Opposition Questions Labor’s Decision to Cut Home Affairs Budget

Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs Mike Pezzullo speaks during a Senate inquiry at Parliament House in Canberra on September 24, 2020. AAP Image/Lukas Coch

Opposition Home Affairs Minister James Paterson has said he is concerned that the federal government is underfunding the Home Affairs department after senate estimates revealed the department’s budget had potentially been slashed by over a billion dollars.

Home Affairs is the agency that oversees Australia’s migration, cyber and infrastructure security, national security and resilience, and border-related functions.

The funding cut was revealed during a senate estimates budget hearing (pdf) on May 22, which revealed that the federal government had reduced the funding for Australia’s primary domestic security agency by $300 million in this financial year ending 2024.

However, when taking into account the cuts made by the federal government from the Coalition last budget in March 2022 prior to the election which had seen the department promised $8.59 billion, but only deliver $7.48 billion, the department suffered a total drop of $1.1 billion in funding.

“In March 2022, you were told by the then government that, in the 2022-23 financial year, you would have about $8.6 billion at your disposal for the national security challenges our country faces and the broad remit of the Department of Home Affairs. In fact, from this new government, you’re only given $7.48 billion—a cut of about $1.1 billion,” Senator James Paterson said.

Paterson also noted that when taking inflation into account this would be an even larger cut, “given how high inflation is at the moment.”

“Are the national security challenges facing our country getting so much less serious that you can afford to cut hundreds of millions of dollars out of the home affairs department’s budget?” he said.

“That’s a 12 or 13 percent cut in the department’s funding.

“In the uncertain strategic environment that we face, ... it seems perverse to be cutting the department’s funding.”

Home Affairs Not Worried By the Funding Cuts

However, the head of the Department of Home Affairs, Michael Pezzullo, was not concerned about the reduced funding, which he said occasionally occurred due to the nature of the departments work.

“What typically happens either at MYEFO, the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, or through the year, with estimates variations and the like, is you get the funding that you require to do the job,” he said.

“If you look ahead at the funding for things like Operation Sovereign Borders, which is typically dealt with as an estimates variation, or detention contracts, or what we might be doing on Nauru, which might be a function of the number of people there, and you project forward, in any given financial year, into the forward estimates, you do find some of these drop-offs occurring.”

Pezzullo noted that he believed that when the time came the government would provide the funding the department required.

“When the government turns its mind to either a terminating measure, a lapsing measure, an estimates variation or, indeed, new policy, they give us the funding that we require,” he said.

Department Funding Under Scrutiny

The news of the funding cuts comes as Home Affairs comes under increasing scrutiny following allegations the department is chronically underfunded and has lost over 600 staff, undermining its ability to keep Australia safe.

An inquiry into the departments funding, by consulting and legal firm Proximity between December 2021 and February 2022, found the financial means to support the agency’s policy and operational issues were lacking reported The Sydney Morning Herald.

Functions and priorities were never right sized or funded appropriately from the outset,” the report found.

“While all agencies are expected to be efficient and balance their budgets according to government direction, the baseline budget situation for the department has become misaligned with its core and far-reaching activities related to keeping Australia safe.”

“A large gap between funding and operation requirements is forcing the department to make tradeoffs between risk tolerance, service delivery quality, and cost.”