Christian missionary Jane Smith was asleep when her husband broke the news border security was about to raid their Queensland home.
“I thought he was joking. I said, “Ah stop talking stupid, talking crap to me, talking sh*t,” she told a parliamentary inquiry into job security.
“Anyway, next minute I get up and all these police are in my house.”
Ms Smith said nine border force officials had gathered onto her Bundaberg patio waiting for the go-ahead to enter her home. They ordered her husband, Geoff, to hand over his phone.
When Ms Smith asked border force what they had done wrong, officials alleged she and Mr Smith had been “profiteering” off Pacific Islander workers who had absconded from employers.
“It seems that border security was implying that Mr and Mrs Smith were profiteering off the back of workers rather than offering them a safe haven in between employers that were exploiting them and mistreating them very badly,” solicitor Dana Levitt said.
“The implication being that they are somehow running their own commercial labour hire company, which is absolutely not the fact at all.”
A senate committee will on Wednesday examine whether Australian Border Force officials illegally obtained correspondence and phone records of a foreign diplomat during the raid of Mr and Mrs Smith’s home.
According to a report in The Australian, texts and emails between Mr Smith and Vanuatu high commissioner Samson Fare were seized during the raid that day.
Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which is part of Australian law, the diplomat’s correspondence and documents can’t be seized.
Mr Fare has previously called for the seasonal workers program to be overhauled because of concerns of appalling work conditions and wage thefts.
It’s alleged that some workers had left their approved employer due to the conditions and have since gone on to work illegally for other employers who have promised better pay.
Mr Smith is facing up to four years in jail and fines of $40,000 if charged and convicted of referring unlawful non-citizens for work.
“There’s been no resolution, no apology, no follow up,” Ms Levitt said.
Ms Smith said she felt “humiliated” by the whole experience, and it has led her to seek support from a psychiatrist and she battles depression.
“I felt really humiliated of what they were doing to me. And I was really, really, really shocked of this happening in my home.”
Australian Border Force and Home Affairs officials will appear before the committee on Thursday.
