An asylum seeker who has been waiting years for an Australian visa has criticised a Labor MP over immigration laws, complaining he does not want to be drawn into a life of crime but the government will not allow him to work or study.
Footage of the conversation between Julian Hill, Labor’s assistant minister for citizenship and multicultural affairs, and a foreign national was captured at a protest outside Hill’s office in Dandenong, south-east of Melbourne, on Monday.
The protest has been going on for about 65 days and was orchestrated by refugee groups, some of whom say they have been waiting more than 12 years for the government to make a decision on their residency status in Australia.
In the video, which was shared on TikTok, Hill was on her way to lunch when she began speaking to a protester who expressed extreme frustration over the visa plan.
The protester does not appear in the images.
Mr Hill said: ‘I’m quite in touch with the community here and I talk to people… I’m aware of the issues.
‘The government has granted 19,000 permanent visas to people who have (temporary protection visas) and (safe haven business visas).’
He said “a couple thousand” people have moved from the bridging visa queue to the status resolution queue, meaning they have been granted permanent residency.
The protester said he was grateful to the government for granting those visas, but said many people who were rejected under the previous government’s fast-track program “are just sitting in limbo.”
The expedited process was an attempt by the Coalition to streamline the process, but ultimately meant that individual cases were not properly reviewed, the refugee definition was altered, and the application was 60 pages long and only available in English.
In the video, the man said: “Personally, I don’t have the right to work or study… So the question is, how am I going to survive? I don’t want to engage in crime.”
Labor MP Julian Hill is pictured speaking to protesters outside his office in Dandenong
Protesters have been outside Mr. Hill’s office for about 64 days.
Mr Hill intervened and told the protester that his criminal activity would reflect negatively on his visa application: “Don’t do that, it will bring you character problems.”
He replied: “That’s the thing: I’m trying to do the right thing and the government is penalizing me.”
In the video, the man explained that he was in the audience during an ABC Q&A episode on September 2, when Hill was a panellist, and said Labor was trying to ensure all refugee cases were resolved as quickly as possible.
His comments were in response to a question from a Tamil refugee, who said three people from his community had taken their own lives in the Dandenong region in the past six weeks because they faced deportation due to the fast-track process.
Julian Hill (pictured in Parliament) is the Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs.
“With 8,500 people affected by the previous government’s fast-track process and denied a future here, why can’t the Labor government grant us permanent visas after 12 to 15 years in Australia?” he asked.
Mr. Hill thanked him for his question and said he was deeply sorry for the loss of those three community members.
He said: ‘It has not been politically popular, and it has not been without controversy from Peter Dutton, that we have now granted permanent protection visas to this country to 19,000 people who were stuck in limbo for ten years.
“It is not good for our community, for our society and for our country to have permanent temporary migrants who have been deemed genuine refugees and deserve Australia’s protection.”
He said there are still about 1,000 cases left to process, which are backlogged because of complicated identity issues.
“But more are granted every week,” he continued.
‘Of those people with bridging visas… there is a lot of misinformation on social media about this, there are around 200 people who are still under review of their merits in court, there are around 4,500 who are still in court in the process of judicial review.
‘We have allocated more resources to the courts to speed up these decisions; there are now around 2,000 people who had bridging visas and who were now able to apply for permanent visas and who are now also in the queue.
Mr Hill explained that there are around 2,500 people who are not genuine refugees, some of whom were part of the previous government’s fast-track process.