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

I'll deal with the question in two parts—firstly, specifically with reference to the issue of visa cancellations and, secondly, with the concept of visas coming from war zones. First of all, with respect to cancellations, the situation is the same as when I last advised the parliament, which is that some cancellations have occurred and they have all occurred offshore. But that does not change the fact that the security agencies never stop collecting information, as has happened no matter who is in government, and we continue to conduct various checks on people who have visas, whether they are onshore or offshore. But, specific to the question, the cancellations so far have been offshore.

The issue which was raised in the preface to the question—and it has been raised a number of times in this House—was about the use of visitor visas from people coming from war zones. Because the Syrians who came on humanitarian visas were separately interviewed, there's been a presumption that they were the only people who came from the war zone during that time. It's to be remembered that, during the period those opposite were in office, for a large part of that time the Leader of the Opposition was the minister in charge of these programs. Large parts of Afghanistan were controlled by the Taliban, and did the then government put a ban on visitor visas from Afghanistan? No. One thousand nine hundred and ninety-one visitor visas were granted from Afghanistan during that period. From Iraq and Syria during the period that Islamic State controlled large parts of Iraq and Syria, did they put a ban on visitor visas from the region? No. Four thousand nine hundred and ninety-four visitor visas were granted from Iraq and 1,505 visitor visas were granted from Syria. Similarly, during the entire period when the Gaza Strip was controlled by Hamas, 864 visitor visas were granted from the Palestinian territories.

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