O'Connor accused of 'babysitting' portfolio

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Created on Tuesday, 19 February 2013 12:40

Written by Editorial staff

Immigration and citizenship minister Brendan O'Connor appears to be lazily babysitting the portfolio until the September election.

That's the assertion of Migration Alliance's Liana Allan, who asked why the minister is not even using an assigned immigration email address.

She exclaimed: "I was shocked to discover when I tried to write to him, that he hadn't even been given a DIAC email address yet.

"I was provided a strange email address by his office. The current immigration minister is still using an old email address whilst running the Australian immigration portfolio."

Ms Allan is wondering what the circumstances were when Mr O'Connor took over, and is asking whether a lack of organisation is the result of a last-minute ministry reshuffle.

The founding member of Migration Alliance explained that this is characteristic of the inability Labor has shown when it comes to immigration. The current administration has failed to address the concerns of Australian migration agents, and as a result, a new government is required.

A number of emails have been written to the minister, Ms Allan elaborated, but received no response on a range of matters.

Her first correspondence was to welcome him to the portfolio - no response.

Her second email was to address the concerns she and fellow agents had over what they perceived to be a deeply flawed Ethics Toolkit - no response.

"I have explained the huge costs associated with producing an inferior and poorly constructed document, which was supposed to be the cornerstone of the migration advice profession and a signal of our ethical obligations to each other and to the international community," Ms Allen said.

A recent Senate Estimates Committee found that such is the cost of the current border policy, Antarctic Division's A419 aircraft has to constantly be on standby to ferry asylum seekers around the country - at a cost of $120,000 per week.

Shadow minister for justice, customs and border protection Michael Keenan said that 33,000 illegal entrants have arrived in Australia under the watch of the current government.

Blame doesn't seem to be properly administered as well, as the Department of Immigration and Citizenship told Estimates on February 11 that the $375 million cut to foreign aid - in order to pay for border protection - was the fault of AusAid.

AusAid told Estimates three days later it didn't believe that to be the case.