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TRANSCRIPT
“The bill was a complete about-face from what we saw only a few hours earlier when the Immigration Minister welcomed with open arms, a number of members of the Iranian women's soccer team. So on the one hand, he said, "You will have protection here. Australia will keep you safe. Welcome." And then turned around and introduced a bill into parliament, which in essence would have blocked that team from ever coming to Australia in the first place.”
That's Jane McAdam AO, she's a Professor of Law and Founding Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at University of New South Wales Sydney.
A new bill* introduced by the federal government proposes temporarily banning some people from coming to Australia.
Under the proposed changes, the Home Affairs Minister would be able to issue an "arrival control determination" or essentially an entry ban of up to six months for people from nominated countries if they are entering Australia on a temporary visa.
Just before it was proposed, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke granted humanitarian visas to five Iranian football players who have been in the country for the Asian Women's Cup.
That number has since increased to seven, after Mr Burke announced two more members of the team are seeking asylum in Australia.
But hours after he says one of the women changed her mind and contacted the Iranian authorities to return to her home country.
“Lots of Australians are celebrating. It's now seven women from the Iranian football team who have been granted temporary humanitarian state visas to remain in Australia. The government doing the right thing to save these women from certain death. At the same time, the moral hypocrisy of trying to ram through a piece of legislation either today [[Wednesday, 11 March]] or at latest by tomorrow [[Thursday, 12 March]] that will shut the door on all other Iranians, with a current valid visitor into Australia from doing so. It is essentially a Trump visa ban it is discriminatory It is an incredible failure of moral leadership.”
That's Kon Karapanadiotidis OAM, the CEO at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.
He says Australia and the United States are sending military forces to the Middle East in the name of liberating the people of Iran, while at the same time legislating so they can shut the door on those very same people when they seek safety here - even when they already have a visa.
“What's he (Prime Minister Anthony Albanese) doing - he's basically standing up for illegal military action by the United States and Israel, but he's doing nothing to stand up for the Iranian people. Seven people doesn't cut it. I'm sorry, you don't get our bravo. But that's what they're relying on. He's like, "Oh, look how great and compassionate they are. " They are the party that has gone further to the right on immigration law than even the Liberal Party did. And they've passed four of the most draconian laws in Australian history in the last two years. And this one, it's unheard of. I've never heard of such a thing in an Australian setting.”
Both the federal government and Coalition have expressed concerns the conflict in the Middle East could lead to more people seeking asylum once they arrive in Australia.
The ban, which lasts for six months, could impact 61,000 current visa holders in the region - 11,000 from Israel, more than 1,000 from Lebanon, and 7,000 from Iran.
Mr Karapanadiotidis also references former Prime Ministers in Australia who provided support during a humanitarian crisis.
“Even (Scott) Morrison did that when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. (Tony) Abbott did that when the Syria crisis blew out. (Bob) Hawke most famously did that after (Beijing's) Tiananmen Square and (Malcolm) Fraser is a shining example of that as well with the Vietnam War. 30,000 people have just been executed in Iran. The country is being bombed to smithereens and our government is shutting the door for the next six months on people from Iran, and most likely also people from Lebanon and from Palestine.”
He adds that the Albanese government’s actions sends a disturbing message about who is worthy of protection and who is not.
Greens leader Larissa Waters says the policy is hypocritical.
“Now on the Iranian Visa issue - this visa ban by Minister Burke is so cruel and so heartless. To be offering help to a handful of young women and then shutting the door to thousands more it's just morally bankrupt.”
Meanwhile the Coalition says the legislation has their in-principle support.
The ASRC CEO has told SBS there's a bipartisanship on this.
“You saw Zali Steggall speaking quite powerfully about this. You saw the Greens speaking quite powerfully about this, a number of other Teals and independents calling out the real failure of leadership to rush this through. Sadly, at the moment, the Coalition does support it in principle. At a time where we need moral values-based leadership, we are getting the opposite both from Labor and from the Coalition. They're allowing One Nation to set the tone around how we deal with issues of refugees and immigration.”
Clare Sharp, the head of Immigration at the Department of Home Affairs, has told a parliamentary inquiry, the federal government feels the draft laws are needed.
“Each visa holder who is coming into Australia on a temporary visa must satisfy us that they are coming for a genuinely temporary purpose. We do have the ability to review that when they're offshore on an individual basis, if we come to the view that the visa conditions are not going to be satisfied, we can cancel the visa. However, we would need to do that currently - on the current law - one by one. And it is very resource intensive. It's not possible for us to do that in a practical sense for a large group of people at the same time.”
Home Affairs Minister, Tony Burke says they have the power to cancel visas.
“If you sought a visa at a time that your country was not a war zone, and then it becomes a war zone, there are visas out there that in the current context, we would not have issued. We do have the power to cancel them right now. But we have to do it individually for each one and that's just not a practical thing to be able to do. I want the decisions about who comes here permanently to be deliberate decisions made by the Australian government, not an accident of who was coming here for a holiday, and then there was change in global circumstances.”
He adds that the volume of applications they receive may change with conflict.
“While we do have a conflict, it is scale where the number of this scale where the number of visitor visas would be so significant. So the fact that it is well below historically what we might have had for people coming from Iran doesn't change the fact that it's still a big number.”
Mr Karapanadiotidis says Australia has lessons to learn from previous conflict.
“I think Australia has, we should have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan. Australia has a moral responsibility here to be able to provide sanctuary to people from Iran. There are 95,000 Iranian Australian citizens in this country. And as it stands, there are no emergency visa provisions that the government's put in place to allow Australian citizens to evacuate safely family members from immediate danger.”
Professor McAdam told SBS a streamlined equitable framework is crucial.
“People from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, you name it, all have had very different experiences when it's come to seeking protection in Australia. And what we really need is a more predictable, streamlined, equitable framework, not this jumping from one approach to another each time a new conflict emerges.”
She says each time a humanitarian emergency emerges, the federal government lurches from one idea to the next.
“It would make it more predictable and less politicised for the government if there were a framework in place that could be activated when circumstances require it. And what we suggest is that it would have a kind of formal activation mechanism. It would involve consultation with relevant stakeholders, with affected communities, the diaspora community, and then would have a visa pathway that would enable not everyone in the country to leave, but would have eligibility criteria so that it's fair and equitable to provide protection for people.”
She goes on to say, in some cases that could include humanitarian evacuations.
“For somebody here right now who's Iranian, who's fearful of going home, they could lodge a protection claim. Not everyone will. We just saw that with the soccer team. Some people wanted to stay, others wanted to go home. So it's firstly, it's erroneous to say everybody leaving Iran will necessarily claim refugee status or claim asylum in Australia. And secondly, the bill does have a carve out for people who already possess a humanitarian or refugee visa.”
The co-CEO of the Refugee Council of Australia, Paul Power, says the proposed law seriously undermines Australia's commitment to the principles of the Refugee Convention.
[*the Migration Amendment (2026 Measures No.1) Bill 2026]
