Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

The immigration and border protection portfolio has a special responsibility. That responsibility, under this government, is to protect the value of immigration to this country, and to protect the value of our borders as a national asset to this country.

Immigration has been a key cornerstone of our economic and social success as a nation for 200-plus years. There are two key ingredients that will ensure that we continue to maintain this success. We are, arguably, the world's most successful immigration nation. And we have a very good argument that we are the world's best immigration nation. But this cannot be taken for granted, and it will not continue if we do not focus on two core objectives. This government's core objectives in this portfolio area are to ensure the economic focus of our migration program and to ensure the integrity of our migration program.

Without these two key elements our immigration program will be unsuccessful. It will fail to meet the success benchmarks that it has achieved for so long. In this budget we announced the migration program. And we announced that in that program more than two-thirds of the permanent migration program will be attributed to skills. This was a core election commitment, and it follows on from the position that we held when we were last in government.

At the end of the Hawke-Keating government less than 30 per cent of the permanent program was in skills. Over the course of the Howard government that rose to almost 70 per cent. There were many things that we were critical of in the previous government in terms of how they managed immigration. One, though, that I will say that they maintained was the high proportion of skilled migration in the overall permanent program. That is something that we have continued in this budget. We will always ensure that the immigration program is an economic program, not a welfare program. That is our absolute focus in running this program in this budget and the budgets that will follow under an Abbott government.

The second area is integrity—integrity in all aspects of the program. Our activities in our first nine months have obviously been very focused on what has been happening on the border with illegal maritime arrivals. And we have had significant success over that period of time. We know that you cannot pretend to manage your immigration program if you cannot manage your borders. If you are not in control of your borders you are not in control of your immigration program.

So our policies, under Operation Sovereign Borders, have been about addressing that core primary task of any government: to ensure the security of our borders. The success has been there, I think, for all to see. But it cannot be taken for granted. It can easily change. If policies are changed, if postures are changed, if resolve is change and if these policies are not resourced then the success can change and we can easily go back to the position that we were in under the previous government.

Three critical areas make up Operation Sovereign Borders. The first is denying permanent residence to those who have arrived in Australia illegally by boat. We have done that, despite the frustration of those who sit opposite. The second is the offshore processing of people who have arrived illegally by boat. That has been done and continues to be done under this government. The third is by turning boats back where it is safe to do so. These policies— particularly the latter one, when it was introduced in late December—have ensured that we have had no successful people-smuggling venture to this country for almost six months now.

This has produced savings in this budget of $2½ billion. The previous government had forecast arrivals of 15,600 people over the budget and forward estimates. That is more than 600 boats. Our forecasts have been significantly reduced, and that is what has produced the $2½-billion saving. We have also produced a saving through the closure of 10 centres, two of which are often described as one centre—Aqua and Lilac compounds on Christmas Island. That has produced savings of $283.3 million and $300 million in program savings alone from how we have constructed the overall migration program itself. The budget is delivering on our commitments in immigration. I am happy to take questions.

See this speech in context