2016] The Protection of Stateless Persons in Australian Law 415 ty. Australia will continue to work with UNHCR, civil society and interested parties to progress this pledge.74 This declaration reinforced contemporaneous statements by the Australian government that it intended to create a statelessness status determination procedure within the framework of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) (‘Migration Act’). However, the government subsequently decided to create only internal departmental procedures to determine statelessness,75 and stated that a dedicated visa for stateless persons would not be considered.76 It is against this background that we examine current Australian law to assess how fully it reflects Australia’s international obligations to protect stateless persons, and to recommend how greater compliance might be achieved. IV T H E E X T E N T O F S TAT E L E S S N E S S I N A U S T R A L IA There is no comprehensive, publicly available governmental record of the number of stateless persons in Australia. The Australian Bureau of Statistics does not collect information either on the number or location of stateless persons in Australia,77 and there is no mechanism in place to identify them. As the Equal Rights Trust has observed, ‘[t]he stark absence of accessible data on statelessness in Australia is reflected in the fact that Australia consistently registers “nil” under the category of stateless persons in the UNHCR annual report’.78 This is not a uniquely Australian phenomenon; rather, improving ‘quantitative and qualitative data on stateless populations’ is one of the ten actions to end statelessness listed in the UNHCR’s Global Action Plan to End 74 UNHCR, Pledges 2011, above n 14, 49. Additionally, the Australian delegate to the UNHCR Standing Committee on 22 June 2011 had pledged to the UNHCR that Australia would develop a process for identifying and registering stateless persons in order to adhere to its obligations pursuant to the 1954 Convention: Refugee Council of Australia, Australia’s Statelessness Status Determination Procedure, 1, 1 n 1 <http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/r/s&l/120600-SSD.pdf>. 75 This was explained by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (Cth) at a meeting of the Onshore Protection Consultative Group on 16 November 2011. 76 Onshore Protection Consultative Group, ‘Statelessness Status Determination Briefing Paper’ (16 November 2011). The change in direction followed the appointment of a new Immigration Minister, although this was never formally cited as the reason for the volte-face. 77 Tarek Abou Chabake, ‘Presentation’ (Paper Presented at the Workshop on Researching Statelessness and Citizenship in Asia and the Pacific, Melbourne Law School, January 2016). 78 Equal Rights Trust, above n 13, 112. Subsequent annual reports (since 2010) have continued this trend.