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

I am glad that senators opposite do in fact look at the DIMA annual report, which was tabled yesterday if not the day before. It is true that we have for a long time had a very high level of visits, around 100 per cent—for monitoring, at least—and that the visits would tend to be in the 25 per cent mark. The number of sponsors monitored in 2005-06 did fall from 7,963 to 6,471, while the number of site visits fell from 1,845 to 1,790. The annual report does show that the percentage of sponsors monitored fell from 96 per cent to 65 per cent—the target that we work on is 100 per cent—while the number of site visits fell from 22 per cent to 18 per cent. Our target there is 25 per cent. They are the percentages from the overall figures that I have given you.

Resources were diverted to investigate an increase in allegations—not all, of course, of which have been found to be warranted. In doing this we have targeted resources to higher risk industries, for example restaurants and construction. It used to be the case many years ago in Customs, for example, that every package of goods would be looked at. But people recognise in compliance that targeted work generally produces better results than a blanket ‘visit everybody’ approach.