Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am not sure whether it is ‘Come stai, paisano’ or ‘Xiexie, ni’ to the member for Watson. Either way, I am happy to follow the contribution of the member for Watson. I can give him an answer. The government began the process of drafting this correction in May of last year. Within a few months of finding that error, having it drawn to its attention, the government sent the matter off for drafting. The process of drafting is always subject to the other priorities of the parliament. At the end of it, here we are in March of 2007 fixing the matter. I do not disagree with the ambition of the member for Watson for things to have happened faster; I do not disagree with his contention that there was an unintended consequence in the 2004 legislation—mainly because I think I might have been the minister introducing that legislation at the time. Nevertheless, we all take our advice and I am happy to stand here today very much in defence of the government’s efforts in this regard.

As it stands, the big difference between this side and that side, between the government of the Liberal Party and the National Party and the opposition of the Australian Labor Party, is that we see migration as a nation-building exercise. The Australian Labor Party, through their efforts in office, have always seen it as a constituency-building exercise. This is just not my contention. The poor member for Watson has been handed the poisoned chalice of immigration. In the 13 years that they were in office, they had seven immigration ministers. On that side, they could not get rid of it fast enough. In the 11 years they have been in opposition they have had seven shadow ministers. They cannot get rid of it fast enough. I do not know who the member for Watson upset on his side but he is the shadow minister for immigration. Actually, it is not called ‘immigration’ on your side, is it, Member for Watson? Nevertheless, he is there. Good on him. He struggled through his 15 minutes. It was like listening to two five-minute speeches with a bit of a hook between.

I want to acknowledge the member for Petrie, who is in the chamber. She is the Assistant Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. She is well able to do that job, and I congratulate her on her recent appointment to that position, a recognition of her ability and skills and her long-term service to the people of Petrie—may it continue for many, many more years. She understands very completely, as I do—and I suspect you do too, Mr Deputy Speaker Barresi—that the Australian Labor Party do not really have their hearts in it when it comes to migration.

On this side, as I said, we see it as nation building. We see the sense of resourcing those who have arrived in Australia in a way that gives them the tools they need to fully integrate. On that side, they like to create a sense of victimhood, a sense of ‘You’re always a migrant, you’re always different, you’re always disadvantaged, you’re never going to get anywhere, so if you vote Labor we’ll give you lots of social welfare.’ That is the sort of constituency the Australian Labor Party have always tried to build through their migration program.

I make that point in recognition of the fact that the Migration Legislation Amendment (Information and Other Measures) Bill 2007 is going to facilitate the passage of people through our migration system. It is also going to enhance the integrity of every person who passes through it. It is going to further ensure that everybody who legitimately comes to Australia is here having passed all of the tests—the security tests, the criminal checks, the terrorism checks and the health checks. If they have not passed those checks then the agencies that deal with people who should not be here or people who have involved themselves in other activities are well able to get hold of that information. That is what this bill is about. It is another example of the Howard government building on the integrity and the legitimacy of every person who passes through the migration system, because they are an important part of the energy of this economy. They are aspirational in every way, shape and form.

Nobody leaves their country of birth—either unwillingly or by choice, either as the richest of business migrants or as the poorest of refugees—to fail. No-one comes to Australia with any ambition other than to do better than where they have come from. That ambition to succeed is very much at the heart of the energy that the one in four Australians who were born in another country represent. And there is another group of Australians—one in four again—who have at least one parent born in another country. Basically half of this nation’s 20 million-plus people, half of our population, have got this energy to do better than in the old country, to succeed at some sort of level relative to where they came from.

That is a very misunderstood energy on the opposition side. On that side they say, ‘You’re going to fail.’ On this side we say: ‘How do we help you succeed? How do we teach you English? How do we get a recognition of the skills and education that you had in your old place? How do we get that recognition to work in our workforce? How do we get you to do what is in your heart, in your mind, in your ambition to succeed? How do we get you on your two feet?’ Those are the sorts of things that we turn our minds to. The dignity and the effort of those who have come to this country should be applauded at every given opportunity. But those opposite always try and find some doubt about the legitimacy of those who come here—that perhaps they are never going to get anywhere because they wear different clothes or have different skin or whatever. I am not suggesting that they are outwardly causing this distress by their actions, but they are by the systemic way that they go about it.

Look at the way state governments do it. In Queensland I have a problem that the state government of Queensland refuses to assist with. When I was the Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, every state government had this view: ‘You imported them; they’re your problem. So some kids need some further English language assistance. So some parents need some further quick assessments of the abilities and skills they have. So some people need a helping hand to coordinate the way they operate in our local communities. We’ll send that problem to the feds.’

I remember a classic in Shepparton, where I had an official from the Victorian driver’s licence registering authority saying: ‘We’ve got all these Iraqi women in Shepparton and they all want to get driver’s licences. You guys had better start giving us translators so we can check that they know how to drive their cars and they know what they’re doing.’ I said to this chap: ‘Mate, that should be a consideration of the Victorian government, in that they take taxes from and represent this constituency of people who are working in the community and who want to advance themselves. You have the responsibility to make sure that, no matter where they’ve come from, no matter what their language skills happen to be, they have the proper skills to know how to drive a car.’ This kind of ‘flick it off to the feds’ approach from state Labor governments that have rivers of gold flowing to them is of great concern.

I put it on the record that the Labor Party had seven immigration ministers in their 13 years in government and have had seven shadow ministers in their 11 years in opposition. That is 14 people who have flicked immigration as fast as they could over 24 years of Labor Party history. Some recent comments about some of these matters will underscore my point. The former ALP president Barry Jones has actually admitted that the Labor Party mismanaged migration. He said that the focus was used to build up a long-term political constituency. In other words, they would go to groups and say: ‘What do you want? We’ll do it for you. Don’t tell the other mob down the street who are from a different background from you, and as long as party A does not talk to party B then we’ll get away with it.’ It was to build a long-term political constituency. It was different treatment for different people, not a nation-building exercise but a political constituency-building exercise.

Chris Hurford, a former member in this place, a former Labor Party Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, one of the 14 Labor Party people with responsibility for immigration over the last 24 years, admitted that in the case of Australian citizen Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali, for instance, permanent residency was granted because they believed this would have some political influence at a New South Wales state government election. And in a recent edition of the Weekend Australian the former Prime Minister Paul Keating confessed his continual defence of the decision to grant Sheikh Taj his permanent residency.

I simply make the point that the bill before us is about building on the integrity of our migration system. It is about ensuring that you cannot have a migration system that is about building a political constituency; it is about ensuring that we have legitimate people coming to this country to participate with the energy and ambition that they have in their hearts and their minds. For some of those people it is going to be about going beyond just the survival that they have had to endure in, say, their country of birth, where they fled as refugees to a neighbouring country. In Australia today we see lots of people falling into that constituency—many of them in my own electorate—people who have fled from Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea; and from western African countries like Sierra Leone. There are people in the suburbs of Sunnybank, Yeronga and Moorooka who fall into that category. These people need our assistance to survive and to succeed, but we do not need to see them as victims and we do not need to keep them locked on social welfare.

We need to also ensure that every one of them, because of the integrity measures contained in this bill, will be able to look every other person in the local community in the eye and say: ‘I am legitimately here. If you have a question about my legitimacy there are systems in place.’ The government has in fact ensured that our borders are not only secure—that we not only decide who can come and the conditions under which they come—but in fact that everybody who does come here through the migration system is a legitimate entrant to Australia and a legitimate contributor to our potential wealth.

Nothing gives me greater personal joy than to see these people who have come with nothing get something through their own efforts. Nothing gives me greater joy than to watch people I have met over the time I have been privileged to be the member for Moreton come to me and say, ‘I have for the first time bought my own house.’ In fact, I know the Abraham family who came from Eritrea and bought a house at Darra. They got a letter from the bank after all the effort of the family to pay this house off inside five years—a letter I have never seen—which said: ‘Congratulations. Now that you have paid off your home loan, can you borrow more money?’ What a fantastic story. They are now living over in the member for Ryan’s electorate. They have moved over to the posh side of town—and good on them. I would like them in Moreton, because I am sure they will vote for me. They are the sort of energetic, aspirational people that Australia’s migration system brings to this country. Despite my aside about how I would love them to vote for me, it is not to build up a political constituency that is looking for favour from one side of politics over the other but one that in fact is about the energy, effort and ambition to get ahead. That is why what this government does in every piece of legislation it brings forward is about refurbishing that, reinforcing that and re-encouraging that.

I have met people in refugee camps in places like the Kakuma camp in Kenya when I was a minister—and I would hope that the Assistant Minister for Immigration and Citizenship may have a similar opportunity at some stage. Minister Ruddock, when he had responsibility for the immigration portfolio, said to me, ‘Nothing will firm more in your mind how important Australia’s role in resettlement of refugees is than actually seeing for yourself.’ Spending a day in Kakuma—92,000 people living in five separate camps around the Kakuma River right up at the edge of the Rift Valley desert in Kenya—firmed very strongly in my mind just how desperate these people are and how hungry they are to not just simply survive but to rebuild their lives and succeed. Most of them want to go back to where they have come from—to their place of birth—and it is understandable. But for the few thousand each year who come from places like Kakuma, Cairo and other places to Australia, they bring with them an enormous energy and an enormous point of difference. It is important that we continue to resource their efforts to make a difference in Australia.

This is why I get frustrated. Around Moorooka we have a lot of African faces—people who are opening up businesses along the Moorvale shopfronts in Beaudesert Road. I know the Eritrean women’s group are now seeking some funding under some of the work of the Department of Transport and Regional Services to help them launch a restaurant with the fantastic foods and coffees of that region. People are opening businesses. I remember about six or seven years ago opening a business of someone who said, ‘No-one knows how to cut Africans’ hair.’ It is a very tight curl, Mr Deputy Speaker Barresi; I am sure you had some at some stage earlier in your life! I know you will be warning me in a moment to sit down! They recognised an opportunity and had the ambition and the wherewithal to do it—and why? Because Australia encouraged them by giving them a place that was secure in which to live and encouragement and a set of tools to integrate fully into the community. This business is thriving. It has people from all over the south side of Brisbane coming to get their hair cut.

Identifying information provisions were inserted into the Migration Act in 2004 which created a scheme for the collection, access and disclosure of personal identifiers in various circumstances. Some of that had to be rectified. That of course is part of the ongoing work of government. This bill will also allow the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to disclose to a person an individual’s movement records, avoiding the requirement for them to FOI them. It will ensure some of the key circumstances are things such as the prevention or lessening of a serious threat to life. For instance, if the department held a photograph of someone who had made a threat against an Australian high commission or embassy overseas, these amendments would allow the department to actually provide that photograph to the Australian Federal Police. These are common-sense provisions. Unfortunately, with the sort of world in which we live today, these are provisions that we have to make sure are right. I suspect that the world continues to change, as it did after September 11, 2001, and what might have been true in 2004 may not be true in 2007. This government is prepared constantly to upgrade that.

I know that the Migration Agents Registration Authority, MARA, will also get some assistance under this bill to investigate complaints against migration agents. There is certainly a code of conduct for migration agents. I had a few tussles with them a few years ago about that. We want to see a professional standard of conduct amongst migration agents. People do not have to use them to access the migration system, but when they do, they have got to make sure that the migration advice they get is professional and of high standard. We need to make sure that clients are protected from unscrupulous agents. This bill will certainly assist MARA in that work.

Of course, with regard to the enforcement of criminal law in areas such as drug importation investigations and prosecutions, some of that work has been hampered and delayed by the provisions we are amending in this bill today. The reality is that there will be a new permitted disclosure ground to allow the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to provide identifying information, when reasonably necessary, for the enforcement and investigation of criminal law. By every possible measure, each of these particular, apparently technical but nevertheless very necessary, amendments within this bill made good sense.

At the end of it, the motivation behind this needs to be restated: this government is committed to ensuring that every person who passes through our migration system gains legitimacy and dignity in the eyes of every one of the beholders of Australian citizenship. We need to celebrate the new entrants into our country and we need to know each and every one of them is legitimately placed in Australia. It is the way you build a nation.

For those of us who have perhaps had generations of Australian citizenship, or for those of us who have come in our own lifetime and taken up citizenship, our key role, knowing these people are legitimately here, is to cross the road and shake them by the hand and make them welcome. If you think about it, if you move into a new house and your next door neighbour never talks to you, how awkward do you feel? How many mistakes could you make? How many high prices could you pay at the shop down the road because the neighbour has not told you where the better prices are?

It is the role of every Australian citizen, every long-term permanent resident, to think about others as they would like them to also be thought about. Cross the road, shake their hand and make your next best friend, knowing very firmly that the person whose hand you are shaking has passed legitimately into Australia through what is world’s best practice when it comes to migration anywhere in the world. There is no other country that does it better than Australia, and this bill certainly reinforces that point.

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