Professor Mooney

Letter to the Editor - The Canberra Times
20 May 2005

Dear Sir/Madam

Professor Gavin Mooney’s “advertisement” in your newspaper to Immigration Department staff is an insulting personal attack on the integrity of public servants (Academic throws gauntlet down to Immigration staff, 20/5/05).

Commentators like Professor Mooney denigrate the hard work of thousands of people in the department.

If your journalist Paul Malone, who wrote the accompanying article, had bothered to contact the department for comment, we would have told him that next financial year immigration staff will:

• Enable over 90 000 skilled migrants to enter Australia in the biggest skilled migration program in history.
• Help 13 000 refugees and humanitarian entrants start a new life in Australia, resettling many from desperate situations in camps in Africa.
• Process visa applications from hundreds of thousands of tourists, students and temporary workers.
• Screen tens of thousands of people at airports as a part of ensuring border integrity.

As a migrant himself, it is disappointing Professor Mooney is unable to see the broader picture of the work of so many local Canberra DIMIA employees who are trying to earn a living and administer the laws of the country.

Des Storer
First Assistant Secretary
DIMIA