Amanda Vanstone (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

By way of answering Senator Evans’s interjection, the question was raised in the context of, ‘Isn’t it true you don’t have this power?’ as if to say that if we did have it we would be better off. I am simply saying that, if that is the point that is being made on the other side, please tell us that you would like to give immigration officers more power to storm workplaces to understand what is happening.

I will simply repeat two things I have said here before. Firstly, this is one of the most valuable visas Australia has to grow Australian jobs. When there is a particular shortage in an industry or a company—there might be a piece of equipment that desperately needs fixing and there are few people who can do it or there might be some technology that needs installing and there are few people in the world who can do it and do it quickly—then people can be brought here and they can do the work. That means that Australian jobs are kept going and in fact grow.

The second thing that I have said is that if anybody has information about someone misusing this visa then they should give us the information and we will look at it. You only have to look at Western Australia, where about 90 per cent of the cases that we have sent to the Western Australian government for investigation have proved to be cases that should be looked at. What does that tell you? It tells you that we are unsure about 10 per cent of the cases but we send them anyway because we want to make sure that the people who are doing the wrong thing are caught.