Scott Morrison backflips and grants visa to boy who arrived by boat
Decided to grant a 15-year-old Ethiopian asylum seeker a permanent visa: Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has granted a permanent
visa to a refugee who arrived by boat, despite fighting the boy's case
in the High Court and signalling he would not be swayed when the court
found against him.
In a decision that could have implications for many others,
the Immigration Minister announced the backflip in a letter to lawyers
representing the 15-year-old Ethiopian on Monday.
It was greeted with incredulity and joy by the boy, who has
been living in Melbourne after stowing away on a ship and arriving at
Gladstone 16 months ago.
"[It is] a great outcome for our client, the rule of law and the nation at large": David Manne, lawyer. Photo: Paul Rovere
"It has saved my life," he said, confessing that his life had
been a roller coaster, climaxing in a High Court decision that Mr
Morrison signalled he intended to ignore.
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"It's a huge relief to finally have an answer,'' the boy said
through his lawyer, David Manne. ''Lots of things kept changing from
good news to maybe bad news."
Mr Manne urged Mr Morrison to now take the same approach to
other refugees who arrived without visas, saying it was essential that
they have the chance to rebuild their lives.
The decision, believed to be the first by Mr Morrison to
issue a permanent visa to a refugee who arrived by boat, follows the
minister's determined, but so far unsuccessful, efforts to reintroduce
temporary protection visas for unauthorised arrivals.
After the senate rejected TPVs, the minister imposed an
effective freeze on the granting of permanent protection visas to about
1400 asylum seekers who had already been found to be refugees, with many
thousands more claims still to be assessed.
After the court ruled last month that the freeze on visas
was unlawful, Mr Morrison said: "The Coalition government will not be
providing permanent visas to illegal boat arrivals.''
A week later, he signalled that he would deny the teenager a
visa by personally applying a "national interest" test to every
application for a permanent protection visa.
In a letter to the boy's lawyers, Mr Morrison maintained that
it would not be in the national interest to reward "people who arrive
illegally" with the same permanent visa outcomes available to people who
"abide by Australia's visa requirements".
He also suggested the granting of such a visa would undermine
"the integrity of Australia's visa systems and its sovereign right to
protect its borders".
The letter gave the boy's lawyers 28 days to explain why he
should been given a permanent visa. They replied last week, asserting
that the test as described was inconsistent with the Migration Act.
It would also, they asserted, "transmute" the question of
whether non-citizens were entitled to visas from legal decisions to
political ones.
Mr Morrison said after careful consideration of the facts,
"including the information provided by you in response to an invitation
to comment on whether the grant of the visa is in the national
interest", that he had decided to grant a permanent visa.
Mr Manne described the decision as "a great outcome for our client, the rule of law and the nation at large".
Meanwhile, the High Court challenge on behalf of asylum
seekers being held on a customs boat on the high seas returns to the
High Court for a directions hearing on Tuesday.
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