Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Keneally for her question. I absolutely reject any suggestion that members of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade or any other public servants engaged in consultation with Australians about their current status are 'cooking the books', to use her pejorative term. Let me be very clear: DFAT will not remove any Australians from its registration database without their consent. I am not familiar with the specific example to which Senator Keneally has referred, but I will undertake to take details from her after question time and follow that up.

What we have done is work with Services Australia to contact registered Australians to ensure that the information we have in our database is up to date and correct. Having detailed information assists us with planning for facilitated commercial flights. That includes the Qantas flight that arrived in Hobart yesterday from New Delhi. It also helps us to prioritise vulnerable Australians within the caps on incoming passenger arrivals. I don't know how those opposite suggest that we actually manage this process without having the most current information and without having up-to-date data from Australians.

We are in the middle of a global pandemic, and people's circumstances do change and are changing very quickly. Within the registration database, there are different status fields related to Australians' intentions to return. We will only change their status on their behalf based on information that has been provided to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and, as I said, we will not remove Australians from our registration database without their consent.

This is a very intensive process to try to support as many Australians as we can. Since 18 September, over 43,800 Australians have returned from overseas. That includes more than 17,000 Australians registered with DFAT, of which— (Time expired)