Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know it's Monday but—oh, dear me!—you don't know whether to laugh or cry. I know this bloke's new here. I don't know actually know who he is, but I know he's new here. But, if someone told you to do this, just say no next time. Honestly. If you wrote this, use ChatGPT next time. This is ridiculous.

Yes, you're right: the first bit of the ANAO report on the Australian Passport Office, released on 7 February, revealed:

Passport applications are not being processed in a time and resource efficient manner.

Well, yes, they did find that. Of course they did. But keep reading the report, because, if you think this is an attack on the government, you've missed the point. I wonder why the Audit Office found that. They confirmed what everyone who tried to get a passport in 2022 knew: the previous government failed to plan for an entirely predictable surge in passport applications. It's bleedingly obvious. It's not rocket science. When you close the borders for a couple of years, millions of passports expire. Why would people renew a passport when they're not going to travel? And then guess what? You open the borders and there are millions more passport applications. It's entirely predictable. It's so simple that even the Liberals should have been able to understand it. The ANAO audit report also found that the former coalition government was warned in December 2020 to prepare for 'a pent-up demand surge'. Anyone should have been able to see it. The Public Service warned them, but they did nothing. They had ample time to prepare. It was a complete failure in governance by the Liberals to prepare directly for these backlogs and delays which Australians experienced.

Because of their failure and incompetence, it took 50 days, on average, to get a passport at the peak of the delays. That means people missed trips. They missed people's funerals. They missed family weddings. They missed being reunited with their loved ones they hadn't seen during their precious bit of annual leave, the time that they could go. They missed work trips. They missed paid-for holidays because of the incompetence of that mob opposite, who are so silly they come in and move a motion thinking they're attacking the government when they're attacking themselves. They weren't very good at being the government. They're not very good at being the opposition. What's the contrast? This government fixed their mess. In 2023, 94.9 per cent of routine passport applications resulted in passports being issued in a 10-day time frame. The average wait time to get a passport was down to 3.9 days. I genuinely have no idea why they chose to bring a debate on their own failure.

But how could they fail at something this basic? Well, if you watch the television you might get a clue. It's because, instead of governing, during that wasted decade of decay and division they were fighting with each other. Senator Reynolds described their culture. She talked about people being blackmailed, threatened or intimidated to sign a petition. Senator McKenzie said that, while that internal war was going on, 'it was like being strapped to a suicide bomber'. She said: 'Something horrific and catastrophic was going to happen. You wish they wouldn't do it, but they do it anyway.' The former member for Bennelong, John Alexander—there's a much better member for Bennelong over there, I see—also said something, and this is one of their own describing the former government and what it did instead of fixing the Passport Office. This is what he said about their government: 'In looking at the nine years in power and our three prime ministers, the playing of politics was always the No. 1 game, the No. 2 game and the No. 3 game. It's not productive and it's not edifying.'

So let's be really clear. This is a silly motion. They think they're attacking the government, and they're attacking themselves and exposing their own record of failure. There was an entirely predictable surge in passport applications that their government failed to plan for because they were too busy fighting each other and trying to get back at each other as if it were a never-ending version of Mean Girls. In their case, it was mainly mean boys.

Finally, I will finish on the other bit of the motion, on the cost of passports. Yes, as you said, the No. 1 priority is addressing cost-of-living pressures and providing targeted relief. The cost of passports, though, is indexed annually. This has been the case under successive governments over many years. But the point here is that we're modernising Australia's passport system so that Australia's passport remains a globally respected identity document. Right now, it's equal fifth on the list of the most secure passports in the world. It has to remain secure. We have to continue to invest more in maintaining the security of Australia's passport system, because for many Australians their passport is their primary-source identity document, and that security gives Australians visa-free access to over 180 countries. The cost of a passport over its 10 year life is less than $1 a week.

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