Abbott's TPV Plan

The Coalition has announced that they would reintroduce temporary protection visas (TPVs) if elected to government. It comes as part of their package of measures designed to deter asylum seekers from asking us for help.

TPVs were first suggested by Pauline Hanson in 1996. Her proposal was criticised by Philip Ruddock as “unconscionable”. Three years later, TPVs were introduced by the Howard Government; Ruddock was immigration minister.

TPVs suffer from a couple of serious vices: not least that they are likely to cause more deaths at sea – something both major parties claim to be concerned about.

TPVs provide asylum seekers with three years’ protection only, and they deny the visa holder the right to be reunited with their family. If one member of a family makes it to Australia and satisfies the authorities of their status as refugees, then it is likely that other members of their immediate family are also refugees.

Under Howard, the TPV regime made it impossible for those people to bring their families out to Australia to join them. The circumstances which justified their protection make it impossible for them to return to their country of origin. Even meeting with their family in a third, neutral, country was impossible because if a holder of a TPV left Australia for any reason at all, they were denied re-entry.

Under the scheme, a person who is accepted as a refugee, and is given temporary protection, has to re-establish their claim for protection each three years. Consider the consequences: the TPV holder cannot return to their country of origin, because of a fear of persecution. But they cannot put down roots in Australia because they do not know if they are here to rebuild their life, or just "parking". It is difficult to imagine that a person who is just being "parked" here will contribute as much to the community as one who has been given protection to enable them to build a new life.

The second vice is that TPVs provide a powerful incentive for refugees to use people smugglers, as they deny the right to family reunion. Take a typical case: the husband reaches Australia and gets a TPV. His wife and children are still at home, facing the same dangers as the husband. Plainly enough, they would have perfectly good refugee claims. But TPVs deny them this right. The only way the family can be reunited is that the wife and children make their way to Australia by using smugglers' services.

The TPV was the major cause of the SIEVX disaster. On 19 October 2001, a boat carrying 400 asylum seekers sank in its attempt to reach Australia. 353 people drowned. Most of them were women and children coming to Australia to be reunited with the men in their family who were already in Australia on TPVs. The people who drowned were true refugees, doing what human instincts dictate: getting the family back together. The Rudd government abolished TPVs in 2008.

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