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

Australian citizenship is precious, and I have raised concerns before in this place about maladministration by the government. These concerns are growing. On Saturday I hosted a large community meeting with the member for Isaacs. We had around 350 people, which is a lot, given that we just stuck a notice out on Facebook two weeks ago. I would like to thank Hayatullah Rahimi and the Omid Cultural Association for organising the meeting with us, and Asher Hirsch from the Refugee Council of Australia.

We heard hundreds of reports of devastated people whose lives are now in limbo. They cannot travel, they cannot see family and they cannot go overseas to complete their studies. Their mental health is suffering because this government has failed to process their citizenship applications. These delays are inexplicable. The Federal Court of Australia in December found unreasonable delays in the case of two men—18 months and two years they had been waiting—and the court could not now rule out the possibility that a certain class of people were being picked on in mysterious ways.

This is the tip of the iceberg. The minister gave evidence to the court—he was forced to give evidence—admitting that there are over 10,000 cases which are considered complex now delayed. And yet how many people does the department have trained to work on these cases? Twelve—12 people working on 10,000 cases! They will never get processed without pressure.

Labor will speak up. We call on the government to clear the backlog this year, and to apologise to these people whose lives are in limbo. (Time expired)