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

Two more illegal boat arrivals carrying 120 people. That means that since the budget and these two backdowns on the budget, they have had 1,800 people arrive illegally in Australia in the past six weeks. That is the equivalent of 300 people coming into Australia illegally per week, and the government budgeted for 450 to come per month. So we are getting 1,200 a month, the government have budgeted for 450 a month, they have already taken $400 million out of their budget bottom line today alone, plus there is the blowout we are going to get in processing charges for all the extra illegal immigrants that are coming down. When you add all of that, their $1.5 billion surplus, which nobody believes they are going to get anyway, is completely blown away.

This passenger movement charge is really the final insult for the tourism industry. The government have slashed funding for the facilitation of passenger movements in and out of Australia and that has led to increased processing times for people coming to our country and leaving our country. At the same time they are getting more money from the people who are moving through our borders. So you can wait longer and you can pay more: this is life under Julia Gillard's Labor Party.

Unfortunately, Customs is an agency that has been systematically targeted by Labor since they came to office. The $34 million cut for passenger facilitation that I have just outlined comes on top of another $10 million cut in the most recent budget. This is occurring at a time when passenger numbers are going to move from approximately 32 million to 38 million over the next four years. So this hit to Customs means that people are going to be waiting longer but they are going to be paying extra for the privilege under the Labor Party. It means that the government's target of processing people within 30 minutes when they come into Australia is just not going to be met. Indeed, the government's own KPIs show that people are waiting longer: only 92 per cent of people are going to be processed within the time frame and, because of the budget and personnel cuts, that figure is only going to get worse.

The Australian Airports Association represents people who actually know what is going on at our airports. If you talk to them they will let you know how concerned they are about these Customs cuts. They tell us that in Australia's major gateway ports—Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth—the processing time at peak periods for passengers has gone up by 24 minutes because of these Labor Party budget cuts.

There is absolutely no correlation between the passenger movement charge and what it costs the government to process passengers. The government's own figures tell us that they are going to be spending less on processing passengers—$240 million this year and then $230 million next year—at a time when they are going to be raising about four times that much from the passenger movement charge. The indexation was completely and utterly indefensible. It hit an industry that employs 900,000 Australians and it hit them at the worst possible time, when they are struggling from the effects of the high Australian dollar.

Don't let the minister, who came in here and gave a 10-second speech on his amendment, get away with the claim that the government are doing this willingly; that they have suddenly seen the light; that they have had a road to Damascus style conversion and realised that they cannot afford to hurt the tourism industry in this way. I have a copy of the government amendment here and we are happy to support it because it gives us the outcome we are seeking. It gives us that outcome because it is word for word, letter for letter, exactly the same as the amendment we moved yesterday.

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