Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

The question does come consequent upon passage of the appropriation bill, which I think passed the chamber yesterday. I think the senator who asked me the question participated, possibly at length, in that debate and asked similar questions of the representing minister at that time. It is the case that the bills appropriate total funding of the figure that the senator just quoted at me—in which case, one wonders why she needed to ask me the question—of $1.675 billion to implement the Houston report for costs associated with IMAs, and the funding in the appropriations is consistent with the update that was handed down in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

I think the $668 million can be broken down to a number of components: an increase in the humanitarian program to 20,000 places per annum, the increase in the family stream of the permanent migration program to 194 places per annum, regional capacity building initiatives to support government and international organisations to strengthen the region's capacity to manage migration, capital costs associated with the regional processing centres, and I can continue in the next supplementary— (Time expired)