Government to reintroduce temporary protection visas in deal with PUP to ensure Senate success

Updated

The Federal Government looks set to succeed in its bid to bring back temporary visas for refugees, after striking a deal with the Palmer United Party.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has introduced legislation to Parliament to resurrect the Howard-era temporary protection visa (TPVs), and to create a new visa called a safe haven enterprise visa (SHEV).

The bill also moves to classify babies born to asylum seekers in Australia as "unauthorised maritime arrivals" to ensure they will be blocked from applying for a permanent protection visa and can be resettled offshore.

Human Rights Law Centre spokesman Daniel Webb said the measure was "cruel" and "patently absurd".

"If these changes go ahead, some babies born in this country will be subject to mandatory detention and mandatory removal to Nauru as soon as possible," he said in a statement.

Mr Morrison has filmed a video message to be shown to the asylum seekers held in offshore detention centres in Nauru and PNG's Manus Island.

"You may have heard that temporary protection visas are to be introduced. This policy does not apply to Nauru or on Manus Island," he said in the message.

Those in community detention in Australia will be able to apply but Mr Morrison has stressed that neither of the new visas allow for permanent settlement in Australia and will, therefore, not act to encourage the people smuggling trade.

"This will help ensure that the tap stays off, that it will never return and we will never go back to the cost and chaos and tragedy that was put in place under the previous Government," Mr Morrison told Parliament.

However, refugee advocate and human rights lawyer David Manne said the system will "re-traumatise" refugees.

"What we know from the past, under the previous TPV experiment in this country, is that leaving people in this kind of limbo and cut off from family re-traumatised thousands of refugees, and in fact was a major block and major impediment in terms of them being able to rebuild their lives fully and fully participate and contribute in this country," he told ABC News 24.

However, there are questions about whether the new safe haven enterprise visa, which was suggested by PUP leader Clive Palmer, could give refugees permanent residency.

Mr Morrison said the SHEV "encourages enterprise through earning and learning".

It will be available for five years and will be given to refugees who live in areas deemed to have labour shortages.

But the SHEV will allow recipients who work for three-and-a-half years to apply for other onshore visas, including family and skilled visas.

Mr Morrison said that would be a "very high bar to clear" and insisted it would not result in permanent protection.

"They will not be able to apply for a permanent protection visa," he said.

The Coalition has struck a deal with the Palmer United Party to try to ensure the legislation passes the Senate.

PUP leader Clive Palmer said the new safe haven enterprise visa would give people a fresh start in regional Australia.

"The safe haven enterprise visa will allow people to come to Australia for an initial period of five years and give them the opportunity to work, provided they go to a remote location or a location that needs labour," he said in Brisbane.

"There are many areas and many communities in our country that can't get labour."

Opposition spokesman Richard Marles said it seemed that the visa would open a pathway to citizenship.

"Scott Morrison seeks to present himself as the tough man of Australia's borders, but what we are seeing in this minister is a man who absolutely knows how to backflip," he said.

But Greens spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said the SHEV was a "furphy".

"I am sad to say that Clive Palmer has been well and truly played," she said.

"There is no pathway to permanency for the bulk of asylum seekers and refugees that this bill will deal with."

Family reunion not included in new TPVs

TPVs were brought in by the Howard government and abolished by the Rudd Labor government in 2008.

Mr Morrison said those granted a TPV visa would be entitled to work, receive social security and Medicare benefits - as they had under the last Coalition government.

But they would not have family reunion rights and the visa would be granted for a maximum of three years.

TPVs have been widely criticised for leaving people in limbo, with no certainty about their future, but Mr Morrison disputed that.

"TPVs will provide refugees with stability and a chance to get on with their lives, while at the same time guaranteeing that people smugglers do not have a 'permanent protection visa product' to sell to those who are thinking of travelling illegally to Australia," he said.

He said the visas would allow the Government to deal with about 30,000 asylum seekers whose cases had still not been assessed.

"The challenge of dealing with the legacy case load of some 30,000 people who turned up under Labor, the overwhelming majority of those I should stress who are in the community, not in held detention in this country, that task remains," he said.

Mr Morrison said he wanted the thousands of cases cleared as soon as possible, but "is not naive".

"I think it will take years," he said.

Mr Morrison is due to travel to Cambodia tomorrow to sign a new resettlement deal, which he said will be apply to asylum seekers on a "strictly voluntary" basis.

Topics: immigration, community-and-society, government-and-politics, federal-government, australia

First posted