Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I do understand that for people who are waiting for visa applications to be processed, that is a really difficult situation for people to be in. As I say, as well as impacting on those people who are waiting for those applications to be processed, it's impacting on employers all around the country, who are desperate to get workers who have been waiting for their visas to be processed for a very long time. For all the complaints we hear from people on the other side about what needs to be done to assist regional employers to get the workers they need, they did nothing about the visa backlog. It's also, of course, impacting on the very people that you're asking about.

At the Jobs and Skills Summit, we committed to put on about, I think, 500 extra immigration staff to help clear that backlog, in addition to the work that had already been done. Because of that, we've now been able to bring that backlog down to 800-odd thousand from the nearly one million we inherited. It's still too long. We're still putting in more resources. Hopefully, that will make a difference to the people you're asking questions about.