TRANSCRIPT - INSIDERS ABC TV - SUNDAY 19 OCTOBER 2025

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TELEVISION INTERVIEW: INSIDERS (ABC)

SUBJECTS:  IMMIGRATION PROGRAM, TEMPORARY HUMANITARIAN VISAS, ILLEGAL TOBACCO TRADE.

SUNDAY, 19 OCTOBER 2025

DAVID SPEERS: Tony Burke joining us from Queenstown in Tasmania this morning. Welcome to the program.

TONY BURKE: Thanks, David, and welcome, welcome to the Hunters Hotel in Queenstown. Anne Urquhart's brought me down to Queenstown for the Unconformity Festival, so right now your Insiders viewers are in the arts capital of the nation for this weekend.

DAVID SPEERS: Okay. Well, "unconformity" is perhaps going to be the theme of the discussion. We'll see. Just on that point from Paul Scarr there, the Shadow Minister, last year your department did announce that it would move to a four‑year planning model for immigration, it said that this would enable migration planning to better align with long‑term infrastructure, housing and services planning across all levels of government. What's happened to that plan.

TONY BURKE: Look, part of my reservation on, as I've looked more deeply into this, is the first job of the immigration program is to make sure it is tailored to the needs of the nation, and what I am concerned about is if you overcommit where you will be at in future years you miss some of the changed needs of the nation that we have.

In the coming years there will be different start dates, for example, in different parts of AUKUS, where we will have Australians moving on, particularly in certain states moving on to higher paid job opportunities, and we'll need to backfill some of their jobs as well.

There's different changes that will happen at different points, and my concern is to make sure that we keep the flexibility that we are very precisely targeting our program for the needs of the nation.

DAVID SPEERS: Are you saying it's too difficult to do a four‑year plan for migration?

TONY BURKE: Well, imagine if you'd done a four‑year plan in 2018 or 2019, what would have happened once the pandemic hit, if you'd done it during the pandemic where ‑‑

DAVID SPEERS: That's a once‑in‑a‑generation event.

TONY BURKE: That's right, but in terms of the manufacturing opportunities that we're going to have through AUKUS, they're very significant changes as well. You look historically at this, I'm working through how we can engage in as much multi‑year work as possible, but also to be very sensible about making sure that we have the full flexibility we need.

I never want to have a situation where we feel committed because we'd announced this is where we'd be three years earlier and we lose some of the flexibility we need to take advantage of exactly what Australia needs in that moment.

DAVID SPEERS: The bottom line on this one though, is the level of immigration right now too high in your view?

TONY BURKE: Look, it's been coming down and it needed to come down. In terms of net overseas migration, we're now 40 per cent below the peak. The key area where the numbers were beyond where it was in the interests of Australia for them to be was with respect to student visas, so that was a bit ‑ some of that was over stated because of net overseas migration after the pandemic, you had three - first‑year, second‑year, third‑year students all arriving on brand new three‑year visas.

So some of it was just the way things flowed after the pandemic, but it was also true that ‑ and remains true that international education is the only industry that I can think of where you need to find a long‑term home for every customer, and ‑‑

DAVID SPEERS: But where we are now, sorry, just back to the question ‑‑

TONY BURKE: ‑‑ some institutions ‑‑

DAVID SPEERS: ‑‑ is the current level too high still?

TONY BURKE: Well, as I said, it was too high, it needed to come down, it's going to continue ‑‑

DAVID SPEERS: But now? 

TONY BURKE: ‑‑ the net overseas migration figure, we're expecting, will continue to soften, will continue to come down, and that's just getting us to appropriate levels post‑pandemic.

DAVID SPEERS: What's the appropriate level you're looking at?

TONY BURKE: Well, it's tailored to the needs of the nation is the answer to that. You need to remember, for our immigration program a whole lot of it is visas that are skilled work visas that are demand driven.

Now I never want to have a situation where we have a demand for more healthcare workers and we say, oh, no, we're not going to do them, we're just going to close shifts in our hospitals. I never want to have a situation ‑ like we have tripled in the last few years the number of people coming on construction visas.

Now, you look at the ‑ this immigration debate is usually side by side with the debate about making sure that we've got the infrastructure and the housing in place that we need. You know, it would be completely cutting off your nose to spite your face to say, well, we're going to, you know, commit ourselves in some way that stops us getting the construction visas that we need as a matter of demand.

DAVID SPEERS: Can I ask you about Barnaby Joyce potentially moving to One Nation, and how seriously you're taking what looks to be some realignment on the right of politics right now, and the impact that might have on the migration debate in your portfolio; how are you viewing this?

TONY BURKE: Yeah, look, first of all, I ‑ and I'll answer in the terms that you've given, not in terms of where the Coalition's up to, because they’re matters that matter for Australia, and if I put it in these terms: social cohesion matters; social cohesion really matters, and the days that people used to talk about being able to engage in dog‑whistle politics and you'd give a message and only certain people would really hear what you were saying, it's not a dog whistle anymore, you know, it's a set of bagpipes coming over the hill, and you can hear it a mile off.

And so, you know, we are a multicultural nation, and when people sledge multicultural Australia, there are a whole lot of Australian citizens who hear it, feel it deeply and know that it's people talking about them.

I love this country, like I really do, I love modern Australia, modern Australia and multicultural Australia are the same thing, and regardless of whether it's the Coalition or anywhere in the debate, when as a nation, if we end up in a debate where you've got Australians belittling each other at scale, that's a bad place for the country to be, and it's a job of parties of government to stand up for modern Australia.

DAVID SPEERS: And what do you think about Barnaby Joyce potentially becoming a One Nation leader? Do you think the party would still be as heavily focused on migration under Barnaby Joyce than it has been under Pauline Hanson?

TONY BURKE: Oh, look, I don't know, I don't speculate, and I can tell you of all my conversations in Queenstown, no one's raised Barnaby with me.

DAVID SPEERS: Right.  Let's move on. I want to ask you about boat turn‑backs. Is it the case that people smugglers are now using smaller boats to try to reach Australia, and how is Border Force responding to that?

TONY BURKE: It is the case that the big vessels that you used to see years ago isn't how the operation is being attempted these days, it's smaller, faster boats that they're trying. The thing in common with our response is none of these attempts are successful; zero.

But the attempts that are being made mean that we've had to change some of our methods as well. Probably the most significant change in response these days is the majority of people now get sent straight back it their country of origin. So you used to really only see people going back to Indonesia or off to Nauru for processing, but the majority of cases now are going straight back to country of origin.

We had one very recently where within 72 hours we had everybody back to their country of origin. There was one in May, for example, where it was a mixed boat‑load of people from different countries, and we had to, you know, from three different sorts of citizenships that people had come from, it was more complex, but we still made sure we returned people directly straight back to the countries of origin.

DAVID SPEERS: Can you tell us which countries ‑‑

TONY BURKE: Regardless of ‑‑

DAVID SPEERS: ‑‑ we're talking about here?

TONY BURKE: No, I can't. I can't, I'm afraid.

DAVID SPEERS: Okay.

TONY BURKE: But this is happening, now it's happening fast, but I'm glad you've asked me the question, because it's important, because obviously it's always in the political interests of my opponents to try to argue that somehow attempt equals success. They can attempt, and they're attempting in different ways, but the success rate remains at zero, and Operation Sovereign Borders continues to evolve as the threat changes and response changes.

DAVID SPEERS: Can I ask you about those coming from Gaza. You've said about 6 or 700 Palestinians have been approved for visas to come to Australia. Does the ceasefire though in Gaza change anything; do they still need safe harbour in Australia?

TONY BURKE: Yeah, look, if I can say, that's the number of people on our books. I have to say, we're not sure if they're all alive. So, you know, some people in that number will choose to stay, some people may end up with other options that they'd prefer to take, and there will be some people who we don't hear from again, and there's some on that case list that we haven't heard from for a very long time.

A significant number of them are part of split family groups where some of the family is in fact here in Australia, and they're wanting to join.

You need to remember our humanitarian program that we run around the world isn't limited to places where there's an active war. There is decency that Australia shows to people from around the world. We've been ‑ you know, there are Israelis within ‑ who've been approved for humanitarian visas as well. I've got no intention of cancelling those either. We're a decent country. We are talking about people where all the checks have been made, and some of them won't choose to come here, some of them won't be alive anymore ‑‑

DAVID SPEERS: But for those who do ‑ those who do still want to come ‑‑

TONY BURKE: ‑‑ but all ‑‑

DAVID SPEERS: ‑‑ who've been granted a visa, are they on humanitarian visas, and are they permanent, like are they allowed to stay in Australia permanently?

TONY BURKE: Oh, when people are offshore, the first visa in cases like that that's issued is a temporary visa. You know, there's a whole lot of security checks that are made, probably more than for any other cohort I can think of, and ‑‑

DAVID SPEERS: Is that a temporary protection visa, I thought it might have been, opposed temporary protection visas.

TONY BURKE: No, no, temporary humanitarian visas we've never opposed.

DAVID SPEERS: Okay. So they come on a temporary humanitarian visa and then you decide whether they can stay permanently?

TONY BURKE: That's right, that's right, you make decisions, and some people, you know, some people make decisions based on what other family are doing, based on opportunity.

You need to remember, for a whole lot of the people who come on our humanitarian program, their first priority always was to be safe in the country of origin, and sometimes those dreams get taken from people.

DAVID SPEERS: I want to ask you about the so‑called NZYQ cohort as well; these are the former immigration detainees the High Court says you can't keep in detention indefinitely. You signed a deal earlier this year to transfer them to Nauru. How many have been issued visas to go to Nauru?

TONY BURKE: So there's been some ‑ we haven't made formal announcements, but there's been some reporting of visas in the high teens to 20s and beyond. The reporting that's been out there is roughly correct.

There's a few different stages. You've got the stage of the issuing of a visa, you've then got a different stage where people are then taken into detention, you've then got the awaiting of the actual flight to Nauru, and I'm not going to ‑ the numbers change very regularly, so I'm not going to sort of give constant updates on each of those different stages.

But if I put it in these terms, what we've legislated for is working. Some people will delay things for a period of time while they pursue legal options within the courts, we always knew that was the case. Importantly, as visas are issued, people are then taken out of the community and put into detention awaiting deportation; that matters.

The other thing that matters is cancelling a visa has to have meaning, and until we landed this agreement with Nauru ‑ and I'm very grateful to the government of Nauru for coming forward and offering to help Australia in this way ‑ until that was there, we had a situation where for some people, no matter what laws they'd broken cancelling a visa was meaningless, and as a sovereign country, we've got every right to say, you know, getting to stay here having a visa is part of that.

DAVID SPEERS: And how does the deal work for them? Can they work in Nauru, and what happens if they need medical care they can't get in Nauru, if they need cancer treatment, or something like that; can they come back to Australia?

TONY BURKE: People will have work rights there on these visas, they're 30‑year visas, they give people work rights.

DAVID SPEERS: Right.

TONY BURKE: I've gone and inspected personally the accommodation and inspected the health facilities there, and you know, the standard there is good and way beyond what some of the speculation about the health standards has been ‑‑

DAVID SPEERS: Right. So they can't come back to Australia for health treatment?

TONY BURKE: ‑‑ and for ‑ no, no, no, well, they don't have a visa, they already don't have a right to be in Australia. It's just because of our international responsibilities we've had a view that we don't send them back to a place where we think there's a chance of them being persecuted. 

But that doesn't mean that Australia's the only country they can be in, and Nauru's been willing to help us with this.

DAVID SPEERS: On another part of your portfolio, dealing with the booming black market trade in tobacco, criminal gangs' involvement in this, we see it, you know, almost every night on the TV. Was the scale of this problem expected by the Government as it started to increase the tobacco excise?

TONY BURKE: Yeah, look, the concept of illegal tobacco has sort of always been with us and is in every country of the world pretty much, you know, it's a really common thing for ‑‑

DAVID SPEERS: It's ballooned here over the last few years.

TONY BURKE: But ‑ no that's right ‑ you're absolutely right, which is my next point. So as that increase has happened, it's always meant we've had to look at how the impact here is on organised crime. And I think when people started looking at this debate they were looking at it in terms of loss of government revenue.

When I meet with the Police Ministers now, we are all looking at this in terms of a challenge for us in dealing with organised crime, because when you're talking about organised crime, and this is this whole convergence issue I've been talking about, there is a convergence of threats now, and so the same criminal groups are involved in organised tobacco, you'll had some of them in forms of arson, you'll have some of them involved in the drug trade, they'll be involved in child exploitation; all of these things start to interlink. So everything we can do to attack those networks helps with the full range of issues.

This after ‑ a bit later today, I'll be announcing ‑ I guess I'm now announcing it now on your show ‑ the National Disruption Group. It will be headed by Australian Border Force, but we are bringing together all the State and Territory Police Forces, the Australian Federal Police, AUSTRAC, the Criminal Intelligence Commission, the Department of Home Affairs, the Department of Health, the Illicit Tobacco and Vape Commissioner, we're bringing all of that together in a single disruption group, because to do this, it's not only the interception and the good work that Border Force do intercepting containers at the border and intercepting illegal tobacco at the airport, we also need to look at what happens before it reaches the border, what happens post‑border, what happens at the warehouse level, and what happens in terms of the flow of funds for these organisations as well.

So that National Disruption Group involves, you know, if there's a cohesion of threats and a convergence of threats, there needs to be a convergence of protection in responding, and that's what we're announcing today.

DAVID SPEERS: I mean at the start of last year the Government announced a major Border Force crackdown, and said that there'd be a coordinated multi‑agency, multi‑jurisdictional response from Federal, State and Territory Governments. How is this thing you're announcing today different?

TONY BURKE: Oh, well, it's not simply, you know, one group within each government and representatives of each government. We are going ‑ we now have in the one disruption group, we effectively have every relevant agency coming together to look at how this works the whole way along the pathway.

Before the last Police Ministers meeting, I had some wariness as to what level of cooperation we might get and to what extent the states might just say, oh, no, this is a Commonwealth problem.

Because of the way organised crime have moved in here, because of some of the impact, I've had small businesses take me through some of the challenges that they've faced as a result of this, this is something where we need that higher level of coordination, to have the formal group with every agency looking at every stage of this supply chain.

DAVID SPEERS: Two quick ones, Tony Burke. The PM about to meet with Donald Trump at the White House. Do you think this will be a positive meeting, or are you a bit nervous?

TONY BURKE: Oh, look, the relationship that we've been having, both the Prime Minister already with the President, and certainly, you know, for myself with Home Affairs, working with the Secretary for Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, working with the Director of the FBI, Kash Patel, the engagement government to government has been really strong. Really strong. And so for me, that's very specifically on the measures to keep people safe, but that sort of engagement I think we've been seeing across government and that sort of marks the foundation for the meeting.

But as you know full well, it's not the first time they've spoken, it's not the first time they've communicated, and looking forward to the meeting.

DAVID SPEERS: And I should finally ask you about the big political and policy issue during the week for the Government, that was the Prime Minister telling the Treasurer to find a better way to do the superannuation tax, and the Treasurer was left to announce that the other day. Has this damaged Jim Chalmers at all, do you think?

TONY BURKE: No, not for a minute. What we've done, as Jim has said himself, is we've listened to the different responses that have been there, and we've found an outcome not only that makes sure that we're dealing with people who have been using superannuation for purposes that really doesn't have anything to do with retirement income, but also a very serious benefit for low‑income workers, and you know, one of the limitations of the superannuation scheme can be what happens to people on lower incomes, and that part of the announcement that Jim made during the week, it probably hasn't received as much publicity as we'd all hope, that will be life changing for people in retirement.

DAVID SPEERS: But in terms of the internal dynamic, is this a sign of a Prime Minister who's more cautious on reform, and a Treasurer who's more ambitious?

TONY BURKE: Well, we've ended up with a situation where, as the Treasurer said himself, Jim made clear, we've ended up with something where there are really good benefits for low‑income workers as well as making sure that the policy objective he was always seeking, which is to make sure that superannuation is there for retirement income, that's been backed in with the system we've put in place.

DAVID SPEERS: Tony Burke, thanks for your time this morning.

ENDS