‘Ineffective’: Home Affairs hammered over trafficking investigation failures

The Home Affairs section has failed to efficaciously modulate migration agents, botching investigations into superior complaints including astatine slightest 1 allegation of enactment trafficking.

A damning Commonwealth Auditor-General study accused the Home Affairs’ managed Office of Migration Agents Registration Authority (OMARA) of a big of failures successful supervising the migration agents who facilitate the accomplishment of susceptible radical into the country.

“Home Affairs’ regularisation of migration agents is not effective. There is an lack of regulatory enactment to show the activities of registered agents, and the section does not instrumentality timely and effectual enactment successful effect to complaints it receives astir the activities of registered agents,” the ANAO study published connected Wednesday found.

It recovered the section did not decently show agents and had not utilized the information it had disposable to instrumentality risks from mediocre behaviour retired of the migration system.

It recovered successful 1 illustration the section failed to decently analyse an cause suspected of enactment trafficking aft it was alerted by the Australian Border Force. The reappraisal besides urged an overhaul of an support strategy that allowed agents to person their registrations automatically approved adjacent erstwhile facing galore complaints.

The findings travel aft Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil pledged to overhaul the integrity of the migration strategy in the aftermath of reports by this masthead  and 60 Minutes exposing the mode criminals hijacked visa schemes for their ain gain.

Stephanie Foster is the caput of the Department of Home Affairs.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

That reporting besides led to an influential reappraisal conducted by erstwhile Victorian constabulary commissioner Christine Nixon, who recovered weaknesses successful the visa strategy enabled enactment trafficking to thrive and dodgy acquisition providers to acceptable up alleged shade colleges to funnel students into low-paid work.

In the suspected sex-trafficking example, the auditor wide recovered the section failed to usage its afloat scope of powers to analyse the agent, and ignored a erstwhile ailment relating to quality trafficking.

“The cause was named successful [ABF] Operation Resonate successful November 2020 successful narration to migration agents facilitating the exploitation of overseas nationalist enactment workers,” the watchdog reported connected Wednesday.

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“In dismissing the complaint, the section did not code each of the applicable substantive matters related to the ailment … [and] it did not code the allegations identified successful Operation Resonate.”

The auditor-general noted that portion the section did not hole a “case probe summary” for its officers it did hole a “media handling strategy”.

The bureau besides recovered the section utilized an automated process to renew the registration of agents, approving aggregate agents who were taxable to complaints of fraudulent behaviour.

In different examples, the section took 5 years to disregard a ailment against an cause with respective accusations of aiding mendacious extortion claims against them, and besides dismissed complaints against an cause relating to cash-for-visa arrangements owed to a insignificant technicality successful the process.

In October, O’Neil announced a $50 cardinal injection into the section to boost its quality to show compliance, a determination to fortify the fit-and-proper-person trial for registered migration agents, and said the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority’s quality to authorisation agents would beryllium improved.

Labor MP Julian Hill, seat of the cross-parliamentary committee connected nationalist accounts and audits, said the revelations successful the study warranted a nationalist inquiry, adding his constituents had been the victims of shoddy proposal from migration agents.

“We’ve inherited some [a] migration strategy and section underfunded and riddled with integrity issues,” Hill said.

In her effect to the report, Home Affairs caput Stephanie Foster agreed OMARA had scope to fortify but disagreed the bureau didn’t efficaciously respond to complaints. “Allegations of non-compliance, adjacent erstwhile superior integrity concerns whitethorn beryllium alleged done quality reporting, are not conclusive grounds that OMARA tin instantly usage to beryllium … that the cause had engaged successful misconduct,” she said.

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