Thousands of student visa holders have been exploited by the 7-Eleven chain of stores across Australia, according to a joint investigation by ABC Four-Corners and BusinessDay.  A 7-Eleven ‘insider’ on the report alleged that if franchisees were forced to pay the correct wages, at least 140 of the 620 stores would be unsustainable.

The revelations had one of 7-Eleven's most savage critics, former ACCC head Allan Fels posting on a blog that the only way 7-Eleven franchisees could make money was by ripping off their workers. Some reports allege that many workers were paid $10 an hour before tax – well below the award rate of $24 per hour. The reports also allege that the company's own figures suggest up to two-thirds of its stores are underpaying their workers.

Professor Fels has subsequently removed that post and has been appointed to head an inquiry funded by 7-Eleven to investigate the alleged rampant wage fraud and cover-up by the head office.

With both the Labor Party and the Greens calling for a pardon of student-visa workers caught in the scandal, the Abbott government has now announced that it is considering amnesty for these workers.

According to the ABC/BusinessDay report – which revealed the widespread exploitation of 7-Eleven staff – the majority of the company’s staff are foreign students who are only allowed to work for up to 20 hours per week. But most of them work for over twice that amount of time for less than half the award rate. This puts them at risk of deportation for a breach of their visa conditions.

The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) – the union that covers the industry – has been accused of failing to protect 7-Eleven employees. The SDA has now reportedly set up a hotline and website to help 7-Eleven workers make claims against the company.

7-Eleven has agreed to buy out any franchisees who want to sell their stores since the exposé on the retailer’s exploitation was publicised.

It is reported that 7-Eleven generated earnings before interest and tax of $143 million in 2015, helping boost the wealth of co-owner and chairman Russ Withers and his sister Bev Barlow to $1.5 billion.

Amidst the growing European refugee crisis, Prime Minister Tony Abbott is under increasing pressure from the Opposition, refugee groups and some members of his own party to boost the number of Syrian refugees Australia accepts.

Mr Abbott has said he is prepared to lift the percentage of Syrian refugees, but maintains that does not mean Australia's annual overall intake of 13,750 would rise.

Refugee Council of Australia president Phil Glendenning has told ABC radio Australia’s contribution so far has been “shameful” and the government must do more.

"When you look at the scale of the humanitarian disaster that's taking place, arising out of the challenges in Syria, to say that we're not going to be increasing our intake is not stepping up," the shadow defense minister Senator Conroy told ABC's Radio National.

The International Organisation for Migration estimates that more than 350,000 migrants were detected at the EU's borders between January and August this year. And there is potential for this number to keep climbing.

Violence and civil war in Syria and Iraq have displaced millions. An estimated 1.7 million refugees are in Turkey, 1.2 million in Lebanon, more than 600,000 in Jordan, hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Egypt. Another 7 million are internally displaced inside Syria. Roughly half of the country's entire pre-war population are refugees, at home or abroad.

Farmers and backpackers are angry that the department of immigration has suddenly brought forward its decision by several months and without any consultation to stop recognising volunteer work for the purposes extending the sc417 working holiday visa.

The ban which came into effect on 31 August 2015, disallows the counting of volunteer work as part of the 88 days of work required to extend the sc417 visa by a year. The DIBP said the ban was necessary to stop the alleged widespread abuse of the sc417 visa programme.

Producers involved in the Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF) scheme are however angry with DIBP sudden decision to implement the change which was announced in May this year with an expected date of implementation set to be in or about December.

“It's virtually shut down our ability to provide food to our local community in the quantity and the standard that we've been doing….We were of the understanding several months ago that the Assistant Minister [for Immigration and Border Protection] wouldn't make a decision until Christmas time or roughly around Christmas time," said Mike Smith, Solum Farm, Mororo – a New South Wales north coast organic farm.

"So we told all our young people 'so this is what's going to happen, we're going to push to make sure it doesn't happen but in the interim it gets you right through until Christmas, so finish your 88 days because they've said that's okay'.

WWOOF essentially link backpackers to organic farmers by giving them the opportunity to work on Australian organic farms, exchanging 4 - 6 hours work per day for meals and accommodation, usually in the farmer’s family home.

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) is concerned about departing sc457 visa workers and foreign students being targeted by tax fraudsters and therefore intends to undertake detailed investigations of DIBP records to identify the fraudsters, according to a report in The Courier-Mail.

It is reported that given the concern, the ATO will be sieving through the department of immigration’s databases under the data matching program to “detect, and deal with compliance risks within the visa holding population.”

An earlier report by the ATO indicated that, “Data from DIBP will be used in ATO risk detection models to select populations for administrative action relating to tax return integrity, income tax and goods and services tax non-compliance and fraud.”

According to that report, based on those identified risks, the ATO intends to acquire visa information for visas granted in the period 1 July 2013 to 30 June 2015 and future periods between 1 July 2015 and 30 June 2017. This means previously acquired data for the period 1 July 2013 to 30 June 2014 will be refreshed in the new table structure in an effort to take advantage of opportunities with new risk detection models.

The report was scant and did not say if the main concern was over money laundering by organised criminal gangs or just the underpayment of taxes by businesses.

Typically, the department cancels between 8,000 and 9000 visas annually, but in the latest figures released by the DIBP for the year ending June 2015, there has been a 30 per cent increase in the number of cancellations, according to a report in The Australian.

The visas of 1793 Chinese students were cancelled making them the highest risk group. With 1160 visa cancellations, South Korean students were next, followed in number by students from India, Vietnam and Thailand.

The total number of student visas issued rose by 2 per cent, from 292,060 to 299,540.

Low-quality education providers, unscrupulous education agents, and the overly complex current student visa framework have been blamed for these large number of visa cancellations.

Last month, two colleges - St Stephen Institute of Technology and Symbiosis Institute of Technical Education - were shut down after allegations that they were not providing education, but were “being used to source student visas for Indian students who then go to work…”