This week marked 100 days of continuous protest by a refugee-led movement against Australia's Fast Track system. This movement has found a foothold nationwide with protest encampments in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. Protestors are calling for permanent visas for the 7200 people seeking asylum who had their cases rejected under the government's failed Fast Track system over a decade ago.

RACS Centre Director and Principal Solicitor Sarah Dale (right) with representatives from the refugee-led protest movement and ASRC

This month RACS travelled to Canberra to join forces with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and members of this ongoing nationwide protest movement. Together we spoke to MPs about the critical need for the failed Fast Track system to be changed.

RACS’s concerns about Fast Track

For over a decade RACS has advocated against the Fast Track system whilst providing free legal support for those subject to it. The system was first announced in the lead up to the 2013 federal election. At this time there was a ‘legacy caseload’ of 30,000 Unauthorised Maritime Arrivals (UMAs), so Fast Track was proposed to clear this backlog and to speed up other claims for asylum.

Crucially, for thousands of people seeking asylum who were refused by the Department, Fast Track meant an automatic referral to the Immigration Assessment Authority (IAA). The IAA mostly conducted its reviews without ever interviewing the individuals concerned and with very little ability to consider new information, even if relevant. In most cases, it affirmed the original refusal by the Department. 

RACS spent a year advocating against the Fast Track system before it was passed in late 2014, believing that it would strip many people seeking asylum of fair proceedings. Indeed, separate independent merits review processes have generally overturned over 70-80 percent of the Department of Immigration and Border Protections decisions. One of RACS’s solicitors during this period described how Fast Track  

“made it easier to remove people from the country even when they have legitimate refugee claims”, as well as how it had made “everything harder” for lawyers working in refugee rights. 

Without refugee status thousands have been left on temporary and bridging visas for over a decade, with limited work rights or access to education and healthcare. For some who came to Australia as children and completed high school here, they are faced with either exorbitant university and TAFE fees or barred from studying at all whilst their cases have remained in limbo.  

Worse yet can be the ongoing fear and uncertainty of deportation from Australia, which many now consider to be home. 

RACS’s Legal Help for Refugees Clinic

News about Fast Track could not have come at a worse time for RACS. In 2014 we had lost 85% of our funding in a federal government move that went against international and United Nations standards, which consider the right to legal advice an “essential safeguard”. To combat this, RACS looked to fundraise and went on to hold speed dating events or host gigs to raise money. In 2015 RACS opened the Legal Help for Refugees Clinic to support those suffering under Fast Track, which in its early days was run as an evening clinic at the University of Technology in Sydney before expanding to several sites across Sydney 7 days a week.

Over nearly three years more than 4,250 clients were seen by RACS at the clinic for statement support, RACS went on to lodge over 1,783 applications for individuals and their families. This was possible because of the support of more than 800 volunteers, as well as hundreds of solicitors, migration agents, interpreters and students. For many choosing to support RACS mission and combat the negative effects of Fast Track, the circumstances could not be more serious. The executive director of RACS at the time, Tanya Jackson-Vaughan, noted that

“it is a matter of life and death with protection claims… Particularly now that there is really no right to review, you’ve got one chance of putting your claims properly. Without legal assistance or migration advice everyone would struggle. Even if you’re highly intelligent and fluent in English it would be a challenge.”

Though the Fast Track system came under sharp and consistent criticism from many legal experts and advocates, in May of 2017 a further ‘lodge or leave’ deadline was set by then Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton. Individuals who did not file their applications before 1 October 2017 could be forced to return to the countries they fled from and banned from ever re-entering Australia.  

RACS’s response was swift. We increased available services to individuals desperate to get their applications in on time with a team of community organisers, volunteer interpreters, specialist lawyers, and pro-bono lawyers.  Their combined efforts provided critical legal support seven days and two nights every week until the deadline. In honour of this work RACS was announced as a finalist for the 2017 Human Rights Awards.   Around Australia approximately 70 individuals missed this deadline, but that didn’t stop RACS from continuing to advocate for their right to make an application also.

The burden on people seeking asylum and legal services 

Despite the efforts of lawyers from RACS and other organisations, however, many of those affected by ‘lodge or leave’ were still unable to access free legal support due to a lack of funding and available services.  

RACS patron, the Hon Michael Kirby, noted that“this is not a  good time for the rule of law in Australia… we have to engage the very best lawyers… who can make sure the rule of law is a reality for those who come to us seeking asylum.” 

Similar events unfolded in 2021 when the Department of Home Affairs sent out hundreds of 14-day notices to those trapped in visa limbo for interviews critical to resolving their cases. Sarah Dale, RACS Centre Director and Principal Solicitor, said legal services had become “completely overwhelmed” by the demand for help before the deadlines. Dale described the “insane hours” the lawyers at RACS were working to go “above and beyond for the community that would otherwise be left by themselves”. 

Moving forward: pathways to permanency? 

In 2023 the Australian Government announced a pathway to permanency through the Resolution of Status Visa, which Dale remarked was the most “momentous and impactful” change she had experienced in the field in over a decade, with 19,000 people gaining “access to a safe and permanent place to call home”. Tragically, the thousands affected by the Fast Track system were excluded from this permanent visa pathway, as were those subject to offshore processing.

In 2024 RACS also celebrated the abolition of the Immigration Assessment Authority (IAA), which was a central element of the Fast Track process. RACS Supervising Senior Solicitor Ahmad Sawan told a parliamentary committee the news was “monumental” and a “huge step forward”. However, he also stressed concerns that the new Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) could still exclude people seeking asylum from “equal access to a fair, just and independent mechanism of merits review”. 

The long-standing and ongoing protests of refugees and advocates make it clear that far too many individuals continue to suffer under government policies that undermine the rights of those seeking asylum. The legacy of the Fast Track system has permeated almost every area of RACS work. It has had devastating consequences for thousands of our clients and placed a huge burden on the shoulders of our volunteers and employees for over a decade. We sounded the alarm about the risks and pitfalls of Fast Track long before it was rolled out, and we will continue to push for the rights of the almost 8,500 individuals still suffering to have a just outcome and access to a fair review system.

“This Government accepts that this system was broken. It has taken significant strides to eradicate some of the faults of Fast Track, these systemic changes are welcome.

“But it is not enough to only address the failings of the system, we have to ensure that the very people it failed also find redress.”

“We are talking about parents and children, our neighbours and colleagues that are still left in impenetrable limbo for over a decade.

“This suffering has to end, and could end tomorrow with leadership ensuring a pathway to permanency.”

- Sarah Dale, RACS Centre Director and Principal Solicitor

For more information about the Fast Track system, see this research brief from the UNSW Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. 

You can read the open letter urging the Government to resolve Fast Track here.