Peter Dutton has been savaged by the government for turning a blind eye to a profoundly broken immigration system in his former role as home affairs minister.
The criticism was contained in Labor’s response to a scathing review delivered by Christine Nixon, who was commissioned by the government to undertake a “rapid review” into the exploitation of Australia’s visa system.
Ms Nixon found the immigration system was “seriously and systemically” broken, allowing for the perpetration of sexual slavery, human trafficking, and organised crime to go virtually unchecked.
She concluded migrant worker exploitation was essentially a design feature of the system, and urged the government to protect temporary migrants from the “grotesque abuses” as a matter of urgency.
In her letter to Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, Ms Nixon said Australia’s visa system “must be strengthened” in order to counter “organised crime syndicates, to ensure they don’t prey upon Australia as an easy destination to conduct their exploitative and criminal business, and to protect those who are most vulnerable”.
Ms Nixon’s review found that found that staffing cuts at the Home Affairs department, which were implemented under the former Coalition government, had undermined effective compliance.
Ms O’Neil said the review had ultimately revealed the extent of Mr Dutton’s failure in the role, and that, in turning a blind eye to criminals abusing Australia’s visa system, he had perpetrated “one of the great frauds” in Australian politics.
“How did this all happen in public view? It’s fairly simple. It was lack of care, lack of attention, and lack of basic interest in one of the most important things that the Australian government does,” she said.
“And the responsibility for a lot of these problems lies directly at Peter Dutton’s feet.
“(He) oversaw the immigration system and its decline in resourcing, in capability, and in its capacity to manage people coming in and out of the country in a lawful manner.
“I see it as one of the great frauds of Australian politics that he made a career out of pretending to be a tough gut on the borders, all the while he was cutting resources … and allowing criminals to stay in the system.”
Ms O’Neil said failures in the system had allowed Binjun Xie, the alleged Sydney-based human trafficking kingpin, to dodge authorities and remain in the system for nine years.
“We cannot run a migration system where someone can openly commit crimes right under the nose of Peter Dutton, and yet remain in our country effectively for an indefinite period until Minister (Andrew) Giles and I took action,” Ms O’Neil said.
Mr Dutton defended his time as home affairs minister later on Wednesday, saying he was proud of what he had done to reform the system, before pointing the finger towards Labor for “losing control of our borders”.
“I’ll tell you what I did as immigration minister: cancelled over 6000 visas of bikies, of criminals, of drug dealers, of rapists, of child sex offenders. This government hasn’t done anything like that,” he said.
“I’m not taking any lectures from Labor when it comes to the migration program,” he said.
Mr Dutton added that under his guidance, the Coalition had “stopped the boats”.
He also took aim at the government for sitting on the report for seven months. Ms O’Neil said that was normal government practice.
The review found exploitation had become normalised in many sections of the labour market, with backpackers and international students most susceptible to being paid below minimum wage.
The government has already introduced legislation to strengthen employer compliance, but the Nixon review recommends stronger action.
Ms Nixon’s review also found the protection visa system was being grossly exploited, with people who make false asylum claims protected by processing delays, allowing them to stay in the country fraudulently for up to 10 years and slowing down the process for vulnerable refugees.
Ms O’Neil said an announcement about the issue would be made on Thursday.
The review also revealed the “substantial and accelerating issues of integrity” in the international education sector, finding that refusals of international student visa applications are rapidly increasing, and are now at more than 35 per cent.
The government announced its response to this matter on Monday, confirming education agents would be banned from receiving commissions for poaching students enrolled in other institutions.
In response to the review, Ms O’Neil said it would make multi-agency Operation Inglebrook permanent.
Inglebrook was set up initially to crack down on sex exploitation in the immigration and visa system, and will continue to address systemic migrant worker exploitation across all industries, and the misuse of the visa and migration system.
The Home Affairs Minister said the government would also strengthen safeguards around migrant agents to address criminality in the industry, and would do so by providing a stronger framework for the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority and increasing financial penalties for providing unlawful immigration assistance.
It will give the government greater power to cancel the visas of migrants found to have exploited other temporary migrants.
The government will also invest an extra $50 million to establish a new division within the Home Affairs department to increase compliance resources in this financial year by 43 per cent.
Ms O’Neil said the new division would improve protections for vulnerable migrants, and target the organised abuse of immigration programs.
The government will release its Migration Strategy later this year.