The Nixon inquiry,along withanother scathing recent review of the broader immigration system by former public servant Martin Parkinson,will place significant pressure on Labor to urgently respond to gaps in border security. It also raises serious questions about failings within the Department of Home Affairs and under the previous Coalition government,which oversaw the regime for a decade.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton,who was in charge of Home Affairs under the previous government,said:“Funding for our security agencies increased year-on-year when I was minister for home affairs. I was proud to have continued the work the Coalition did to keep our country safe and secure. Unfortunately,Minister O’Neil behaves like she is still in university politics. Senior people within the department are laughing behind her back due to her juvenile and petulant approach.”

In response to questions sent to O’Neil’s office seeking comment from the minister and the Department of Home Affairs,a spokesman said:“The government has received the Nixon report and is carefully considering its contents.”

In her last public statements on the reports,on April 18,O’Neil said Nixon’s and Parkinson’s reviews showed “aspects of our migration system that are broken in fundamental ways”. She confirmed it would require a legislative response.

In last week’s budget the government allocated $50 million over four years followed by $15.3 million a year to boost enforcement and compliance,and $76 million to tackle a blowout in delays dealing with visa applications.

Dutton made Labor’s projected migration increase of 1.5 million people over five years the centrepiece of his post-budget political attack on Labor.

Sexual exploitation

Poor oversight of the visa system had left women with little or no English being held in sexual servitude for weeks without being allowed to leave hotel or motel rooms,with clients lined up down the hallway,“usually of the victim’s same nationality”,Nixon’s report found.

Their services were promoted and co-ordinated in call centres with hundreds of phone lines,operating nationally,and “a controller who moves the women around so they are unaware of their location within Australia,aided by complicit hotel and motel managers”.

Victims of these scams were in debt bondage,owing “debts” that averaged between $40,000 and $50,000,and usually in Australia on tourist or student visas.

Their controllers,who themselves might be in Australia on temporary visas,“have been found to turn over millions of dollars annually operating businesses built on the exploitation of vulnerable temporary migrants”.

The report recommended that,as in Canada and New Zealand,temporary migrants should be barred from working in the sex industry,and if they were found to do so,they and their employer could be deported or otherwise sanctioned. An Australian who employs a temporary worker in the industry should be disqualified from directing a company and their name published on a register.

Prohibition would “send a strong and clear message that the Australian government has no tolerance for the exploitation of temporary migrants,and abuses of human rights that have no place in Australia”,the report found.

Also set up after the Trafficked investigation was a joint-agency operation codenamed Inglenook,which Nixon reported had raised more than 57 border alerts and found another 93 foreign nationals “of interest”. The extent of wrongdoing revealed by the investigation meant it should continue for three more years,she recommended.

Border Force discrepancies

When the Australian Border Force was set up in 2015,it brought together a variety of legislative powers across 35 pieces of legislation. Dutton,the then minister,said it was “a dedicated front-line agency targeting and disrupting the whole range of border threats from organised crime gangs to narcotic traffickers and people smugglers”.

However,Nixon found there were “significant discrepancies” in its operations. It had only 120 investigations staff “and difficult decisions are regularly made about the prioritisation of finite resources to protect the border against constantly evolving threats”.

There was no compliance or investigative capability within the department’s immigration group and while Border Force investigators can exercise search warrant,arrest and telecommunications intercept powers for offences under the Customs Act,they have no such powers under the Migration Act and must rely on other agencies.

“With diminishing investigation function and field compliance resources,investigative skills appear to have been degraded,and visa and migration fraud competes for priority with other high-priority activity,” the report said.

It recommended the government “reprioritise an immigration compliance function” – a recommendation that appears to have been reflected in the budget.

Wrongdoing by people on temporary visas was facilitated by extended delays in visa processing. This masthead last year reported onnotorious people trafficker Binjun Xie,who stayed legally in Australia,with work rights,for eight years,moving from a student visa in 2014 to a partner visa in 2016 and then multiple bridging visas.

Nixon found that Xie,who is still being hunted by authorities,exploited entrenched delays in the country’s visa processing and migration appeals system and had “applied for a number of different visas,one after the other”.

Criminals could also extend their stay in Australia for years while undertaking illegal activities by applying for protection as refugees.

Such cases had clogged the Administrative Appeals Tribunal,with the number of cases before it growing from 8370 in 2017 to 37,025 last year. The time from lodgment to decision had blown out from 10 months to 26 months,and only a tiny minority won their cases.

“The significant majority of applicants are found not to engage[meet] Australia’s protection obligations,” the report found.

The report was also scathing of the blind spot in the legislation and scrutiny of education providers,saying professional facilitators were “exploiting the student visa program to facilitate work in the sex industry”,and that unregulated education agents played a key role in the rort.

A federal parliamentary committee inquiry was told recently that agents were alsofinancially exploiting their clients and should be better regulated,amid a recentsurge of fraudulent applications,particularly from South Asia.

Nixon’s report pointed out gaps in the tracking of money laundering and counter-terror financing laws,saying that only casinos,bullion dealers and solicitors had an obligation to report suspicious money movements,and only for cash transactions of more than $10,000.

Reforms currently under consideration to expand this to property agents,lawyers and tax professionals should go further and include migration agents,education agents and privately owned vocational education providers.

It also pointed out that the Home Affairs Department’s internal corruption prevention mechanisms were inadequate,particularly for staff getting unauthorised access to visa applications or cherry picking the ones they worked on.

The Trafficked series revealed howwomen on temporary visas were being shunted “like cattle” around the sex industry,some fearing for their lives.

It also showed how registeredmigration agents were rorting the system without penalty and more thana dozen education providers had been found to be corrupt and facilitating sex trafficking.

“Criminal organisations and unscrupulous people are always looking for ways to exploit people and make money. It is clear that gaps and weaknesses in Australia’s visa system are allowing this to happen,” the Nixon report said.

“I hope this report will lead to a strengthening of Australia’s visa system so that temporary migrants are protected from the grotesque abuses that have been described,and Australia is reaffirmed as a safe destination for those who wish to visit,study,work or live here.”

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