Public condemnation, including protests in central Melbourne, forces a visa operation to be shut down as ‘lower levels of the organisation’ are blamed

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The federal government’s Australian Border Force was forced to abandon a controversial visa crackdown in Melbourne on Friday, following sustained criticism of the operation from politicians, unions, the city council, human rights lawyers, and the people of Victoria.

Melbourne city centre was brought to a standstill on Friday afternoon after protesters flooded Flinders Street train station, which they had deliberately planned to coincide with the 2pm joint border force and Victoria police press conference officially launching the operation.

Holding up placards and chanting “border force off our streets” and “fuck off border force,” more than 200 protesters walked from the steps of the station where they had gathered and spilled out to the intersection in front, banking up trams and causing chaos amongst the traffic.

The press conference was cancelled at 2.30pm; half an hour after that, the entire controversial operation, dubbed “Operation Fortitude”, was shelved by Victoria police in response to what they described as a high level of community concern.

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“We shut them up,” protest leader, Ezekiel Ox declared at the station shortly after 3.30pm. “They’re not having their press conference. We’re claiming victory. People who speak a second language are now not going to be harassed on trains tomorrow.”

Operation Fortitude was first announced by the border force on Friday morning and was to also involve police and transport officers, who over Friday evening and Saturday would target people travelling to, from and around the CBD.



Police sniffer dogs, electronic car license plate readers and booze buses were all to be used, while the border force’s commander in Victoria, Don Smith, warned border force officers would be “speaking with any individual we cross paths with”.

“You need to be aware of the conditions of your visa; if you commit visa fraud you should know it’s only a matter of time before you’re caught out,” he said, immediately triggering concerns that on-the-spot visa checks would be carried out and that officers would rely on racial profiling to target people suspected to have overstayed.

Unrest about the operation gained momentum in the ensuing hours, culminating in the protest on Friday afternoon. The border force’s own union, the Community and Public Sector Union, welcomed news that the operation had been cancelled, accusing the federal government of politicising their work.

“While border force staff have been involved in these types of operations before, they have never been publicised in this way,” the union’s national secretary, Nadine Flood, said.

“They were deeply concerned at the suggestion they would be stopping all people on the street, which is not how their work has been done in the past. We are calling on the federal government to stop cynically exploiting the work of the Australian Border Force for its own political ends, potentially putting these officers at risk.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protest in Melbourne makes Australian Border Force cancel visa crackdown. Link to video

In a further embarrassment for the federal government, Victoria’s police minister, Wade Noonan, issued a statement saying he had been led to believe Operation Fortitude would be a standard police operation targeting antisocial behaviour and commuters to ensure people got home safely.

“We fully support the decision by Victoria police to cancel the operation after the unfortunate and inappropriate characterisation by the Australian Border Force today,” Noonan said.

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The lord mayor of Melbourne city council, Robert Doyle, also weighed in on Twitter, praising Victoria police for cancelling the operation. Human rights barrister, Julian Burnside, the federal Greens member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, and federal Labor frontbencher, Anthony Albanese, were among those to question the operation over the course of the day and after its eventual scrapping.

“Operation Border Farce came to our city and was just as quickly shown the door,” Bandt said. “Within hours, Melbournians came together and stood up to Tony Abbott and his politics of division.”

Labor leader Bill Shorten did not condemn the operation but queried why it had been telegraphed to the media. Richard Marles, Labor’s federal immigration spokesman, said immigration minister Peter Dutton “needs to come out of hiding and provide an explanation for the shambles that has seen a cross-agency operation compromised and a key government agency left red-faced”.

Christopher Pyne, the leader of the federal House of Representatives, said Victoria’s decision to cancel the operation was “bizarre … these sort of visa checking arrangements go on all the time – it’s hardly a new thing”.



The executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, Hugh de Kretser, said while the backdown was welcome, the incident reinforced concerns around the militarisation of immigration officials.

In July, the Australian customs and border protection merged with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and launched the Australian Border Force, whose officers have substantially greater powers than either customs or immigration officials. Authorised officers can ask for information from someone they knows or reasonably suspects are a non-citizen.

“The whole incident reinforces concerns around the militarisation of our immigration officials,” de Kretser said.

“The comments this morning reflect a disturbing attitude around how the border force will conduct itself. While common sense has prevailed today, the events raise many questions. The legal basis for the entire operation and the sharing of information between police and the border force is murky.”

Barrister and senior vice president of Liberty Victoria Jessie Taylor described the outcome as “a fantastic demonstration of people power”.

“The public response was so powerful and so swift,” she said. “This was going to be a preposterous waste of resources and money.

“Victoria police of course have stop and search powers when they have reasonable suspicions such actions are warranted. But when you start to bringing reasonable suspicion into the realm of immigration and border protection, you run a real risk that there will be racial profiling occurring, and that anyone without blue eyes and fair skin [will be] targeted.

“Not to mention the hubris with which this operation was talked about, and the language which was chosen to describe the operation.”

Anyone who was up to no good would surely have known to have just stayed indoors through the operation, she added.

“It was a farce,” Taylor said. “It was an insult to those trying to enjoy Australia’s most liveable city.”

In a strong sign that the border force knew the backlash to the operation had been severe, its commissioner, Roman Quaedvlieg, held a press conference in the hours following the protest, saying; “There was never any intent for the border force to proactively go out and seek immigration breaches in Melbourne city.”

However, he acknowledged that the language used in the press release issued by the border force on Friday morning, and which triggered the unrest, was “clumsily worded”.

“It was released in the lower levels of the organisation,” he said.