House debates

Wednesday, 16 June 2021

Bills

Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2021-2022; Consideration in Detail

4:24 pm

Photo of Julian HillJulian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Every diplomat has been pulled out of Afghanistan because of security, and yet the government has nothing to say to Australians whose husbands, wives and children are there fearing for their lives. It's absolutely disgraceful. So I ask the minister: when will this discrimination end, and what possible explanation is there that that is the average processing time? I'm not talking about the outlier cases with complex identification; I get that. This is the average processing time under this government. And it's not a COVID thing. You can't hide behind COVID. This is eight years of data.

The final thing I'll say is: for subclass 300 visa holders, fiances are family too. These are genuine relationships, often of years and years, and yet there are thousands of people who are separated from their partners because they're not married. They've applied, they might have the visa, but they're not getting in. There are genuine religious and cultural reasons why many people won't physically live together for 12 months before marriage. So I say to the minister: when will subclass 300 visa holders be able to come and get married? Can you guarantee also that decisions in your department about travel authorisations—this is the minister in the Chamber's responsibility—are being made consistently? We keep hearing instances of inconsistency where a few random people get the authorisation and everyone else doesn't.

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