Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I've got a series of questions that I was hoping the immigration minister might be able to answer. We're now six months into this term of government, and I would like to know whether the minister is embarrassed that, after nine years in opposition, he's had to appoint a panel to develop an immigration policy because in nine years in opposition the government did nothing. If that's not the case, could he, this afternoon, detail his immigration plan? Would he, in particular, tell us: How many young skilled migrants will be included in the additional 35,000 permanent places? How many temporary skilled visas have been issued in the last six months? How many permanent skilled visas have been issued in the last six months? What is the make-up of the individual categories of those permanent visas and those temporary visas that have been issued in the six months?

Can the minister also explain: it's understandable that this could be occurring, but what is the department doing given that there are 300 new people now processing visas and they don't seem to have been given the adequate training that's necessary to be able to deal with all the errors that they are making? Some of those errors have very, very severe consequences for those who have applied for visas. For instance, once your visa has been rejected and you cannot come to Australia, then you also cannot apply to go to other countries. It would seem to me that some sort of review system needs to be put in place and put in place very quickly if we are going to be able to deal with this.

Would the minister also be transparent with the Australian people? He talked with great fanfare about his jobs summit and the announcement out of that of the 35,000 additional permanent places for one year. What is going to happen the following year and the year after that? Will those 35,000 permanent places continue, or is this something he has outsourced to the panel because he didn't have a migration policy when he came to government? It would be very good to know about that.

Also, will the minister adopt all the recommendations of his panel, or will he select some of the recommendations from his panel? It would be very good if he could tell the Australian people, having set up the panel to devise an immigration policy for the government, whether that will become the immigration policy for the government, or will he cherry-pick according to his own plans? The Australian people also want to know: what are your plans when it comes to temporary protection visas? What are your plans when it comes to SHEVs? Are you going to be fully transparent with the Australian people as to what the numbers are and how you will be dealing with these issues? When will you do that? There are a lot of people wanting to know the details around this, which we are yet to see.

The government has used smoke and mirrors to try and play around with the actual allocation of money that has been given to the department for visa processing. The government has made a huge fanfare about the additional resources that have been put in place. There are still over 700,000 visas waiting to be processed. Will the allocation of those new resources be a one-off, or is the government going to ensure that those positions stay in place? Because there are 700,000 people waiting to have their visa processed. What the Australian people are looking for, Minister, is a plan. They have been waiting nine years to see this government have a plan for immigration. They haven't seen it yet. You've outsourced it, but it would be good if you could explain a little bit of the detail of what your policy for immigration is.

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