Labor's spokesperson for immigration says a change to the tourist visa application process has led to an almost 700 per cent spike in asylum applications from Chinese nationals .
Speaking at the Law Council of Australia's immigration law conference on Friday, Kristina Keneally said the number of Chinese nationals on tourist visas claiming asylum in Australia jumped to 7,304 in the year after the government allowed applications for the visa to be lodged online.
In the 12 months before the policy change in March 2017 only 1,060 Chinese nationals on tourist visas lodged visa asylum applications, she said.
"Now this is not an issue of a person’s nationality – it is about the integrity of our migration system – and an insight into how backlogs have grown so quickly," Senator Kenneally during the address in Melbourne.
Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge. Source: AAP
"Claiming asylum is an important right that we need to uphold, and you play a vital role in supporting that right. But an overloaded system that discourages or delays genuine claims disadvantages all asylum claims," she said.
More broadly, over the past five years, Senator Kenneally said had claimed asylum, with 90 per cent of them found to be illegitimate.
According to figures released in October last year, close to 80 people per day requested asylum after landing in an Australian airport.
At that time, Immigration Minister David Coleman defended his government's policy and said the number of plane arrivals applying for asylum was down by 12 per cent from the same period the previous year.
"We won’t be taking any advice from Labor, whose mismanagement of our border was an absolute disgrace," he said.
“Less than 0.25 per cent of people who arrive lawfully in Australia apply for protection, and of them, the vast majority are refused."
In recent years, the number of asylum claims from air arrivals dropped to 24,520 people in 2018-19, down from 27,884 people in the previous year. However, this figure was up from 18,267 people in 2016-17.
Call for more to be done on the rise of racism
Kristina Keneally also said the government should be doing more to curb , pointing to New Zealand's response as a positive example of what could be done.
In a Facebook post that has since gone viral, the New Zealand Human Rights Commission set out their two-step guide to COVID-19: "1. Sneeze into the crook of your elbow. 2. Don't be racist and xenophobic."
She also announced Labor would be launching a petition in Chinatown later on Friday calling on all Australians to stand against racism, which she said had "reared it's ugly head" in Australia.
"At a time when anti-Semitic attacks have risen 30 per cent, violent attacks of people of an Asian appearance or the Muslim faith have occurred in suburbs across Australia, and ASIO has declared right-wing extremism a threat capable of causing a terrorist attack in Australia, we must reflect on the action we can take to arrest these trends," she told the audience in Melbourne.
"The coronavirus – and the spread of misinformation around it, particularly on social media – has been confronting."
Chinese-Australians have reported an increased number of racist attacks and hostility, online and in person since the outbreak hit headlines in January.
In one instance, a Melbourne doctor of Asian .
Senator Keneally said the spike in racism had damaged the Australian economy, and the livelihoods of the Chinese community, as many businesses were forced to close.
"Social cohesion does not create itself," she said. "And when social cohesion begins to crumble, it requires proper governance, hard work, investment, and leadership for it to recover."
