AFL boss made visa enquiry for polo player

AFL boss Gillon McLachlan has revealed he checked a visa application for an Argentine polo player who was a "friend of a friend" when Prime Minister Scott Morrison was immigration minister.

Mr McLachlan is giving evidence to a Senate committee over lobbying Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton to save a French au pair who worked for his cousin from deportation in 2015.

On Wednesday, Mr McLachlan told the inquiry he asked the AFL's head of government relations Jude Donnelly - a former Liberal staffer - to check on a business visa application for the polo player in 2014.

Ms Donnelly said she asked a former colleague in then prime minister Tony Abbott's office about the status of the application and was told it had already been approved and was being processed.

"I was contacted by someone who was waiting on a business visa, a friend of a friend, who was wanting to come into the country who had language issues," Mr McLachlan told the inquiry.

In a separate case, Frenchwoman Alexandra Deuwel was detained at Adelaide airport in October 2015 after admitting she intended to work in breach of her tourist visa for grazier Callum MacLachlan, the AFL boss' second cousin.

Callum MacLachlan contacted his relative, who directed Ms Donnelly to forward an email from him to the minister's chief-of-staff.

Mr Dutton then overturned departmental advice, allowing Ms Deuwel to stay in the country on a tourist visa.