A slightly different audience …

Some time ago, Bob Correll, the Deputy Secretary of DIC¹ , contacted us to complain that the Values Australia website

“may seriously damage Australia’s reputation overseas”

before going on to threaten us with a variety of laws.

We are sure that Bob’s people are watching, so we just wanted to ask him, “How do you think your department’s “important work” of managing Australia’s reputation overseas has been going in the last few weeks?” (I mean vis-a-vis Haneef?)

By the way, Bob, we notice that you gave a speech right in the middle of the debacle, on July 24, strangely not mentioning Mohamed Haneef. “Strangely”, because your talk was titled “Managing our shared future: the use of the visa as a whole-of-government policy tool”.

We would have thought that your master’s “use of the visa” in the Haneef matter would have been an excellent illustration of its use – “leverage” you called it – in serving government objectives.

If you don’t mind, Bob, I’ll share just a few of your observations with a slightly different audience than the one you addressed at the Government Policy Evolution conference.

“One of the clear challenges we have is to spread this leverage throughout the government, so that every relevant agency is using the visa to extract the maximum outcome and benefit for the nation as a whole.
[…]
To an extent, the visa sets the Department of Immigration and Citizenship apart in the Australian policy landscape. For instance, many Australian Government portfolios are working to achieve a range of impressive policy outcomes, through the usual methods of the Budget cycle, legislation, grants programmes and so on. Within my department, the visa gives a focus to a great deal of our work.

 

We can use the visa as a whole-of-government instrument to contribute to broader government policy objectives through the delivery of services on behalf of lead policy departments. The areas we can contribute to cross almost every aspect of the government’s economic, security, social, cultural and international responsibilities. This can be done by the conditions attached to the visa. For example, access to health and welfare services and work rights.

https://valuesaustralia.com/blog/visapolicy.jpg
You may or may not be surprised to know that the Minister for Immigration is one of the most litigated individuals in Australia — although I am pleased to note he is successful in more than 90 per cent of these cases
[…]
If this all seems theoretical then just three weeks ago the Prime Minister announced a new cross-portfolio border security initiative with the visa at it’s heart.

But Bob, our favourite line was when you said:

“the possibilities for tuning this policy tool are limited only by our policy creativity…”

Well, your Minister has certainly been creative. You go, Bob!

Really. Go

¹ Department of Immigration and Citizenship