Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

They probably have a reasonable pass rate. The situation is that even with those applications of people coming to this country, there is a significant rate of rejection on the basis of country assessment, visa subclass, English proficiency, finances, medicals, letter of offer and confirmation of enrolment. The requirements are there.

It is important to note that when people constantly harangue the Australian public about a maximum of 13,750 refugees coming here a year, whether by plane, by boat or by offshore decision-making, the numbers that possibly can undermine Australia's immigration system coming through the student category if it is not properly policed is very significant. As the member said earlier, 250,000 were basically in the noncompliance cancellation group. Obviously, because we are reforming this today—and both sides of politics know that it is needed—many people in that cancellation stream should not have been cancelled, but of course a significant number would be.

I also note that the member for Canning talked of our minister being required to go to India and crawl and lick shoes in respect of the acceptability of Australia and how we welcome migrants. Because of the previous government's measures, people were perceiving the education visa category not as a way of getting an education but as a way of permanently living in Australia. We reached a stage when this government looked at measures to avoid that kind of analysis and to toughen up and a number of the students became concerned that their pathway might be terminated. They of course became very intense about that and we had very histrionic reporting in the Indian media. It is interesting to note that at least three of the murders that were cited as indicative of Australian racism at that time—the very vicious throat-cutting of a woman in Westmead in Sydney, the deaths of workers in the Riverina, and the unfortunate death of a young child in Melbourne—in retrospect were allegedly committed by Indian nationals. Part of this huge surge of Indian reporting about racism and hostility by the Australian people in retrospect was, as I say, very sensationalistic.

We got to that point because the previous government basically said, 'All doors are open. We do not care about proper policing of the immigration system. We do not care what people are going to do long term. We do not care about their qualifications. We do not care if they should be coming here to study. We are driven by the industry. We want the bucks.' When we see people opposite alleging that we have a mess, they know truthfully that they created this mess. That is why the current government had to insist upon the recertification of private colleges in this sector, because once you go from TAFE provision, once you go from the more reliable mainstream colleges, you get the shonks coming into this industry, the people who want the quick buck. This government had to make sure that all of those colleges are recertified because of the free-for-all created by the previous government.

You would think this was coming from over there, the way they talk about refugees and being tough on immigration. This current government went out there and reduced by half the number of jobs and the number of occupations that qualified people to live here. We got rid of all the questionable categories and the Australian people asked themselves, 'Do we really need to have people in these sometimes low-order jobs coming here through immigration? Why can't we, the Australian people, provide those jobs?'

Equally, this government—not those people opposite who are talking about a mess—went out there and said that in future people will be here for two years provisionally for work and they will be inspected in the workplace to see whether they measure up. When the member for Canning talks about a shambolic regime, a mess, a crisis, we know that it was those opposite who said that they did not care about making sure that there is a proper system here, that they did not care about policing it, that they are totally obsessed with the fact that it is a big export earner. Quite frankly, the reality here is that when we get rid of the rhetoric from those opposite about people coming here and distorting our immigration system, this is a far bigger danger area than whether 3,000 people come here by boat a year. Now that this government has been forced to crack down and do something about the mess they have created, the reality is that down the track we are going have a very significant number of these people when they see the doors are closed, when they see the dream has disappeared, coming before the refugee processing system of this country and claiming that they are not able to return to their countries overseas because of human rights abuses. The numbers involved in this are going to be far greater than any number of people coming here by boat or plane.

Essentially, the situation in this bill, as I say, is that for the regime in future in this area it has been found that the numbers proven through immediate cancellation are too great for the system to control, whatever the nature of this government. I heard the previous speaker make the point that she thought there would be a call for greater resources through these new changes. It has already been exposed that under Labor and Liberal and the way the situation was liberalised with regards to student access to this country, the system had already broken down through this automatic cancellation process. We stress that one of the outcomes of this legislation is going to be that you can have more targeted analysis of which colleges have high rates of not fitting within the system, abuses et cetera. We are going to see whether there are some countries where, despite the heavy numbers of rejections I mentioned earlier, a higher proportion of students in this or that category, this or that study, are basically failing to comply. We are going to be able to target resources, in a very real sense, to make sure that the limited resources we have for actually monitoring the system are devoted to the areas where the problems arise, rather than having the across-the-board, widespread cancellation process which has led to the system being broken down.

I commend this legislation, and I note that the quibbling from those opposite is extremely hypocritical. We might be able to have a reasonable debate about refugee policy in this country, or the arrival of boats and whether they are precipitated by events in other countries or policies in this country. But for them to come in here today and—in an area where there has been a dereliction of duty in regard to this country's national interest as to immigration—and allege that the problems in recent years were not manufactured by their own previous policies is absolutely preposterous.

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