Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

In my opinion, the people I represent are some of the most compassionate and fair-minded people you will find in Australia. They call a spade a spade, and they accept people. It is a very multicultural community. I always point to the school of Robinvale, which has 415 students with 54 first languages.

One of the things that was brought to my attention quite a while ago was the plight of people who had come here by boat and were stuck on a visa under which they were not able to work. Out of discussions with the then Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison, came the Safe Haven Enterprise visas. Under these visas, if you work or study for 3½ years out of five, you will have a pathway to apply for residency and, ultimately, citizenship.

Whilst these visas are now law, it disappoints me that the state governments are required to sign them off. The Victorian state government has not signed them off at the moment. Every council in the electorate of Mallee has said, 'We want to be a council that has the SHEV.' So they are very keen. New South Wales has signed off. But the Victorian government's response is that they are trying to extract more services and more dollars for these people. The people are already living in my community, so they are already drawing services. My argument is that when they are working they are less likely to draw services.

What I am bringing to the parliament is my plea to the Victorian government. I have written to the Minister for Immigration, Peter Dutton, asking him to work constructively with the Victorian government. I have also written to the Victorian Minister for Finance and Minister for Multicultural Affairs to see if there is a way that we can bring hope to these people. Ultimately, the thing that has defined Australians is that, if you come here, you contribute, you hold down a job and you get involved in the community, we will welcome you. We often have people come into our office and we work very constructively with them.

I also want to add one thing. As we think through our refugee policy and how we deal with desperate people, there is a great line—which actually comes out of Genesis, I have to say—which is: 'It is not good for the man to be alone.' In a lot of instances, you have people who are refugees but their families are not here, and you can see the heartbreak in them. They are holding down a job and they are contributing to our community, and I think it is appropriate that we look quite favourably at how we can ensure that they are reunited with their partners, with their wives and with their children, because that and helps to cement them and they become great Australian citizens.

We all came as refugees or as migrants, one way or another, a long time ago. The Broads came out in 1850. There are many of us and, hopefully, we have been more positive than negative on the Australian population. I believe that if these people are given the opportunity they can be very positive as well.

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