It seems even the Fake Left has its immigration limits:
Government plans to privatise the visa application system could include “premium services for high-value applicants”, different access for those able to pay more, as well as “commercial value-added services”.
The Community and Public Sector Union has warned the changes – the department’s preferred option is to have all visa applications decided via an online platform – could cost up to 3,000 jobs and jeopardise the security of people’s private information.
The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, has said the proposal’s rationale is to modernise Australia’s visa system to deal with a massive and growing number of applications, but the Greens senator Nick McKim said the proposal could see a fatal corruption of the integrity of Australia’s visa system with “access to Australia packaged up and sold to the highest bidder”.
Labor’s immigration spokesman, Shayne Neumann, said the current privatisation proposal was continuation of a trend started when the new Department of Home Affairs outsourced 250 departmental call centre jobs to New Zealand company Datacom.
A briefing delivered to potential commercial partners by the first assistant secretary of the immigration department, Andrew Kefford, outlined in detail the department’s plan to move visa applications to an automated “global digital platform”.
The department is seeking a private-sector partner to design, build and operate a commercial “user-pays” visa application and approval system, with limited human involvement.
“We are genuinely seeking a partnership to design, implement and run Australia’s visa business,” Kefford told companies. “We are keen to explore commercial value-added services that will assist in attracting people to Australia.”
“The issue we have in this modern age is the volume … I don’t have the staff, and never will, to provide the scrutiny that’s required that we can now deliver through technology.”
The Greens senator Nick McKim said his party opposed the proposal which, as outlined, represented “nothing less than a full-scale privatisation of access to Australia”.
So, the baptists find themselves upset with their bedfellows the bootleggers.
I would like to see this as sense but the cynic in me only sees it as the public sector union worried about its employees, tugging on the forelock of its media apologists.
