Immigration minister tried to cap protection visas after Senate blocked his attempt to introduce TPVs

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The immigration minister has moved to head off a high court challenge to one of his ministerial directions by revoking a cap he imposed on the granting of protection visas only a couple of weeks ago.

The cap was imposed in early December after Labor and the Greens combined in the Senate during the final parliamentary sitting for 2013 to frustrate the Abbott government’s efforts to reinstate temporary protection visas (TPVs) for asylum seekers.

The Coalition argues the visas – a vestige of Howard-era deterrence policies, and abolished by Labor in 2008 – are necessary to deal with a backlog of asylum seekers that arrived under the previous government.

But the non-government parties who oppose the visas disallowed the TPVs, prompting immigration minister Scott Morrison on 4 December to use his ministerial powers to impose a cap on the number of onshore protection visas at 1,650 for this financial year.

Morrison declared the cap a valid response to the disallowance, and he accused Labor and the Greens of frustrating the new government’s agenda.

But Morrison revoked his own cap on Thursday as legal proceedings challenging the move commenced in the high court.

Lawyers from the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre asked for the cap to be declared invalid. The case centres on the treatment of a 15-year-old Ethiopian boy, who initially had his application for a protection visa denied. The boy was subsequently declared to be a refugee.

The Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said on Friday the cap and freeze on the visas had been imposed by Morrison during a “hissy fit”.

Hanson-Young said it had been obvious from the outset that the cap was in contradiction to the Migration Act – and Morrison’s pre-emptive revocation underscored the fact that it had been overreach.

“This turnabout today from the government shows this was in contradiction with the law. The government thought they could get away with it, but they’ve been caught out,” Hanson-Young told reporters in Adelaide on Friday.