A secret Turnbull government plan to radically reshape Australia's visas system could undermine social cohesion, increase the risk of violent extremism and create a "two-tier society", according to leaked documents marked "Protected: Sensitive - Cabinet".
Australian Federal Police have been called in to investigate after Fairfax Media obtained and published the documents, which reveal concerns in government that the sweeping changes to the visa system could undermine social cohesion, increase the risk of violent extremism and create a "two-tier society".
Details of the proposed overhaul were examined by the powerful national security committee months ago and are now expected to go before the full cabinet in early 2017.
The reforms would involve the mandatory granting of a new provisional visa before a person can be granted permanent residency.
The changes are supposed to "reframe temporary, provisional and permanent migration and citizenship" and deliver budget savings by tightening access to social security payments for the newly created category of 'provisional migrant'.
In Parliament, Labor's legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus asked if the leaking of sensitive and protected documents would be investigated by the federal police, "given the document refers to details of past and future meetings of the national security committee of cabinet"?
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Parliament the secretary of the Department of Social Services, Finn Pratt, had referred the leak to the AFP for investigation, while playing down the leak.
"The document concerned is not a cabinet document. It was not a cabinet document as such...it was marked protected because it was dealing with matters that were to be submitted to cabinet but was not, in fact, submitted to cabinet."
The document, which reveals details of national security committee and cabinet deliberations, was prepared for a meeting of Mr Pratt and his Immigration Department counterpart Michael Pezzullo earlier this month, and lays out a litany of concerns about the visa changes.
"The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection [Peter Dutton] is now seeking cabinet's agreement on the design principles for these eight new visas," the briefing document states.
"The proposed reforms could undermine Australia's social cohesion and potentially increase the risk factors that may lead to violent extremism by creating a two tier society where migrants are treated substantially differently to Australian citizens.
"Changing the longstanding national narrative to one which treats all migrants with suspicion does not best leverage migrants' willingness and potential to contribute."
In addition, the imposition of an additional waiting period for access to the social safety net for people holding a provisional visa would "likely contravene our international obligations, particularly for vulnerable migrants".
Finally, the briefing document warns that removing a direct pathway to permanent residence, and moving existing visa holders to the new system, would "likely be unpopular" in the community because one in two Australians were either born overseas or has a parent born overseas.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SBS සිංහල සේවය සඳුදා, අඟහරුවාදා, බ්රහස්පතින්දා, සිකුරාදාපෙ.ව 11 සිට 12 දක්වා
සජීවීවසහපසුව online අහන්න - www.sbs.com.au/sinhalese
සජීවීව රූපවාහිනියෙන් අසන්න- Channel 38
සජීවීව ගුවන් විදුලියෙන්, (ප්රාන්ත සඳහා fm තරංගමාලා)
93.1fm – Victoria
97.7fm –NSW
105.5fm – Canberra
106.3fm – SA
93.3fm – QLD
96.9fm – WA
සජීවීවහෝ පසුව අහන්න Mobile APP - SBS Radio APP (free download)
SBS සිංහල Facebook පිටුව - www.facebook.com/sbssinhalese
