Dr Susan Kneebone says it herself - she's not the stuff that rebels are usually made of. Slight and quietly spoken, she works from a small office at Monash University's Law faculty, a space crowded with administrative law tomes, family photos and a minimalist version of the clutter found in most academics' offices. She was drawn into examining the role of the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT), she recalls, more as an extension of her administrative law work than from any philanthropic motives.
"I'm certainly not a bleeding heart," Dr Kneebone says, with lingering puzzlement at the reaction her research has provoked. "Administrative law can be fairly dry."
Few Australian academics have ventured into that part of the labyrinthine immigration system Dr Kneebone is examining. While refugees constitute only a small portion of Australia's overall immigration intake each year, their individual stories - and alleged treatment by officialdom - burst occasionally into the public domain with predictably polarising results.
For the past four years, Dr Kneebone has been examining Australian procedures for reviewing the applications of asylum-seekers, and how these procedures fulfil their inter-national obligations in this area. As well as observing RRT hearings and holding discussions with RRT officers, she has reviewed hundreds of tribunal cases, with the aim of comparing Australia with Canada and Britain and finding ways to improve Australia's overall performance.
The tribunal plays an important role in implementing and interpreting the Refugees Convention to which Australia acceded in 1954. Established in 1993, the tribunal is one of many such bodies which independently review administrative decisions in a range of federal areas and portfolios.
Asylum-seekers already in Australia must apply to the Immigration Department for a protection visa as part of the immigration process. If their application fails, they may apply to the Refugee Review Tribunal for a review of the decision. The RRT can also review decisions to cancel existing protection visas.
Dr Kneebone's findings so far have not been encouraging. Her preliminary report last year was mildly scathing of Australia's treatment of asylum-seekers, singling out creeping restrictive practices and patchy conformity to international conventions. In 1996-97, only 22 per cent of on-shore applicants had their applications granted by the Immigration Department and the RRT.
Although often described as 'non-adversarial', the RRT was in many aspects too confrontational, Dr Kneebone wrote. And she alluded to a culture of official scepticism about asylum-seekers' credibility and merit which placed a heavy burden of proof on applicants, in contrast to the 'benefit of the doubt' principle suggested by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The findings provoked a strong reaction from the RRT and succeeded in closing off some official avenues of research. While Dr Kneebone says she found this effective black ban "extremely distressing", it has served to fire her resolve to influence constructive change.
An asylum bid from within Australia can be a drawn-out process. Tribunal members can decide on an application during the first "on papers" stage, or allow the applicant to go to an oral hearing. Most cases proceed to a hearing, where a single-member panel assesses the credibility of the applicant's case about why they should be allowed to stay.
Dr Kneebone says there is an unrealistic onus on applicants to decisively prove their fears of persecution, torture or retribution if they are forced to return to their countries. Some may have waited in limbo for years for their case to be heard, without networks or resources, to find that their claims are being assessed against officially sanitised versions of events provided by their home country.
She argues that the tribunal should take a more proactive approach early on to the collection and vetting of evidence, perhaps including pre-hearing contact with applicants. This could remove or reduce the need for so many oral hearings, she says, with obvious advantages for the applicant and cost and time savings for the government.
According to Dr Kneebone, the RRT's rate of acceptance of appeals has decreased markedly in the past few years. The current level of up to 25 per cent compares with a rate of up to 60 per cent in Canada, a country with similar social and political mores and "attitudes of suspicion towards asylum-seekers". Unlike Canada, Australian hearings are closed to the public, and asylum-seekers are not entitled to legal representation.
Despite what critics claim, Dr Kneebone asserts that less restrictive practices would not open the floodgates to a horde of bogus applicants. Such moves would merely make the Australian process more humane and just.
She is determined to gather as much evidence as necessary to put up a convincing argument. "I want to influence government policy," she says. "I'm trying to get the government to recognise that the Refugee Review Tribunal can do a better job."
Law lecturer Dr Susan Kneebone says less restrictive practices would not open the floodgates to hordes of bogus applicants.