a problem that was of Peter Dutton’s making.
Labor has delivered its verdict on its own handling of the Home Affairs portfolio, including immigration, by reassigning the two ministers concerned.
And yet, overall, Labor has made reasonable progress on immigration in its two years in office.
It must be remembered that they inherited a complete immigration catastrophe from Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton and nearly 10 years of Coalition Government.
At the centre of this disaster was the creation of a security-obsessed Department of Home Affairs which absorbed, and virtually gutted, the immigration function of expertise and resources.
In that period, immigration policy lost coherence, “buy a visa” schemes became popular, the idea of any client service disappeared off the map, huge backlogs of unprocessed applications developed, the immigration compliance function was quietly eliminated, labour scammers freely used the domestic asylum system and exploitation of all kinds of temporary workers became rampant. This was accompanied by unnecessarily cruel treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in the offshore processing centres and domestic detention centres, re-emergence of long-term detention caseloads and excessive use of visa cancellation and removal powers, especially for New Zealand citizens. Contrary to past practice, Australian Citizenship law was cynically used as a divisive political wedge rather than a unifying symbol. All of this was administered by a department that had the lowest morale in the Commonwealth in every year of its existence. And that’s the shortlist…
In the time available, Labor has done a creditable repair job. They initiated the Parkinson and other reviews to restore some coherence in policy and injected some more resources into the immigration function. They made some inroads into scandalous and unprecedented visa and Australian citizenship application backlogs, re-introduced an immigration compliance function, regularised Temporary Protection Visa holders, increased the humanitarian program, resolved the long-term temporary status of New Zealand citizens in Australia and undertook other specific initiatives, such as those related to building better connections with Pacific neighbours.
But endemic problems remain. Despite some injection of resources by Labor, the immigration function is still a shadow of its former self. Massive loss of deep expertise and the unwanted injection of a security culture have not helped. Client service reportedly remains extremely poor. Published client service targets were abandoned by Home Affairs years ago and have never been restored. The Department appears slow to react to emerging issues such as burgeoning net overseas migration, out-of-control overseas student policy and pivotal High Court decisions. Bizarrely, some immigration policy functions remain outsourced to other departments.
To their own detriment in getting completely on top of immigration, Labor has stuck with the Home Affairs portfolio model. The portfolio looks increasingly like a cross between a zombie and the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Like the Black Knight, we are asked to believe that no matter how many limbs are cut off, it will fight on as if nothing has changed. The portfolio remains a collection of vitally important, but largely unrelated, government functions.
Why did the government end up here?
In an article in Pearls and Irritations in May 2022 I said that an incoming Labor government’s first immigration priority should be to restore capability to develop good policy and deliver it by re-instating a well-resourced, freestanding, fully integrated Immigration Department delivering immigration, refugee, compliance, settlement, citizenship, multicultural policy and services.
I also said that “if Labor doesn’t at least get started on this project, it will soon find itself immovably stuck in the quagmire that the Coalition left behind.” Instead of doing this, Labor chose the path of working within the existing flawed structure and getting a few quick wins on the board as soon as possible. No doubt first time Ministers were also conscious of the magnitude of the task and feared being wedged by the Opposition and their media backers. They chose to risk the quagmire.
Fixing up the chaos left behind by the Coalition Government was always a two-term agenda. At some time, the Labor government will have to “bite the bullet” and commit to re-instating a freestanding Department of Immigration. It’s not a surprise that the recent multicultural review commissioned by the government has also recommended it. The sensitivity of immigration issues in Australia is such that if they choose not to do it, the administration will be once again overwhelmed by the next inevitable immigration “crisis.”
In the meantime, the portfolio may well benefit from the simplicity of having a single Minister in charge of immigration who is both an experienced minister and who has had a taste of the immigration portfolio before.
Central to the saga of the departing Ministers, is the attack by the Opposition and various media commentators on Andrew Giles and the Home Affairs Department for the handling of the High Court’s decision bringing to an end the legality of indefinite immigration detention -and the consequent release of some 150 immigration detainees that had completed a prison sentence for crimes committed in Australia.
The bizarre thing about this is that it is arguable that High Court decision was a result of Peter Dutton’s dramatic overuse of the visa cancellation and detention power during his time as Minister. His approach to cancelling visas and tolerating increasingly extended periods of immigration detention was always going to reach the High Court’s red line at some point. If anyone should have resigned because of the consequences of the High Court decision, it’s him. Unfortunately for Andrew Giles, the time bomb exploded on his watch.
There is reason to argue that the portfolio was slow to react to the decision and to develop a strategic as well as a tactical response. However, it’s unclear what media critics actually expected Giles to do. In effect, some seemed to want him to ignore the High Court decision or simply pretend it didn’t apply to individual cases.
No doubt this issue is going to remain a sore point for the government.
What has been missing from the public and media slanging match has been a deeper discussion about the best way to manage convicted criminals who have completed their sentence but remain an unacceptable risk to community safety. There are already provisions in State and Territory law to make such people subject to continuing detention or supervision. These are the laws applied in relation to the thousands of Australian citizens completing gaol sentences every year; it is unclear why a different system should apply to convicted non-citizens who simply cannot be removed from Australia for one reason or another. Media commentators have never managed to define why non-citizens released from Australian gaols (many of whom have spent most of their life in Australia) are uniquely more dangerous than Australian citizens in the same situation. The whole message of the High Court decision was that immigration powers are about removing non-citizens where necessary and possible – not punishing people for crimes or confining them for continuing risk to community safety.
Peter Hughes is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development. He had a long career in the Commonwealth Department of Immigration and Citizenship, retiring as Deputy Secretary in 2011. He was awarded the Public Service Medal in 2005 for outstanding public service in the development of policies and programs to increase citizenship, multicultural harmony and the settlement of refugees.
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