As The Good Oil’s Cam likes to say, given a choice between a conspiracy and a stuff-up, it’s almost always a stuff-up. Almost. Because, while once or twice might be a stuff-up, after the third time, you have to start wondering.
Still, this is a Labor government, so there’s plenty of room for more stuff-ups than Frank Spencer could ever manage. Which is fitting, really, because former Immigration Minister Andrew Giles bears more than a passing resemblance to the gormless protagonist of Some Mother Do ’Ave ’Em.
The latest revelation of Giles’ incompetence really does make you wonder if he was doing it all on purpose.
Thousands of Palestinian visa-holders were referred to ASIO for security checks after they were granted special temporary visitor permits, with the Department of Home Affairs providing a list of 2601 visa holders for review by the spy agency in March.
Brilliant! Check the backgrounds of people who are almost certainly Hamas supporters after you’ve given them a golden ticket to enter Australia!
What could possibly go wrong?
Heavily redacted departmental advice provided to former home affairs and immigration ministers Clare O’Neil and Andrew Giles reveals that multiple visas were cancelled as a result of security assessments.
Documents tabled in the Senate show that ASIO received a list of visa holders on March 16. An April 9 update showed 12 Palestinians had visas cancelled offshore following security checks, with five deemed a direct or indirect risk to Australia’s security.
Bear in mind, too, that these would have been only the most cursory ‘background checks’. Australians would have a harder time opening a bank account than these ‘Palestinians’ hand-waved into Labor’s vital Muslim-dominated seats.
The Coalition claims the documents show there were no rigorous face-to-face or biometric testing requirements prior to the granting of visas and that some visa-holders referred to ASIO would likely have already been in Australia.
Even worse, seven of them were already in Australia before a security check was run.
But Labor is nothing if not desperate to pander to Western Sydney.
Following Hamas’ murderous terror attacks in Israel on October 7, Anthony Albanese announced special visa support and financial assistance for Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank and border areas who arrived in Australia on temporary visitor visas can now apply for bridging visas. About 1600 approved Palestinian visa-holders remain abroad, including those stuck in Gaza.
Between October 7 and September 11, 2963 migration and temporary visas have been granted to Palestinians, including 2587 visitor visas, 97 family visas, 44 return resident visas, 80 skilled migration visas, 57 student visas and 98 other temporary visas.
A total of 7195 visa applications by Palestinians have been rejected.
So – nearly twice as many Palestinians were turned away on the basis of even a token security assessment than were let in.
And make no mistake: once they’re let in, they’ll never leave.
Up to 70 per cent of the roughly 1300 Palestinian visa-holders in Australia have now applied for onshore protection visas, allowing them access to Bridging E visas, which grant access to work rights and Medicare eligibility […]
“Individuals who become unlawful following the cessation of their substantive visa will be eligible for a Bridging E (subclass 050) visa (BVE). A BVE is a short-term bridging visa that allows eligible individuals to stay in Australia lawfully while they seek to resolve their immigration status by obtaining a substantive visa or while they make arrangements to depart.”
In other words, as we’ve repeatedly seen, the ‘asylum seeker advocate’ industry will simply clog the courts until the government gives in. The most egregious example might be the ex-Tamil Tiger ‘refugees’ and their anchor babies, who, despite losing every single court case and appeal, simply wore the system down (at the taxpayers’ expense) until they got their way.
As opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson also points out, ‘according to Tony Burke, none of these people can be sent home even if they are a security risk or fail the character test’.
If Giles and Anthony Albanese had purposely set out to flood the country with terrorist sleeper cells, what would they have done any different?
