February 21, 2024
Federal spending on border enforcement will climb to almost $1.3 billion this year after a boost to budget estimates less than two weeks ago, countering Coalition claims of a funding cut that has allowed asylum seeker boats to avoid detection.
The spending grew last year and will increase by another $32 million this year to pay for surveillance flights and maritime patrols amid a political row over the arrival of asylum seekers on the West Australian coast last Friday.
But official documents also reveal that patrols were scaled back slightly to 2182 maritime patrol days last year, while surveillance flights were cut by 14 per cent to 12,691 flying hours.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has accused Labor of cutting funding for border protection because it does not believe in the policy, linking this to the arrival of 39 asylum seekers last week from an undetected boat.
The budget papers confirm, however, that spending on the policy will be greater this year and next year than the Coalition estimated for the same years when it held power, highlighting the way budget data can be interpreted in starkly different ways to claim a political win.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese dismissed the claims yesterday by saying Dutton was "just making things up" and Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil said the Opposition Leader was telling "easily disprovable lies" about border operations.
The latest estimates, released on February 8, showed the government was on track to increase spending on border enforcement from $1.24 billion last year to a new peak of $1.27 billion this year.
The spending under Labor will exceed the estimate for the same border enforcement outlays when the Coalition issued its final budget before losing office, when it forecast spending of $992.6 million for the year to June 2024.
While the Coalition budget in 2022 assumed spending would fall by $134 million in the 2024 financial year, the actual outlays have increased. This year's new peak, however, is forecast to be followed by lower spending, sparking a tense exchange in a Senate committee about claims of a $600 million cut.
Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson raised the issue in a Senate estimates hearing last year by adding up the foregone spending over three years and asking an official if it was about $600 million.
"It would be, yes," the official replied.
But the secretary of the Department of Home Affairs at the time, Mike Pezzullo, denied this was a "planned reduction" and said the spending was always higher than the early estimates.
"The estimates that are brought down in any budget never reflects the funding that I receive, ever," he said in the hearing last May.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham relied on the Senate estimates exchange to claim on Monday that Labor "has cut" $600 million from the department, while Dutton also suggested the cuts had already been made.
"They've ripped $600 million out of Operation Sovereign Borders and the department," Dutton said on Monday.
O'Neil dismissed that and referred to Monday's statement by Australian Border Force commissioner Michael Outram, who said funding was higher than ever. "We have invested an additional almost half a billion dollars compared to what the previous government was looking to spend," O'Neil said yesterday.
