Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

It is Groundhog Day. It is February, appropriation bills are back before the House and once again the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship has been standing before the parliament and asking for more money. The minister for immigration is indeed the Oliver Twist of Australian politics. Every year he turns up and says, 'Please, sir, can I have some more?' And this time he is asking again for more. This year the ask is $330 million. Last year, on recurrent, the ask was $295 million and with capital included it was $511 million and the year before that it was $85.7 million. Every February this government, despite revealing blow-outs in budget year after year after year—so even after those blow-outs—has to come back and ask for yet more funds time and time again.

The blow-out this year in the appropriation bills is intended to deal with two principal problems. The first one is a further blow-out in the 2011-12 budget, which was already blown out at the time of the original budget to the tune of over a billion dollars a year from less than $100 million a year for asylum seeker costs when the Howard government left office. But it is also to deal with a further blow-out last year. So not only did they get this year's budget wrong yet again and have had to ask for more money; they have even had a blow-out in the expenses from last year of over $100 million. So once again this minister has come to this House and said, 'Please, sir, can I have some more?'

Well, as is the practice with money bills, I suppose the government is going to get what it wants yet again and once again taxpayers are going to have to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars for this government's border protection failures. This is a government that has blown out the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's budget to record levels. This is a government that in 2011-12 will cost taxpayers, for that department, $2.73 billion. That is the bill for expenses for this year for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. This is a billion dollars more than the $1.69 billion it cost in 2007-08. That is why the government is asking for more money today as part of the debate on these bills. Also, DIAC's annual reports show that not only has there been this increase in cost but there has been a very significant increase in the size of the department itself. As to the number of permanent staff employed by DIAC between 2007 and 30 June 2011, there were 1,192 additional staff. So that is 1,192 additional officers within DIAC since this government came to office—an increase of 15 per cent over the last four years. During the same period the number of the highest paid senior executives, so the SE Service within DIAC, had also increased by 24 per cent. The median income for these positions in 2011 was between $180,000 and $210,000. This is a department that has gone completely out of control with costs and with the size of government. There is one simple reason for this: four years ago the government abolished the proven measures of the Howard government on border protection. Let us go through what the result has been. The minister has questioned figures relating to the blow-outs in the government's costs on border protection. I am happy to inform the minister by quoting from the government's own budget papers. Three years ago, in the budget estimates of 2009-10 and the additional estimates of 2009-10, there was a $207.5 million increase—a blow-out of the estimates of 2009-10 over the original budget of 2009-10. In the following year, in the 2010-11 budget they were $793.5 million over what they had said in the previous additional estimates, and when the next additional estimates came around the blow-out from the previous statement was $472 million. But they were just getting warmed up.

Strangely enough, after the election the additional estimates in 2010-11 showed a further blow-out over the budget estimates of 2010-11 of $1.5 billion. But they are still going, because in the additional estimates released last week the additional cost for asylum seeker management, netting off what they returned to the budget after the failed Malaysian people swap—so after they had put all that money back—was $866 million. That is a blow-out over the course of these last three years, from statement to statement, of $3.868 billion. That is the cost of this government's border protection failure—just under $3.9 billion.

When Senate estimates convened this week there were a lot of questions asked about the government decision to abolish the Pacific solution and temporary protection visas. The departmental secretary was asked whether he had advised the government of the potential cost implications of what he later described in his evidence as a major shift in policy. Once again, the secretary declined to answer this question. The only thing we can draw from the experience of the last three years is that the cost implications of that change in policy have so far been $3.9 billion.

This is a direct result of the change in government policy. In evidence, the secretary made it very clear that the reason for the blow-out in their total costs was the massive increase in costs related to the arrival of illegal boats to Australia. That is not in dispute. Under further questioning, Senator Lundy finally admitted that the increase in costs was a result of the change in policy. She coughed that up.

Mr Husic interjecting—

She was so keen to interject during Senate estimates with Senator Cash that she finally admitted what everybody in this country knows—

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