Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great pleasure to have the opportunity to participate in this debate, this consideration in detail, on the budgetary measures connected to the Home Affairs portfolio. In my opening remarks I will concentrate particularly on those matters within my responsibility, although of course, as members would be well aware, the appropriations also go to those matters directly within the remit of the Minister for Home Affairs and also to those of Senator Watt in his capacities in the national emergency management space that fall within the Home Affairs portfolio, a space which obviously has been of particular relevance as much of the country has been working its way through a series of weather events. Our thoughts are with those on the front line of that as we consider the significant reforms that Minister Watt has overseen, many of which they supported by appropriations contained in the bill that is before this consideration in detail process. I look forward to exchanging with members of the opposition and members of the crossbench, should they seek to participate in this conversation, and I know that there are government members who have issues of concern to them they wish to raise.

For this government, and particularly in respect of my responsibilities, this budget delivers on some longstanding concerns we have had about elevating the role of immigration. There are a number of investments which put into the budget in the most meaningful way these longstanding aspirations about seeing immigration as a core function of the national government. Indeed, it is a function that really is about nation-building and a function that, sadly, has had to be substantially rebuilt following nearly a decade of neglect under the members opposite.

We see this neglect particularly in the area of visa processing, where staff had been dragged down through cuts, cuts and more cuts, leaving us unprepared for the challenge that lay ahead of our nation as borders reopened, with very significant consequences for our economy and even more significant consequences, I might say, for those many Australians with deep family connections to people outside this nation. Rebuilding that capacity with very significant investments has been a significant focus for the government and a task that we have approached with urgency. As I told the House not that long ago, since 1 June we have dealt with 3.4 million visas. We would not have been able to do this and reduce the processing time for some key visa categories, and I think particularly of some of the temporary skilled visas, which were taking in some cases months to be processed previously. The time is now down to days. That is down to a couple of things: firstly, the quality of work that is being done by the wonderful women and men who work in the home affairs department and, secondly, the additional resourcing that has been put before them, hiring more people and offering up the opportunity for more over time to speed this process. There is more work being done, which is being facilitated by investments contained in the budget in this regard. These investments are critical in and of themselves, but they are also the basis upon which a wider reform agenda can be prosecuted. These investments are in and of themselves critical, but they are also the basis upon which a wider reform agenda can be prosecuted, and I'm very pleased that, as one of the many outcomes of the government's very successful Jobs and Skills Summit—

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