Senator Andrew Bartlett
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
 
Migration again and flying (again)
Yesterday saw another day of Senate Committee hearings into the administration of the Migration Act. There was again some very useful evidence provided, including some quite startling evidence provided by a researcher named Michaela Rost, about the large number of overseas students who are subjected to detention when they run into problems with their student visas.

Whilst I don’t have a problem with conditions for student and other visas being set and enforced, one of the problems with the Migration Act is that it is so inflexible that even a minor or unintended breach can have quite dramatic consequences. A student who has paid tens of thousands of dollars for a course of study and is one subject off finishing it, can fail some subjects or be deemed by DIMIA to have worked for 22 hours in a week, instead of the 20 hours allowed under their visa. Instead of getting a fine or a please explain, they can get an automatic cancellation of their visa, which can lead to them automatically being put in detention. If they wish to appeal or challenge the decision regarding their visa, they may be kept in detention while they do so, which means a debt continues to pile up because Australia charges people for detaining them. All of which means they can be removed from Australia, ten of thousands of dollars out of pocket, owing a debt of thousands more and with potentially major consequences for their ability to travel to other countries in the future – and with nothing to show for it.

This is unfortunate enough when the decision of DIMIA, with all its harsh consequences, is correct, but in light of a recent Court decision which suggests that thousands of students may have had their visa wrongly cancelled and been removed from the country, it becomes scandalous. Having your visa cancelled and being removed from a country is not a minor thing – even without a debt attached. In the current international environment of disproportionate paranoia and poorly targeted control-freakery, having something like that on your record can severely affect your future job and life opportunities.

The Committee also heard from well-known QC, Julian Burnside, who was eloquent and to the point as always. He is currently acting for the deported US peace activist, Scott Parkin. Whilst he couldn’t go into detail on that case, it still served to show the inflexibility and dangerous disproportionality that exists, even under current law, let alone under some of the extra powers federal and state governments are now planning to give themselves. In Scott Parkin’s case, ASIO made a secret determination that he was a security risk, which means DIMIA automatically had to cancel his visa, and automatically has to put him in detention. He has yet to be told why he was a security risk, because it’s a secret, (although not secret enough for a journalist from The Australian newspaper to apparently be told by someone in Government). I met Scott Parkin at an event in Brisbane a couple of months ago, and while I obviously can’t comprehensively vouch for every aspect of his character, he didn’t threaten my security.

There was some other good evidence throughout the day. By 4pm, my 5am start in Adelaide to fly to Melbourne for the hearing was beginning to catch-up with me and I was starting to flag a bit (must be getting old I think). Last week I had the rare pleasure of being in Brisbane for a full 7days, and this week, I can feel myself building up to a renewal of my full blown loathing of plane travel, which had subsided over the last 6 months or so. I flew back to Brisbane in the evening, looking forward to spending a bit of time with my little girl before flying off again in the morning. My flight landed about 15 minutes early. I was then forced to stay sitting in the plane on the tarmac for another hour, because of lightning storms in the area meaning they wouldn’t use the airbridge to offload the passengers. The irritation of this was compounded by having felt the fleeting pleasure of getting in early.

When I did finally get home, my little girl was sitting up in bed reading a book aloud to herself – well she was actually mainly reciting from memory, but it seems the same as reading and looks just as cute. Five minutes of that was enough to make me wonder about why I was flying out again early in the morning for another three nights away.

However, I dragged myself out of bed at 5am again, this time to fly to New Zealand for an Australasian political studies conference where I will be talking about the nature of Australia’s refugee and immigration laws and policies. I actually agonised a fair bit over whether to go to this - not so much because I would be away from home, but because I have to miss a day and a half of further Senate Committee hearings. Given that I moved the motion setting up the Inquiry, I should be attending, but I know that the other Senators attending will ask most of the questions I would have asked, and I can still read the transcripts and submissions. Plus I know almost all the organisations giving evidence and can follow them up myself if need be. I felt the chance to engage with a new group of people in an international context about the human and legal reality of Australia’s laws was an opportunity too good to miss. However, I won’t know for sure how valuable it will be until after I’ve done it – we shall see.

It certainly gives me a chance to remind myself further of the joys of flying, with a 4 hour trip to Wellington, trying to type this while squished into an economy seat that won’t tilt back, before a 3 hour transit wait prior to getting another flight on to Dunedin. And at the risk of being accused of doing a ‘poor, unpampered me’ impression, I thought I should report for anyone who thought that politicians always get upgraded as a matter of course when they fly, I can report that this does not occur. This thought just happened to occur to me when I was walking back to my seat from a toilet break and noticed that Business Class on the flight was completely empty, while I squeezed myself sideways back into a space which had shrunk even further while I was out of it, because the person seated in front of me took the opportunity of my absence to demonstrate that his seat obviously didn’t suffer from the same inability to recline as mine did. It did also remind me that I could benefit from a bit of work on reducing my waistline, so it was probably a good thing for my health that I wasn’t upgraded. Which reminds me, I really must write a piece on the massive greenhouse emissions caused by air travel - I might save that for the flight back.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Wednesday, September 28, 2005 Permalink
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