In plans to cut resettlement costs of refugees, the Coalition government is reportedly considering a proposal to fast track visa applications of refugees if they agree to pay AU$19,000 and their family in Australia promise to cover health and welfare costs.

Refugee advocates support the proposals which they say will help advantage refugees who have relatives in Australia with financial means.

"It definitely does advantage refugees who have relatives in Australia with financial means over people who otherwise would have been resettled on the basis of humanitarian need," Refugee Council of Australia chief Paul Power told WAToday but added that the measures, which are based on a pilot established by the former Labor government, would effectively shift the cost burden onto desperate families in Australia and prioritise people with financial means over those in greater need.

Under the pilot, which was established in 2013 a refugee is charged AU$19,124 for the first time and AU$2,680 for subsequent applicants. Mr Power estimates that the application fees plus the cost of airfares, medical checks and payments to community organisations that help facilitate resettlement could potentially cost $45,000 to bring a family of five to Australia

Almost 670 people - mostly from Syria, Iraq, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Somalia have been granted a visa under the pilot which raked in an estimated $2 million for the government.

In a scathing judgement against a ministerial decision to deport New Zealander, Mas Eden, the Federal Court effectively accused Assistant Immigration Minister Michaelia Cash of being ‘oppressive and unreasonable’.

Justice John Logan accused the minister of using “a sledgehammer to crack a nut” in the ministers  ill-fated attempt to deport Iranian-born New Zealand citizen Mas Eden and ordered the government to release Mr Eden and pay legal costs, according to a report in The Australian.

In 2011, Mr Eden had pleaded guilty to the indecent assault of a passenger in the taxi he was driving in Brisbane two years earlier. A District Court judge then sentenced Mr Eden to 12 months’ jail — wholly suspended for two years — remarking that “actions can often be misinterpreted and I think this is probably a case like that”.

While Mr Eden committed no offence in the ensuing two years, and quit working as a taxi driver, the Australian Federal Police alerted the Immigration Department to his conviction in January last year.

In April this year, Senator Cash cancelled Mr Eden’s visa on character grounds, ordering that he be sent back to New Zealand. Immigration officers went to Mr Eden’s southeast Queensland home early one morning, detaining him in front of his wife and five-year-old son.

A small group of infographics and data visualisation experts in Sydney have put together an interactive map using the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data to show the Australian suburbs where new migrants from various countries congregate.

The company, Small Multiples explained that it created this project to reveal the birthplaces of the biggest immigrant populations in suburbs and towns across Australia.

It’s important to note this as these maps do not show the actual breakdown of the population by the country of birth. For such details you will have to refer to the ABS census page.

The graphics in the tool colour codes suburbs according to the largest number of overseas born residents living in the suburb using that ABS census data from 2011.

However, the colour coding has a dramatic and intended effect of suggesting that large sections of major cities are dominated by migrants from certain countries when in reality they account for a small percentage of the suburbs population.

Take West Melbourne for instance. There are over 1800 Australian born residents. Of the overseas born in the suburb, China ranked the top country with 200 or about 5% of the population. The infographics colour codes West Melbourne red, the key indicating that the largest number of overseas born people in the suburb were born in China.

In the last three years some 750 partner visas were cancelled. This number is set to rise with the launch of data-matching program by the departments of immigration and human services.

Immigration and Human Services combined their respective customer databases to help uncover various types of fraud including those by couples who have lodged or been granted partner visas.

The system aims at identifying those taking welfare payments as singles, despite sponsoring overseas partners and will be looking at grants and applications from the years starting from 2012. DIBP granted 47,752 partner visas in the program year ending 2014.The biggest source nations were China, India, Britain, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

These grants and other applications are now being checked against roughly seven million unique records in the Centrelink database.

According to figures reported in the Herald Sun, in the last three years about 750 such visas have been cancelled for breaches of conditions, such as making bogus claims, providing incorrect information, and being of bad character.

Australian trade unions have raised the concern that the China-Australia FTA (CHAFTA) would result in foreign workers being employed in Australia at a lower rate and conditions than Australian workers. Are they right?

The CFMEU has started rallying against the CHAFTA on the claim that there is no statement in the CHAFTA that says foreign workers working side by side with an Australian worker shall receive the same conditions and pay.

“That’s nowhere in the agreement… go through the pages of the agreement and look at the Memorandum of Understanding and it doesn’t say it in black and white; nowhere in the agreement,”  Michael O'Connor, CFMEU National Secretary, told with Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast last week.

The CHAFTA is at risk as more than 2,000 workers rallied recently in Brisbane's CBD to protest against the agreement. Bill Shorten has endorsed the union-led assault against the free-trade pact, revealing Labor will take up the fight in ­parliament to rewrite labour ­standards, conditions and skills testing in the historic multi-­billion-­dollar agreement.

One of the documents detailing the nature of the cooperation, namely the IFA at Clause 2(e) indicates that foreign workers will have to be given the same conditions: “…the project company agrees to comply with all Australian laws and regulations, including applicable Australian workplace law, work safety law and relevant Australian licensing, regulation and certification standards.”

The entire process of approval however is complex with several layers of approvals, and authentication involving the project proponents, the China International Contractors Association, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the DIBP. But, no union consultation is involved.