Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo says there is no problem with the overwhelming number of asylum seeker applications (Screenshot via YouTube)

Our Government understating the current number of asylum seeker applications is a cause for concern, writes Abul Rizvi.

AT SENATE ESTIMATES this week, Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo denied that the record number of (largely non-genuine) asylum applications under his watch is a crisis. This is like the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail insisting losing his arms and legs was just a flesh wound. But more seriously, Government allowing Pezzullo to get away with this denial suggests the size of the problem is going to get a lot worse.

Pezzullo argues some 100,000 (largely non-genuine) asylum applications under his watch is just to be expected as it is only a tiny portion of total visa grants over the last 6-7 years. He also argues that the surge cannot be dealt with without extensive negative impacts across the visa system.

Both arguments are a furphy.

His first argument could make sense if the surge in non-genuine asylum applications was evenly spread across the visa caseload and across source countries. But that is not the case. The surge started with visitors from Malaysia – a source country for around six per cent of visitors to Australia – and has now extended to visitors from China.

Home Affairs boss Mike Pezzullo has defended his department's decision to reopen Christmas Island, as the bill rises to $27 million to house just four people. via @katie_b_burgess https://t.co/eJHIsmgd3t — Canberra Times (@canberratimes) October 21, 2019

If Pezzullo checked his department’s files, he would find that small versions of such surges out of Malaysia are not uncommon. In the past, these have been effectively dealt with through timely action targeting the relevant onshore and offshore agents as well as processing any applications quickly to reduce the capacity for the relevant agents to make a profit. By taking such action, the surges out of Malaysia rarely exceeded a few hundred asylum applications.

Pezzullo’s second argument, that the response would result in a negative impact right across all visa types, is also nonsense. If the bulk of the surge is just two countries and one visa type, why Pezzullo thinks an across-the-board response is required was not explained at Senate Estimates.

As in the past, a targeted response is needed, not the nonsense Pezzullo is pushing.

The key difference now is that Pezzullo’s negligence has allowed the caseload to grow to an unprecedented size and extended to Australia’s major source country for visitors.

His department and the AAT now simply do not have the resources to deal with the surge. And in such circumstances, denial and distraction become the only option.

This means the Government is now locked into Pezzullo’s denials and will not be prepared to invest the resources to get on top of the issue despite Pezzullo and the Government’s insistence they are strong on border protection. They are, in fact, only good at gratuitous cruelty and about as strong on border protection as Sargent Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes.

Pezzullo and Dutton’s incompetence means Australia is destined to develop a large and growing underclass of vulnerable and exploited labour.

How did Mike Pezzullo become Australia’s most powerful bureaucrat? https://t.co/bqLnpQZOx1 — 💧Vikki (@Vikkik88) October 22, 2019

Abul Rizvi was is a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration and is currently undertaking a PhD on Australia’s immigration policies. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.