Lenore Taylor theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 December 2013
Asylum advocates label move that will leave about 33,000 people on bridging visas without working rights 'heartbreaking'
Tony Abbott (right) and Scott Morrison at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/AAP
Asylum seekers who arrived by boat and are already in Australia will be left on bridging visas until parliament allows the Abbott government to reintroduce Howard-era temporary protection visas.
The immigration minister, Scott Morrison, has used his ministerial powers to cap the number of permanent protection visas at the exact number already issued – meaning no asylum seeker will gain permanent residency and about 33,000 will be left on bridging visas without work rights.
A ministerial decision was published late on Tuesday night in which Morrison made the decree under section 85 of the Migration Act. In explanatory memorandum, it says: “The instrument is exempt from disallowance and therefore a Human Rights Statement of Compatibility is not required.”
Pamela Curr, of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said the decision was “heartbreaking” and potentially left thousands of asylum seekers without any visas at all because many of the Labor-era bridging visas were now running out.
The current cap on permanent protection visas lasts until next July, but Morrison has reportedly said it will continue until the Senate changes its mind and allows the reintroduction of TPVs.
The manoeuvre makes good Tony Abbott’s vow to circumvent the Senate’s rejection of the government’s proposed temporary protection visas.
Labor and the Greens combined in the Senate to veto the reintroduction of Howard-era temporary protection visas on Monday night, a move the prime minister described as a “two-finger salute” to the Australian people’s decision in the September election.
Abbott is vowing to keep the parliament sitting through Christmas until it passes the carbon tax and mining tax repeals, the increase to the debt ceiling and an as-yet-unspecified measure to enact the intent of the temporary protection visa law.
The government has also unveiled legislation to remove from the Department of Immigration – and confer instead on the immigration minister – the power to make a determination in the case of people whose claim for asylum had been rejected but who would be in danger if returned to their home country.
It is unclear how the government can force the Senate to continue sitting, since the Senate determines its own sitting patterns and the government does not have a majority in the upper house.
“The government could hardly have a clearer mandate than for temporary protection visas … I want to make it absolutely crystal clear … this government will never allow people who come here illegally by boat to gain permanent residency in Australia,” Abbott said.
“The Labor party is giving the two-finger salute to the voters of Australia.
“We will have more to say shortly about measures to ensure Labor’s attempt to sabotage TPVs is not effective,” he said. “This is a government who is not going to allow itself to be thwarted by the people smugglers and their allies in the Australian parliament.”
Abbott threatened to keep parliament from its holidays if it did not vote for his policies.
“The parliament should sit and do its job and doing its job means supporting the policies the people voted for. I want to ramp up the pressure on the Labor party, I don’t think the Labor party should get a free pass at Christmastime."
Labor and the Greens used their combined majority in the upper house to pass a disallowance motion against the government’s “cruel” TPV regulations on Monday night.
Legislation often allows ministers to set detailed rules and regulations within their portfolio, but such instruments can be struck down by a majority vote of either house of parliament. A similar regulation cannot normally be made within six months of a successful disallowance motion.
The government’s regulation prevented unauthorised maritime arrivals, as defined by the Migration Act, from being able to apply for or be granted a protection visa that allowed the holder to remain in Australia indefinitely. Instead, protection would be temporary.
Since the government now sends all asylum seekers arriving by boat offshore for processing, with none eligible for resettlement in Australia, its intention to offer temporary protection visas only applies to the backlog of asylum seekers already in Australia.
The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young moved the disallowance motion in the Senate on Monday night, saying TPVs led to “dramatic, harmful and dangerous effects”.
“We have had temporary protection visas before in this country and they were incredibly cruel, incredibly dangerous and created incredible suffering for the people they were imposed upon,” Hanson-Young said.
“Temporary protection visas under this government are for punishment's sake only. They are only being given to people who have already arrived in Australia.
"They have waited for years in immigration detention and then waited more years, perhaps on a bridging visa or in community detention, only to finally have their application for asylum assessed, be found to be genuine refugees and then be slapped with a temporary protection visa.”
Labor argues there is no need to use TPVs as a deterrent now that all asylum seekers are being sent offshore, and the manager of opposition business, Tony Burke, was unmoved by Abbott’s threat to keep parliament sitting.
“If Mr Abbott wants to bring us back to parliament, we’re all for it," he said. "It's extraordinary the PM thinks he needs to manufacture a crisis situation for his members of parliament to turn up to work.”
Labor abolished TPVs in 2008. Morrison said the Senate vote showed Labor had “learnt nothing from their border failures”.
On Wednesday Hanson Young said the move showed a government “drunk on power” and “chucking a hissy fit” because it hadn’t got its own way in the Senate. She said the people who would suffer are refugees.
Labor’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, said the government was “being mean for the sake of it”. Since Labor’s pre-election decision to send all asylum seekers offshore there was no deterrence value in preventing the backlog of asylum seekers already in the country from having their claims processed, he said.
“The cost of this will be the stress and anxiety to the refugees themselves who are being left in a permanent state of limbo, and the financial cost to the Australian people who will have to continue to support them because on bridging visas they are unable to work,” he said.
