What exactly are our immigration bureaucrats doing?

What are we paying them for?

It’s not properly vetting people for visas, that’s for sure.

News.com.au reports Hamas sympathiser Mona Zahed was approved to visit Australia despite her public support for the proscribed terrorist organisation.

She celebrated the October 7 attacks and backs the Hamas regime.

It’s all out there if you do a basic search.

Something our public servants are apparently incapable of.

It took public outrage and ministerial intervention to stop Zahed coming to our shores.

Credit to Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke for putting a stop to this, but how did it get so far in the first place?

The government assured us their vetting system was robust for letting people from Gaza into the country.

They set the rules and direct what the immigration officials should be looking for.

Apparently that does not include a basic social media check.

Burke would surely argue the system worked; he was able to block the visa, so no harm, no foul.

But frankly when people are marching over the Sydney Harbour Bridge for a foreign conflict, waving terrorist flags and posters of the leader of Iran, catching terrorist sympathisers at the very last moment is not good enough.

Vetting these people should not be a bureaucratic box-ticking exercise.

It’s a serious process intended to protect our national security and the safety of our communities.

There is no place in Australia for people who want to import foreign conflicts onto our shores.

And the government needs to get serious about stopping them.