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Less than 40 per cent of Palestinians fleeing violence in the Middle East have been granted entry to Australia under the visa class the government has allocated for them.

Last year, the Albanese government began issuing visitor visas to people escaping widespread destruction in Gaza, which allows them to stay in Australia for up to 12 months, allowing them the opportunity to apply for protection once they arrive.

Home Affairs officials revealed during a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday morning that so far 2686 visas had been granted for Palestinians and 4614 had been refused.

Only 1010 people have arrived in Australia from the Occupied Palestinian Territories since the Hamas October 7 attack on Israel, which triggered Israel’s full-scale retaliation on Gaza.

Officials have also conceded no humanitarian visas have been issued to people fleeing Gaza.

Agriculture and Emergency Services Minister Murray Watt, who is representing the ministers in the Home Affairs portfolio, said the government needed to follow health and security checks, while officials said applicants were failing the test of being considered genuine visitors.

Greens immigration spokesman David Shoebridge said people fleeing Gaza were being denied “because they are not ‘genuine tourists’.”

“Of course, people in Gaza are more concerned with escaping a genocide, saving their lives and those of their families, than seeing the Opera House,” he said.

“Only a genuinely cruel government would design a system that refuses protection for people facing genocide because they don’t want to return to the genocide.”