Australia news LIVE: Home Affairs Minister lashes Dutton amid $50m integrity boost to department; RBA holds interest rates

In overseas news, at least 21 people have died and 18 were injured after a bus carrying tourists to a campground crashed off an overpass near Venice in northern Italy and caught fire, city officials said.

The bus veered off the road and fell close to railway lines in the district of Mestre, which is connected to Venice by a bridge.

Emergency crew members work at the scene after a bus accident near Venice on October 03.Credit: Getty

The cause of the accident was unclear. Venice city councillor Renato Boraso said one line of enquiry was that the driver, a 40-year-old Italian who was among those killed, had been taken ill before the crash.

“It’s an appalling tragedy, the city is in mourning,” Boraso told Sky Italia television.

He said the coach had been carrying 40 passengers, of whom 21 had died and 18 were injured.

Here’s more on the deadly bus crash.

The country’s corporate regulator acted “shamefully” in its failure to investigate dozens of complaints of banking misconduct against farmers, an inquiry has been told.

A Senate committee examining the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) was told the body had declined to look into systemic complaints against banks in the case of farms being repossessed.

Niall Coburn, a lawyer who represented 63 farmers in similar circumstances, said allegations of predatory lending by banks towards farmers had been ignored.

“This alleged misconduct involves all of the major banks in Australia,” he said.

It is a shameful situation that nothing has been done.

Combined complaints reveal a primary pattern of systemic predatory lending or asset-based lending where loans are being provided on the value of the asset rather than the ability to pay the debt.

This conduct has been, is, and was illegal in Australia.”

Coburn said the repossession of properties by the banks, which had often been in farming families for generations, had caused “financial and emotional devastation” and had driven some farmers to suicide.

He said lessons taken from the royal commission into the banking sector had failed to be addressed.

AAP

The Yes campaign has deleted a social media post that showed a No vote as being marked by cross instead of the word “no”.

The Australian Electoral Commission has been reminding Australians that marking ballot papers with a cross will not count as a No vote.

Yes23 yesterday posted a mock ballot paper with a cross marked on it, arguing this was a vote for the “same old failures”.

A ballot paper with a tick on it was a vote for “better results”, the post claimed.

It has since been removed from the campaign’s social media pages.

A tick will count as a Yes vote because court rulings have deemed a tick is a less ambiguous sign of approval than a cross is a sign of disapproval, given crosses are often used to mark boxes on forms.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton criticised the long-standing practice of refusing to count crosses at the same time as acknowledging ticks as formal votes.

The press conference has ended, however Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil foreshadowed further action on temporary entrants to Australia rorting the temporary protection visa system.

She said one of the issues highlighted by former Victorian police chief Christine Nixon was the ability for people who weren’t refugees to sit within the appeals’ system for up to 10 years as they went through various tribunals trying to claim protection visas.

Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil and Minister for Immigration Andrew Giles.Credit: AAP

While they are doing this, they are allowed to work.

“We have a reform plan which is on foot … and we are going to announce that tomorrow,” she said.

Off the back of surging post-COVID migration, O’Neil said one of the real drivers of net migration was falling numbers of people leaving the country.

“It’s very pivotal to the net migration rate,” she said.

“We can’t run a migration system where people come to Australia … and stay as long as they want.”

O’Neil said those circumstances allowing people to stay for too long would change with the announcements the government is making today.

The Nixon review, which has prompted the announcements, was handed to the government in March.

Asked why the government sat on the report for more than six months, O’Neil responded the government had reacted in a normal timeframe.

“Governments make all sorts of decisions about when to release reports and what to do with the response,” she said.

The government is creating a broader migration strategy, to be released later this year.

O’Neil said the migration system was far too complex.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil accused Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of perpetrating “one of the great frauds” in Australian politics during his oversight of Australia’s immigration system as a former home affairs minister.

O’Neil said Dutton presented himself as a “tough guy” on border security but presided over cuts to staff and compliance activities in Home Affairs over several years, according to figures released by the government.

Clare O’Neil has slammed Peter Dutton’s performance as home affairs minister. Credit: Kate Geraghty

“We have serious and systemic problems with abuse in our migration system,” she said.

The minister added the cracks in the system had been used to undertake “some of the worst crimes known to humanity”, including sex trafficking.

She described the government’s overhaul of the system “as the most substantial reform to immigration compliance for decades”.

The government is refusing more than a third of international student applications, Department of Home Affairs figures reveal.

It comes as authorities grow concerned about prospective migrants moving money between each other to cheat the criteria for a visa.

According to the data, about 36 per cent of applications are being knocked back, a dramatic increase from 6 per cent in January, due to applicants passing the funds between bank accounts to appear as though each has the requisite money to study in Australia.

The nation is also faced with rising onshore applications for protection visas amid fears that many applicants are gaming the system that allows them several years of work rights in Australia as they go through the appeals process in various tribunals.

The government is expected to announce measures to combat visa holders rorting that loophole soon.

Government figures show exploitation of the visa system comes against a backdrop of the staffing of the immigration system being slashed between 2015 and 2022, as well as compliance activities over a similar period.

The federal government will devote $50 million to an integrity overhaul of the country’s broken immigration system to boost the ability of Home Affairs to share intelligence and investigate exploitation of the visa system.

In a multipronged response to the Nixon review of the migration settings that allowed systemic visa fraud, sex and drug trafficking, and the funnelling of international students into low-paid jobs, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles also announced a crackdown on migration agents and better detection of threats through biometrics.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil.Credit: Oscar Colman

“The issues raised in the Nixon review are not new. The warning signs were there. Now, we are getting on with the job of cleaning up [former home affairs minister, and now Opposition Leader] Peter Dutton’s mess,” O’Neil said.

“By once again prioritising integrity in immigration, we’re able to help protect vulnerable communities from exploitation, and make our visa system fairer for everyone.”

Among the reforms are the establishment of a new immigration compliance division within the Department of Home Affairs. A new multi-agency taskforce investigating suspected sex and drug traffickers, Operation Inglenook, known to specialise in obtaining visas via fraud, will also run for at least two more years.

The reforms have been prompted by the Trafficked series of reports by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, 60 Minutes and Stan, which also forced the Albanese government to commission the Nixon inquiry.

They are aimed at stopping what the inquiry led by ex-police chief Christine Nixon has described as the grotesque exploitation of foreign workers.

In her inquiry, Nixon concluded that it was clear that “gaps and weaknesses” in Australia’s visa system were enabling criminal organisations to exploit people and make money.