Amanda Vanstone (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I hear Senator Ellison saying it does. Compliance does that. Tax target where they are going to work—they actually publish: ‘We’re going to focus on this group next year,’ because focusing your work on the higher risk areas will give you a more effective result. And that is what we have done.

Our work, of course, would be aided if we did not have false allegations; if we did not have people saying, for example, that Indonesian workers were working at Halliburton in the north of South Australia getting paid $20 to $30 a day—only to find out, after investigation and effort by a whole range of agencies, that they were getting $20 to $30 a day in bonuses, that their salaries were up around $60,000 a year and they were only there for three weeks to do some specialist work. I have raised before my interest in the person who is digitised out in the Advertiser photograph covering that story; it says something about the source of it. But the general point I am making to you, Senator, is: if people insist on making false allegations we will still have to investigate them.

But I do not offer that as an excuse, and what I give you as an explanation is we are more closely focusing our work. In any event, I have been working within government to get more resources, and I believe I have been successful in that. We may be able to put even more resources in, but I can assure you they will not be just cast around across the board; they will be very well focused.