QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator WONG (South Australia—Minister for Foreign Affairs and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:31): Thank you, Senator Pocock. I do appreciate the question very much. It does give me the opportunity to talk a little bit about one of the programs you identified, the locally engaged employee program, and the mess that that was in when we came to government.

I will just make this point. I think we all recall the fall of Kabul. Unfortunately, there were too many Afghan citizens who worked for Australia or who were engaged in development projects or in other ways which put them at risk who were not processed by the Australian government prior to our withdrawal, and I asked many questions about that in opposition.

I got answers that ministers saw it as a moral responsibility, a moral imperative. Their actions did not match their words, and when we came to government we saw, frankly, a mess when it came to the locally engaged employees' applications. I commissioned a review of that by Rosemary Huxtable.

I'm sorry, I'll come back on the name; I think that was another report. Then we acted in line with all of the recommendations. In fact, as foreign minister and with the ministers in the portfolio, we have certified more than 660 applications from Afghan locally engaged employees, which is more than the total approved under all previous foreign ministers combined since the program began.

As at 27 July 2026, 2,059 Afghan LEEs have been certified and over 5,700 have arrived in Australia. This comprises— (Time expired) The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Pocock, first supplementary?