James Campbell: Refugees a growing issue for Albanese government

Herald Sun

18 hours ago

It hasn't hit the headlines yet, but there's a refugee problem quietly brewing for Albo, which if left unattended, is going to become a major headache.
I'm talking about the ballooning number of failed asylum seekers still in Australia.
On Wednesday, in response to a senate motion, the government released the latest monthly stats on onshore asylum applications.
The situation for July was roughly the same as it has been for every month for the past few years – roughly 2000 people applied for protection, with the largest cohort (365) coming from India followed by China (233).
And as is also usual the number who applied for protection upon arrival at an airport was zero.
During the same month, there were – again as usual – roughly 2200 decisions made, with 599 people successful and 1621 unsuccessful.
Malaysians (186) were the nationals most likely to be deemed in need of protection, followed by Pakistanis (55) and Iranians (41), while very few Chinese (37) and Indians (15) were successful.
All up, there are 27,100 asylum seekers waiting for their cases to be determined, which despite the fact the government has greatly improved the decision rate in the past three years, is roughly the same number as there were when they came office in May 2022.
The problem for the government is the growth in the number of people who are still here despite exhausting all avenues of appeal against the decision not to grant them asylum.
When Labor came to office, there were roughly 68,000 people who had been told they must leave who were still here.
By the end of July, this number had reached 98,979, which without a doubt will be more than 100,000 when the government releases the numbers next month.
A year ago, it was 84,000, which if repeated over this term of Albo-time will see roughly another 45,000 added to the pile.
The reason you can be sure it won't shrink is simple – we basically don't deport failed asylum seekers.
Seriously, we don't.
Last month, only 10 people refused protection visas were deported – fewer than five of whom left involuntarily.
This isn't a Labor thing either – in the last month of the Coalition government, only nine left.
And if you think this failure is bizarre, consider the fact that as of February 2024 – 78 per cent of failed asylum seekers had the right to work and the same percentage had the right to study.
In other words, we are spending God knows how much money running an asylum seeker assessment system in which the outcome for the successful and unsuccessful applicant is basically the same.
Maybe you think we can muddle along like this because in reality adding 15,000 failed asylum seekers a year to the total already here won't make much of a difference in a world in which net overseas migration is growing by 350,000 a year.
Put like that, isn't it really just a rounding error?
But there are several reasons it should be worrying the government.
The most obvious is because it's clearly going to be a pretty big pull factor if it becomes widely known that the reality is if you get to Australia you will stay in Australia (just don't come by boat!).
But there are already reasons why this number is likely to grow over the next few years.
The first is because the government has made it harder for students to obtain permanent residency, which will inevitably mean more of those who don't want to leave will try for asylum.
It should be pointed out as an aside at this point that it is possible for an international 'student' to commence an application for asylum after having already spent the better part of a decade in Australia, shifting from course-to-course then running the clock fighting visa cancellations at the review tribunal and the Federal Circuit Court, all the while enjoying work rights.
Then there's the thousands of people who were granted pandemic visas, which only finally closed in February – who knows how many of them will end up claiming a genuine fear of persecution if they go home?
It would be bad enough if the years it can take to resolve an asylum application – during which the claimant enjoyed work rights – were encouraging bogus applications.
What's even worse is a system which takes years to weed out bogus applicants, but which then allows them to stay forever anyway.
But that is what we have at the moment and there's no sign the government has any interest in doing anything about it. James Campbell National weekend political editor
James Campbell is national weekend political editor for Saturday and Sunday News Corporation newspapers and websites across Australia, including the Saturday and Sunday Herald Sun, the Saturday and Sunday Telegraph and the Saturday Courier Mail and Sunday Mail. He has previously been investigations editor, state politics editor and opinion editor of the Herald Sun and Sunday Herald Sun. Since starting on the Sunday Herald Sun in 2008 Campbell has twice been awarded the Grant Hattam Quill Award for investigative journalism by the Melbourne Press Club and in 2013 won the Walkley Award for Scoop of the Year.