Australia risks returning asylum seekers to countries where they face torture, family violence and honour killings under planned reforms, lawyers say.
Asylum seekers who are not found to be refugees can still qualify for a complementary protection visa if they can prove they face a significant risk of harm if they are returned to their country of origin.
The Turnbull government plans to restrict complementary protection to those who face harm in all parts of their country, under a bill introduced last year. If passed, decision-makers would no longer be able to consider if it is "reasonable" for the person to relocate to another part of the country.
People from countries with a criminal law and an effective police force would also be excluded from complementary protection. These changes are in line with the narrowed criteria for refugees, which became law late last year.
A number of lawyers, including refugee advocates, told a Senate inquiry on Thursday that if passed, more people would be returned to harm.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has previously told Parliament that the changes were needed, citing cases where protection had been extended to people involved in serious crimes in their home countries, such as selling adult movies or supplying alcohol, and those who had fled to Australia because of links to criminal gangs.
Lawyer, Dr Sarah Pritchard, SC, said this was only a small part of protection claims, which already carried a high legal threshold, and likened the changes to "using a hammer to crack a lentil."
Dr Pritchard, chair of the Law Council of Australia's national human rights committee, said complementary protection was a safety net for asylum seekers who were not refugees, but risked the death penalty, torture, honour killings and domestic violence in their home countries.
If the criteria for complementary protection became near-identical to that of refugee protection, it would become "obsolete," she said.
President of the Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs, said the changes would exclude more from complementary protection: "We expect there will be much higher levels of rejection of assessment for refugees. Therefore it will be more important to them that complementary provisions remain in place."
Australia has granted about 200 asylum seekers complementary protection since 2012, immigration officials told the inquiry.
David Wilden, first assistant secretary at the Department of Immigration, said that the bill would not return more asylum seekers to harm. The changes would clarify the law, he said, because the courts had broadened the idea of whether it was "reasonable" to expect someone to relocate to avoid harm to include financial hardship, beyond Australian's obligations under international law.
Decision-makers were also trained to consider whether it was safe and legal to return an asylum seeker to their country, though they were not legally bound to do so under the proposed changes.
Jane Lee
