Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Paterson for her question, and she's absolutely right. What we saw is a decade of profound mismanagement of our migration system, and the consequence of that is that some incredibly vulnerable people were very, very badly hurt.

The Nixon report was received by the government and it made very damning findings about the migration compliance system that was set up and overseen by the Leader of the Opposition when he was in this portfolio. We have seen enormous damage result from the poor management of this system. I know the member for Paterson is particularly concerned about violence and abuse that is perpetrated against women. The Nixon report makes it very clear that women were predominantly the victims of the conduct that was uncovered. We saw horrible instances of violence. We saw awful instances of human trafficking. We saw awful examples of sexual abuse. All of this was facilitated by a broken migration system that was broken by the Leader of the Opposition.

We have taken a very different approach to the management of this system. We've set rules and we are making sure that people are following those rules. The work that the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs and I are doing is imperative. We are assiduously and diligently working through all of the broken aspects of the system and fixing them piece by piece.

A really important part of the government's efforts is Operation Inglenook, which is an Australian Border Force led taskforce which is working around the clock to track down the criminals who came across the borders under those opposite and bring them to justice. In fact, just weeks after Operation Inglenook was stood up, the leader of a syndicate who was running brothels and his wife fled the country because they knew about the new approach the government was taking. I can tell the parliament that when they left the country what we did was cancel their visas and give them a lifetime ban on ever coming back into our country again. Operation Inglenook is absolutely essential. The fact that we had to set it up really demonstrates how poorly this system was being handled.

We have completely redesigned the work that is done within the home affairs department. I want to draw the parliament's attention to one really important fact, which is that, under those opposite, the number of immigration compliance officers in our department was cut in half. What did they think was going to happen when they pulled resources out of the department and ABF? What we found is the borders didn't get properly managed.

See this speech in context