The former senior immigration official Abul Rizvi has accused the Coalition’s home affairs spokesperson, James Paterson, of quoting him “very, very selectively” on visas for Palestinians and said the idea that people coming to Australia from Gaza posed a national security threat was a “complete beat-up”.
Rizvi, a former deputy immigration secretary, was quoted in the Australian on Thursday as saying the government had deviated from past practice by issuing tourist visas, rather than humanitarian visas, to people fleeing Gaza and that the decision was probably a political one that went against departmental advice.
Paterson jumped on the comments, telling reporters at parliament house on Thursday the news story contained “very serious allegations”.
Paterson called for the government to release its departmental advice, saying if they did not do so “that’s basically an admission of guilt from the government, it’s an admission that Mr Rizvi is right, they did make a political decision, that they departed from past practice, they ignored departmental advice and that they recklessly issued 3,000 tourist visas to people fleeing a war zone controlled by a terrorist organisation putting our national security at risk”.
On Thursday morning, Rizvi told the Guardian Paterson “seems to be quoting me very, very selectively”.
“He should read the whole article. If he read the whole article, I actually said the national security dimension of this is a beat-up.”
Rizvi said Paterson’s comments about people arriving on tourist visas risking Australia’s national security was “rubbish”.
“The checks these people go through are extensive, so to suggest there is a national security risk here is a complete beat-up. There is no evidence that the government recklessly issued tourist visas, in fact the refusal rate Australia is applying is substantially higher than the rate the Kiwis are applying.
“These people are being checked to an extraordinary degree by three governments,” Rizvi said, citing security checks done by Israel, Egypt and Australia. “That means it’s extremely unlikely a Hamas operative would get through.
“That’s the biggest rubbish part of it, is that we’ve let in all these Hamas operatives, there’s absolutely zero evidence of that. You could quite reasonably debate what now happens to these people, that’s fair enough, but the idea it’s a national security issue is rubbish.”
Paterson told the Guardian: “It’s up to the Albanese government to come clean about Mr Rivzi’s allegations – only they can put it beyond doubt by releasing the advice the department gave them about these visas.”
Rizvi’s assessment echoes comments by Mike Burgess, the director general of the security agency Asio, earlier this month, when he told the ABC’s Insiders: “The critical point is: there are security checks. There are criteria by which people are referred to my service for review and when they are, we deal with that effectively.”
From 7 October 2023 to 12 August, Australia granted 2,922 visas to people from the occupied Palestinian territories. Only an estimated 1,300 of those have so far been able to make it to Australia.
The opposition has seized on the granting of these visas in recent weeks, saying they were rushed and that security checks were inadequate.
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Earlier this month Peter Dutton said he supported a blanket ban on all arrivals from Gaza. “I don’t think people should be coming in from that war zone at all at the moment,” he told Sky News, saying it represented a national security threat. The comments were labelled racist by the independent MP Zali Steggall.
Rizvi said on Thursday: “What Mr Dutton proposed … a ban on all entries for Palestinians, there is no power in the Migration Act to select a particular nationality and say they are banned. I think it’s time Mr Dutton and Mr Paterson came clean on that.”
Rizvi said giving tourist visas to those fleeing Gaza, rather than humanitarian visas as has been done in some previous conflicts, means Australia is unable to assist the people it believes are most in need of help.
“I said I didn’t know what advice the department would have given, but the advice I would have given was to establish a humanitarian visa similar to what the Canadians have done,” he said.
Humanitarian visas also give more rights to the recipient, including often to work, study and receive Medicare and other social benefits.
Rizvi said he did think the decision to use visitor visas was probably done for political reasons, but that was “because [Labor] feared what Dutton and the Murdoch press would say if they created a humanitarian visa”.
People applying for tourist visas must show they intend their visit to be temporary, which means proving they have somewhere to return to. More than 7,000 Palestinians have had visa applications rejected since 7 October.
“The people who will be able to access this [visitor visa] will be quite wealthy and have options,” Rizvi said. He cited a hypothetical case of two orphaned children with an Australian relative who agreed to look after the children. He said they would be refused a visitor visa because they could not prove their stay would be temporary.
“In other words, we refused precisely the people we would have wanted to help, whereas if a humanitarian visa was in place, the kids would have been given priority because they’re in peril.”