Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Like the member for Menzies, I came to this place in mid-2022. There was a lot that I would have expected to be part of the job: contributing to national policy discourse, perhaps formulating some of the policy, connecting with our communities and, of course, helping people navigate through the NDIS, Medicare and other government services. I didn't expect to be completely and utterly inundated with people crying out for help to get a simple document, their passport, renewed. After our office opened we received email after email and phone call after phone call from people who were desperate to get their passports to be able to go overseas. My office was bombarded with stories of people who had been waiting for months, some needing passports within 24-hours just to be able to visit their loved ones.

Marilyn Psao, a devoted mother, applied for her children's passports in June, eager to embark on a long-awaited family trip. Little did she know that her joy would soon turn to anxiety as normal passport processing times were eclipsed and her wait for passports went from weeks and weeks into months. She was lucky, because our office was able to help her. But there were many who missed those deadlines, who lost money and who were unable to see sick relatives. The stress of this situation weighed heavily on Marilyn, and it complicated a process that should have been quick and easy.

Imeylda found herself facing the race against time as she desperately sought to obtain her passport to visit her sick father overseas. The fear of missing out on her precious moments with her loved ones was really a weight on her shoulders. The member for Menzies cited very similar stories in his speech just then but failed to acknowledge the absolute basket case that was the Australian Passport Office left by the former government. Imeylda was terrified that she would be unable to go overseas to bid farewell to her father in his time of need. Then there was Stephen and his whole family, who have been waiting since the pandemic to go overseas on a long trip. He was also stuck in the passport-processing debacle that was left by the Liberals. These aren't anecdotes. They are real stories, real emails, real phone calls to our office. These are just three examples of the scores of people across Bennelong and the thousands across the community who were let down by the former government's negligence. They, like many Australians, endured lengthy wait times, averaging 50 days at the peak of the backlog, a process that now takes a bit under four days.

The former Liberal government's failure to prioritise the processing of passports inflicted unnecessary suffering on ordinary Australians. This was the legacy that was left by the former government, and yet they have the gall today to put up a motion about a report that reviewed how terribly they had dealt with this predictable issue. That report laid bare the incompetence and disregard for proper planning characterised by the Liberals' 10 years in government. It reinforced what many of us already know—that the former government were more focused on themselves than doing their jobs. The report highlights the failure of the former government to prepare for the surge of demand upon the reopening of the borders. Despite warnings dating back to December 2020, the former government chose to ignore a very predictable uptick in passport applications. The member for Bruce put it very clearly before: when you close the borders, passports expire; when you open them again, people want to go overseas, and they want to renew their passports. The Passport Office warned the former government to do something about this and to employ more staff: 'You're going to get more applications.' They ignored it. Families were separated, individuals missed crucial life events, travellers incurred significant financial losses due to disrupted plans—all because the former government chose to ignore that advice. It was so predictable, yet they ignored it.

A recent documentary showed us how dysfunctional that government was and how they were more focused on looking at themselves than doing their jobs. Thankfully we've cleaned up the mess. It's what we were elected to do. Now, 94.9 per cent of routine passport applications are done within the target of 10 days, and the average processing time is now just 3.9 days.

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