Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Cities and Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister plan to proceed with the privatisation of Australia's visa system, in light of revelations that his mate Scott Briggs spent last year leading a group trying to buy the visa system while sending $165,000 to the Liberal Party?

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Scullin for his question. Let me point out that we are not privatising the visa system—far from it. Rather, several years ago we decided that we needed to upgrade our visa-processing capabilities because the visa-processing capabilities are about 25 years old and do not have some of the modern functionality we would like. Furthermore, given that growth in visa applications is projected to grow by over 35 per cent over the next 10 years to 13 million visa applications each year, it is clearly timely to be examining whether or not to upgrade the visa-processing system.

We've been out to the market to see who would partner with the government to build the new capability. Under the model, these partners would build and operate the platform. This is the important piece: the government would always retain responsibility, as it does today, for all visa decision-making; it would determine the business rules and how decisions are made; it would remain responsible for national security and other risk assessments; and it would have overall responsibility on an ongoing basis for visa policy. In this regard this model is actually very similar to the model we already have in place, called the electronic travel authority, upon which about 30 per cent of all visas are processed. That model was in place all through the Labor years. It did not change; it was precisely that model, which has a partner that assists in the visa processing but the government remains at all times responsible for the business rules, the risk assessment, the policy and all of the major decisions.

The process for selecting the partners has not been completed yet. There is still a process underway. I repeat: we do need to upgrade our visa-processing systems at some stage soon, given the age of those systems and given how many visa applications we are getting every single year, and that's just increasing.