Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I get that the shadow minister for home affairs wants to make a splash in his new portfolio, and I know he's ambitious, particularly for his leader, but this motion is absolutely ridiculous. He went through a history of the creation of the Department of Home Affairs and claimed that what we were doing was factional and party political. He was elected in 2015 after a distinguished military career, but in 2017, and all the way up from the time he was elected to the creation of the Department of Home Affairs in 2017, you had George Brandis from the liberal wing of the Liberal Party—the Attorney-General—fighting against the concept of the creation of the Department of Home Affairs—led by the arch conservatives and the then Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, the then member for Dickson—on the front page of the national media. They did press about it. It was totally ridiculous. Don't accuse us of playing factional and party political when you saw the LNP Queensland branch—liberal and conservative wings—on full display in the creation of the Department of Home Affairs.

Let me tell you, there were 27,000 people left on temporary protection visas in sheds who languished all the way through under the Department of Home Affairs. Now, remember that figure because there's another 27,000 figure—27,931 people who, in 2018, in the year of the creation of the Department of Home Affairs, asked for protection visas when they arrived here by planes. So they're tough on boats but weak on planes. They were very gentle on the applications for visas for nannies for Liberal Party mates—very gentle—and very gracious and charitable on contracts for people who happened to have connections in relation to this issue. They were criticised up hill and down dale by the Auditor-General for their administration of the Department of Home Affairs. You only have to look at it to see some of the toughest language you have ever seen from the Auditor-General in relation to it.

What we have done here are machinery of government changes, and all governments do this. It's routine. It's important for better coordination and communication, and sharing of information for national security agencies and departments. Under the previous government, you had only to see survey after survey in the Department of Home Affairs to see morale was worse in the Department of Home Affairs than in any other department in the Commonwealth government. So you had speaker after speaker from the Liberal and National parties here giving us lectures when their own departmental public servants were so critical of their administration. Now, our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, the member for Grayndler, has been upfront about the fact that this change is partly as a result of the need for better sharing of information as a result Dural caravan incident. We're going to make sure to learn from that experience. We make no apologies for the necessary steps that we've undertaken to make sure Australia's safe. We're not engaging in party political and factional tug-of-war circa 2016-17-18, as we saw under the coalition. This is a deliberate and considered move. It's about prioritising national security.

It's not surprising that a number of national security experts have backed it in, including John Blaxland, Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies at the Australian National University. ASPI has backed it in—John Coyne and James Corera from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. I can tell you that that is not a body affiliated with the Australia Labor Party. They have praised the decision in an article on ASPI's website. What we've done has got the support of security intelligence experts, and those opposite are criticising us about it. ASPI wrote on their website that institutional integration, for example, brings ASIO and the AFP under one minister alongside cyber, immigration and citizenship and will allow for better coordination between national security operations and strategic policymaking. How about you listen to the experts? In the areas of science, they don't want to listen to the experts. In areas of education, they don't want to listen to the experts. In areas of international, strategic and national security, the Liberal and National parties don't want to listen to the experts. It's anti-intellectualism. Go back to Robert Menzies. This is the bloke that created and expanded universities. The party of Menzies is no longer.

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