Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I welcome the opportunity as Deputy Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration to speak to the tabling of our report titled No one teaches you to become an Australian: report of the inquiry into migrant settlement outcomes. Making a new home in a new country isn't easy, yet thousands of people each year do so, and they make it work. They work hard and they're able to orient themselves into a new life here in Australia. In fact, since Arthur Calwell's post Second World War nation-building migration program, millions of migrants and refugees have settled in Australia, making this country the most successful multicultural nation in the world. Our country has achieved this successful migration program through the strategic planning and provision of well-targeted settlement services designed to assist newly arrived migrants and refugees with their settlement and integration into the broader Australian community. By focusing on English language training and community and cultural orientation, we have been a success story, as the chair has so rightly said.

However, settlement into a new and foreign country is not without its challenges, for both the newly arrived and the community, and especially for the service delivery agencies tasked with assisting the integration process. Melbourne-based Sudanese-born youth worker Gum Mamur, who works with the Les Twentyman Foundation in Victoria, summed up the challenges for migrants, especially young migrants, and refugees integrating into Australian life when he said, 'No-one teaches you to become an Australian.' So this report is aptly named as such, and I'm told by Les Twentyman that Gum is very, very chuffed that the report has been named after a comment that he made to the committee.

This inquiry was a timely opportunity to consider whether the settlement services available in Australia are appropriately targeted and sufficient to successfully support migrants and refugees, in particular the young, who have journeyed to make Australia their home. It was an opportunity to consider evidence based material and to find out how the government could improve its support of new arrivals across the country to help migrants become contributing, engaged members of society and to ensure government migration resources are being used efficiently and effectively.

It's clear Australia is at the forefront internationally of settlement and support services for new migrants. As the chair said, the committee visited the UK, Sweden, Germany and the United States in July last year and our visit affirmed that without doubt. Of course, there is always more that can be done. The evidence submitted to the committee makes a clear case for more flexibility within the migrant settlement program. The robust and consistent evidence in the 115 submissions the committee received has, for the most part, reflected the views of those who participated in the inquiry. The committee made a number of worthwhile recommendations for the government to improve migrant settlement services. Mindful of the time, I won't go through those at this point. I'm hoping to be able to do that another time.

Despite the many fine recommendations that we as a committee have made and agreed to, not all of this report objectively reflects the evidence presented during the inquiry. It ignores crucial contextual details in places and gives undue emphasis in others. There is minimal or no evidence to justify some recommendations made by the committee. As such, Labor members of the committee dissent from recommendations 15 to 18. In particular, recommendations 17 and 18 are clearly outside the terms of reference of the inquiry. Despite there being minimal or no evidence, the report focuses on young humanitarian entrants from Sudanese backgrounds who engage in criminal activity. The purpose of this inquiry was to investigate issues relating to migrant settlement outcomes. Labor members are concerned the committee has drawn conclusions and recommendations based on opinion and anecdotal evidence and has made recommendations outside the scope of the terms of reference. As such, some aspects of the report do not reflect the evidence received and ignore the wider context of Australia's migration situation.

This inquiry's focus on humanitarian entrants and youth crime missed the opportunity to review settlement outcomes for the vast majority of new arrivals. Despite this, it is a report that carries important recommendations around improving our settlement service programs while providing more flexibility and appropriately adjusting the nature and delivery of settlement services in order to meet the challenges of Australia's migrant program in the 21st century. For that, I commend the report.

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