The Albanese government has hurried through new powers to block some temporary visa holders from travelling to Australia amid global crises.
The changes, which were passed on Thursday afternoon less than a week after they were drafted, have been described by the government as crucial to border management.
Let’s explain what is changing.
Can Australia now block entry to some people on temporary visas during global conflicts?
Yes. If signed off by the prime minister and the foreign affairs minister, the home affairs minister can issue an “arrival control determination” suspending temporary visa holders from certain countries for a period of six months.
While the ruling applies as a blanket block for anyone falling under the determination’s categories, individuals can get permission to travel to Australia if they can show they remain a “genuinely temporary entrant”.
In practice, a power like this could be used to prevent Iranians, issued with tourist visas before the US and Israel struck Tehran, from visiting Australia.
The home affairs department’s immigration head, Clare Sharp, said the changes give Australia “adequate time to better assess and manage risks associated with those non-citizens travelling” here.
The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said in a media conference on Wednesday the changes were to ensure visas granted by the government were “deliberate decisions”.
“If you get a visa at a time that your country was not … a war zone, and then it becomes a war zone, there are visas out there that in the current context, we would not have issued,” he said.
“We do have the power to cancel them right now. But we have to do it individually for each one and that’s just not a practical thing to be able to do.”
Can the power be used to target particular groups?
The law indicates that the controls can apply to certain “classes” of non-citizens. That class is determined by the country their travel documents have been issued from and the type of visa they’ve been given, Sharp told a committee hearing this week.
“The travel document that identifies the nationality they’re travelling on as well as the type of visa are the two points by which for our systems it’s easiest to identify a group or class of people,” she said.
“The law doesn’t apply to visa holders who are onshore in Australia, recognising that at the time a crisis erupts, Australia does want to support those people.
“It does recognise, however, that there are a very large number of temporary visa holders offshore, and it is trying to manage the impact on Australia’s migration system should they all choose to travel to Australia immediately after the event.”
Why does the Albanese government want to introduce this now?
While the new powers are country-agnostic, the speed in which they were introduced and passed is related to concern about people movements following the outbreak of war in the Middle East.
There are more than 40,000 temporary visa holders across the affected region at the moment, with 7,200 in Iran, as of Tuesday.
The home affairs department confirmed this week it had only been instructed to begin drafting the proposal last Friday.
Burke said there were was another reason the government had to move quickly.
“The answer is simple. The moment you announce this sort of legislation is there, you get a potential behavioural change,” he said.
“You get a potential window where people say, ‘Well, if I was going to come for a permanent reason, better get in there quickly.’”
How are people reacting?
The federal government had announced it had granted asylum to Iranian women’s football players only hours before revealing the new powers. Refugee and asylum seeker advocacy groups, such as the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said the decision sent a “disturbing message”.
“On the same day the prime minister is offering instant permanent visas to the Iranian soccer team, the government is introducing laws that could prevent the extended family members and friends of Australian citizens of Iranian descent from travelling here to safety,” the ASRC’s chief executive, Kon Karapanagiotidis, said.
In the Senate on Thursday, the crossbench was similarly cynical of the move. ACT senator David Pocock criticised the speed in which senators had to get across the details while the Greens attempted to pass amendments to lift the number of humanitarian places Australia offers to 27,000 from 20,000.
