Budget blowouts thanks to border policy

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Created on Thursday, 01 November 2012 16:57

Written by Editorial staff

In a composed speech to the House of Representatives yesterday (October 31), shadow immigration minister Scott Morrison has highlighted the massive budget failures as a result of border policy - debts which will be have to be paid off for decades to come.

He said that the borders have cost the Australian taxpayer $2.7 billion this year, which is a 2,000 per cent jump on what the government has placed in its budget annually in the 2009-10 financial year.

"Before MYEFO [Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook], the blowout was $4.9 billion over three years; today that blow-out over four years is $6.6 billion. That is the price of border failure in financial terms from this government," he said.

In the May budget, the government forecast that 450 boat people with no immigration visa would make their way to our shores every month. The rate of arrivals has averaged out to 2,000 a month, Scott says, and there seems to be no sign of letting up.

Coalition leader Tony Abbott says the government is failing to address this issue since the offshore processing policies were put in place back in August, thousands have arrived and only a few hundred have been taken to Nauru.

Scott said on 3AW Radio with Derryn Hinch that this new policy the government has introduced,which looks at excising Australia from the migration zone, means that they can ease pressure on Christmas Island which is being overrun by such a large number of boats.

"They don’t have to bring people to Christmas Island anymore, they can just bring them straight to Darwin and they can transport the one in ten that goes to Nauru directly there and the others will be directly on mainland," he said.

Such arrivals mean that legitimate claims of asylum from people in refugee camps around the world have been put on the back burner.

The cost blowouts put the budget surplus in danger, which was promised under the national government for the next federal budget. He said Labour has failed to get the budget back into black in the entirety of its five year reign compared to ten surpluses delivered by Peter Costello in his 11 years as treasurer under the Howard government.

The Liberal government put in place policies in the early 2000s that ensured that boat arrivals didn't threaten the public coffers with massive costs to house and process illegal entrants.