Blacklists of immigration lawyers and agents compiled by the Department of Immigration that were revealed earlier this year, sparking outrage and calls for an inquiry, are still being used, despite government promises they had been removed.
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Documents dated late May show the lists are still being used to rate applicants for partner visas according to which lawyer or agent they have acting on their behalf.
The document shows the lists remain part of a "risk tiering tool" that adds three points to an application and may affect the outcome. (The more points, the higher risk rating the application receives.)
"This is both detrimental to the client, without their knowledge, and to the agent, without their knowledge, and based on very spurious grounds," said one lawyer who did not want to be identified.
"The fact that applicants are being assessed or graded on the agent they use is rather ignominious and certainly lacks natural justice."
A spokeswoman for the Minister for Immigration Scott Morrison has denied the lists are still in use. “Consistent with previous statements, the agents-of-concern lists were removed from use last year as the information was out of date,” the spokeswoman said
The department had previously said the lists were created in 2010 and were supposed to have been destroyed. The discovery of the blacklists prompted a departmental audit.
Opposition spokesman on immigration Richard Marles said: "This minister should be applying the law justly and fairly across the board, instead he is running a witch hunt against anyone who dares to have a dissenting voice or view."
The discovery of the lists had prompted calls for the Commonwealth Ombudsman to investigate.
Migration lawyers had previously warned the existence of such a categorisation of migration agents, for whatever purpose, exposed the secretive and clandestine activities for which the department had a reputation.
Some of the lawyers and agents on the ‘‘Agents of Concern List A and List B’’ had been in business for decades and more than three-quarters of them had never had any official sanction against them. Some of them believed they had been deliberately targeted by the Immigration Department.
When the existence of the lists was revealed in early May, the national president of the Migration Institute of Australia Angela Chan said the department needed to have an open and transparent process and, if agents were put on lists, they should have the opportunity to respond.
Ms Chan said the department had admitted there was a flaw in the system and had stopped using the lists.
