Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying, my contribution was going to take only about four minutes, but it has been extended by the frivolous persistence of the member for Shortland. As I was saying before I was interrupted, the budget explicitly cut funding to one of the agencies that is the subject of this bill. It cut $6.9 million from ASIO's funding to enable it to carry out security checks for unauthorised maritime arrivals. When people arrive on our shores illegally, they have paid a people smuggler big money and they rarely have identity documents, so we ask our domestic security agency to check the veracity of their claims. The security checks are incredibly difficult to do because you are dealing with people who do not supply their identity to the Australian government and who come from faraway places with limited administrative abilities, and ASIO is required to assess whether these people will pose a threat to our national security. You can imagine that that is an incredibly important task and people are arriving here on our shores at such a great rate, and the resources of ASIO are being taken up extensively on dealing with these security assessments. The response of the government is to cut ASIO's funding for a program that deals with its ability to assess unauthorised maritime arrivals. I think most Australians would find that extraordinary.

On top of that, cuts to the national security area also include cuts to our ability to surveil our northern waters with aircraft. Astonishingly, the response of the government to the border protection crisis, its response to the $1.75 billion of wasted money, is to reduce the area that the aircraft which patrol our northern waters will be able to patrol. Can you believe that!

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