action 2

 australian is generous, but it is not unconditional.

those who are not citizens are welcomed as guests — and serious crime breaks that welcome.

this is understood when visas are granted, and it is fundamental to how australians preserve a safe, fair society. 

section 501 of the migration act 1958 (cth) is supposed to cancel visas when a person fails the character test.

that includes people who reach:

• 12 months or more of prison sentences, even if
   
• those sentences come from different courts,
   
• different states or territories, or
   
• are ordered to run at the same time.
   

but without connected national data, the law cannot work as intended.

we are calling for the:
 

Australian Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee
 

to conduct a full review of:

how section 501 of the migration act 1958 (cth) is being administered in practice; with a focus on finding improvements. 

This review must examine whether people who fail the character test are being missed due to fragmented information collection, reporting, and data-sharing arrangements between Commonwealth, State, and Territory agencies. It must identify any intergovernmental, inter-jurisdictional, and cross-agency bottlenecks, blind spots, or systemic failures that prevent timely identification of non-citizens who meet the statutory threshold for visa cancellation under section 501.

The review must recommend workable, enforceable remedies, including consideration of a Mandatory National Non-Citizen Criminal Sentencing Register (MNNCSR) to ensure that all relevant criminal outcomes are automatically captured, aggregated, and transmitted to the Commonwealth for character-test assessment.

Further, The Australian Senate should examine any additional legislative, administrative, or operational measures required to ensure section 501 operates as Parliament intended — namely, the lawful and timely removal of non-citizens who fail the character test.

we urge the hon Tony Burke as  minister of Home Affairs to act expeditiously to apply section 501 to the full extent of the law for those who have failed the character test; both retrospectively and proactively from this time forward.