Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question:

(1) (a) Yes, my Department is continuing to contribute to work on this issue with a range of other agencies as any decision to alter arrangements for long term temporary residents may have significant cost implications across portfolios. Decisions regarding this matter would need to be considered by Government in a budget context. As the work is continuing I am unable to provide details of the Department's work.

(b) The Department will continue to work with other agencies to advise the Government on this matter.

(2) The Department would not presume to question the professional opinion of the Australian Government Actuary (AGA) by making judgements about the feasibility or otherwise of the alternative scenarios costed.

The report summarises work undertaken by the AGA to develop a model of the potential direct costs to the Commonwealth of providing permanent residence to Retirement visa holders after 10 years on the visa and discusses the various assumptions used in developing this model. As stated in the report, various scenarios were included in order to demonstrate the sensitivity of outcomes with slightly different assumptions in relation to health cost inflation and mortality.

(3) As indicated in a letter sent to BERIA in June 2011, this report was one of many sources of information used to inform discussions about development of a pathway to permanent residence for these visa holders. For example, this report enabled staff in my Department to develop a better understanding of the factors to be taken into account in developing a costing, the basis for various assumptions and the relative sensitivity of outcomes to changes in these assumptions.

(4) In addition to an alternative costing model developed by BERIA the Government did receive some feedback from Retirement visa holders and their supporters concerned at what they perceived as issues or deficiencies with the report. For example, concerns were raised over not including scenarios which used various alternative assumptions regarding the take-up rate of permanent residence. This was, however, considered unnecessary as indicative figures could be calculated using the modelling outcomes without the need for this work to be undertaken by the AGA.