Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

Melbourne's southeast has welcomed many new communities over the past century. Large communities of Cambodian Australians, Vietnamese Australians and Indian Australians—to name just a few—have made Melbourne's southeast their home and have made vast contributions to the great multicultural fabric that makes up greater Melbourne.

More recent arrivals include the Sudanese Australian community and the Hazara Afghan community, which are emerging in Melbourne's southeast and, in particular, in the City of Greater Dandenong. The Dandenong market is one of the hidden gems of Melbourne, with food, shops and entertainment from countless cultures there for the community to enjoy. This market with its Afghan bazaar and Vietnamese, Mauritian, Indian and Sri Lankan food stalls, to name just a few, symbolises the opportunity that Australia offers and the multicultural melting pot that makes our country great.

New communities face many challenges and do not need additional challenges caused by failings in the government's immigration system. I recently joined the member for Bruce, Julian Hill, at a community meeting in Dandenong South, in my electorate, where around 400 residents—mostly of Hazara background, shared their concerns about the farcically long delays in the processing of citizenship applications for people on protection visas.

Some of the stories I heard were shocking, with some applicants waiting years for their applications to be decided. One man told the meeting how he has lived in Australia since 2010 and, having satisfied the residency requirements, applied for citizenship in July 2014. He is still waiting, on a decision from the minister for immigration, nearly three years on. Another man, who has not seen his wife and children for over five years, spoke of his desire to become an Australian citizen and to work to make Australia an even better place. It has been nearly two years since he applied for citizenship, without his application having been process. This kind of delay is unacceptable.

On 16 December 2016 the Federal Court of Australia found, in the case of BMF16 and the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, that delays by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection in the processing of citizenship applications by two men on protection visas were unreasonable. The two men had been waiting, respectively, for 18 and 23 months from the date of their applications. It came to light in the Federal Court proceeding that there were only 12 departmental staff responsible for processing over 10,000 citizenship applications that had been assessed as requiring further assessment. With such an obvious need for staff in this division of the department of immigration, the only explanation for such a delay would be a deliberate draining of resources from the division that processes citizenship applications from people on protection visas.

People who aspire to the great privilege of Australian citizenship and who have qualified to apply for citizenship should be treated with respect. By ignoring and delaying citizenship applications by people on protection visas, the Turnbull government is failing tests of fairness and lawfulness. These targeted delays are, frankly, unAustralian. That is why I wrote to the minister for immigration on 28 February this year, to highlight the concerns raised by residents in my electorate about those significant delays. I told him that these delays were deeply concerning and I said that it shows unwillingness by the government—in which he is a senior minister—to provide the required resources, to his department, to finalise these applications in a reasonable time frame.

I am seeking an explanation from the minister for immigration as to why he has let times blow out with so many citizenship applications. I want to see the government's plan to bring the processing of citizenship applications within a reasonable and lawful time frame. As you would expect from this government, I am yet to receive a response to my letter. Perhaps I too will be waiting two years for my letter to be responded to, as citizenship applicants who want to become citizens of our great country are also being kept waiting two years. I call on the government and the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection to do their job and to take action to ensure that all citizenship applications are processed within a time frame in line with community expectations and in line with the law of our country.

See this speech in context