Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

The process that they go through is this. Every single applicant is first of all checked against the Movement Alert List. The Movement Alert List is updated every 24 hours, involving ASIO's information. Then, if additional flags are raised at any point, separate referrals happen to ASIO. Then, people who were getting out of that part of the world had to go through a border that was controlled by both Egypt and Israel with the relevant checks that would happen at that point as well. In addition to that, it is now public that there was a further check that was made in March of every single visa holder within this case load either onshore or offshore. All of those checks have been made.

If at any point our security agencies gave advice to the government that a visa should be cancelled, then the government of course would take that advice seriously. But the concept that we should abandon our security agencies and defer instead to Google searches from the opposition is not something this government will do.

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