The Department of Home Affairs is getting over $700 million over the forward estimates in the budget. There’s money to set up border operations at the new Western Sydney airport, to reduce the backlog of migration cases before the courts and the Administrative Review Tribunal, $120 million to improve refugee settlement services, and an unspecified but significant amount of funding for our unaccountable and under-scrutinised security agencies “to meet the government’s national security objectives.”
There’s also some money for Home Affairs itself. It’s a nice round figure, the sort of number ministers would agree among themselves without checking with bureaucrats about costing things properly. Here’s the full description of what is termed a “supplementation” for the department:
The government will provide $100.0 million in 2024–25 to the Department of Home Affairs to support the performance of core functions including Australian Border Force operations, immigration compliance activities and sustainment of critical systems supporting those operations and services.
In bureaucratic language, this is a blunt statement that Home Affairs can’t do its job properly. Performance of core functions. Sustainment of critical systems. The government is slinging $100 million — more than the entire budgets of most departments — at Home Affairs just so it can do the basics.
As we know from a long list of critical reports and inquiries, of course, Home Affairs can’t do the basics. The most recent auditor-general report on the Office of Migration Agent Registration Authority revealed a department literally unable to do anything right.
This isn’t for lack of money. In 2019, Home Affairs received over $3.3 billion in departmental funding to run itself and its then 14,000-strong staff. In 2024-25 — despite losing a chunk of its functions back to attorney-generals when Labor was elected, it will get $4.3 billion, a rise of 30% in five years, funding 15,000 staff. And yet it still can’t do the kind of simple stuff that bureaucrats in other agencies do in their sleep — like prepare a Statements of Expectations. Investigate complaints. Keep core documents up to date.
Somehow, another $100 million doesn’t seem like it will cut it.
