Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When Australia was formed, about 90 per cent of Australians were born here. Today, over 50 per cent of Australians were either born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas. Things change quickly. The original Department of Immigration was established in 1945. Its mission back then was nation-building and administering Australia's migration program—attracting the best and the brightest to make our nation a competitive global powerhouse, both economically and socially.

This great department operated a successful service for decades, overseeing the successful settlement of many, many migrants. Immigration lurched down the road to demise back in 2013, when the member for Cook became the immigration minister and approved the integration of immigration with Customs and the creation of the Australian Border Force. The complete takeover occurred under the current opposition leader's leadership, after he became the minister at the end of 2014. In 2017, after 72 years, the word 'immigration' was dropped from the department's title and the department was sucked into the vortex of Home Affairs.

Here's a list of hits the coalition accomplished during their time overseeing this proud department. They refused to give staff a wage increase for six years. They shut down visa processing functions at approximately six overseas offices. They outsourced contact centres in Australia and overseas. They gutted client services in each state, including shutting down face-to-face immigration services from anywhere north of Brisbane. They cut visa processing staff by a third between 2015 and 2022, as onshore protections claims went through the roof. They halved the immigration compliance team, and they tried to privatise Australia's visa processing system to sell it off to the highest bidder. So, while the former Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government were focused on making staff miserable, overworking them and even wanting to sell their jobs, our migration system was also enabling some of the worst crimes known to humanity under the coalition's watch.

Gaps and weaknesses in the immigration system allowed organised crime and unsavoury characters to thrive. The Nixon review, conducted by former police chief Ms Christine Nixon, found criminal syndicates exploited our visa system to facilitate human trafficking, modern slavery, illegal sex work, illicit drug importation and money laundering—something the former member for Moreton was endorsing, in fact. Temporary migrant workers were at such an elevated risk of being abused and exploited by their employers that it was almost a design feature of the immigration system. At a time of record skills shortages, the visa processing backlog surged to almost one million and protracted processing times ballooned, with some migrants waiting up to 2½ years, which has encouraged bad actors to lodge increasing numbers of non-genuine applications for protection, shifting resources away from authentic claims.

These failures stem from the previous coalition government's neglect of the home affairs department under the former immigration minister. There was a lack of care, attention and basic interest in one of the most important things the Australian government does. The opposition leader's greatest fraud is that, despite presenting himself as tough on borders, immigration compliance was deprioritised under the member for Dickson's watch. As I just mentioned, the coalition halved the immigration compliance team. These problems are systemic and will take time to fix, but, as our response to the Nixon review shows, we're acting to clean up the opposition leader's mess.

We're establishing a new immigration compliance division to reprioritise immigration compliance and protect the integrity of the visa and migration system. It will include new risk and integrity teams to target the organised abuse of immigration programs and protect vulnerable community members from exploitation. It will work to resolve the immigration status of those people whose onshore visa options have been exhausted and to improve protections for vulnerable migrants. We're also strengthening fit-and-proper-person assessments for registered migration agents and improving the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority's ability to sanction unscrupulous registered agents—those that milk the system and send their clients down the wrong path just for money. We're also increasing financial penalties for providing unlawful immigration assistance; I'm forever meeting with constituents who have been given bad advice by unscrupulous registered agents. These reforms will provide a stronger framework for the OMARA to address criminality in the migration advice industry.

The Albanese Labor government will not turn a blind eye to the exploitation of Australia's visa system, as occurred under the member for Cook and the member for Dickson. We need to get the balance right and look at our resources.

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