Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the New Skilled Regional Visas (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019. This bill, I fear, is more of a plan to get a headline than a plan to get migrants into the regional areas of Australia. Of course all of us would support the idea of getting migrants into regional Australia, and of course the government claims that the aim of this legislation is to, together with the new visas that have been created, change the geographic make-up of visa holders by increasing the number of people settling outside major cities in 'regional Australia'. But, like so much else that this government does, we have here yet another marketing strategy rather than an actual strategy that might be directed at achieving a worthy aim.

Labor supports the broad intent of this bill, and the members of the Labor Party who have spoken previously on the bill have, I hope, made that clear. And, as with previous Labor speakers, I join in expressing some very serious concerns that this legislation and the two new visas that the legislation supports have not been properly thought through; are not supported by additional resources; are not supported by any program; and are not supported by additional services, particularly settlement services, that might be thought to be necessary if new skilled visa holders are to be settled in regional Australia. None of that has been explained by the government, and nor has the government put forward any evidence to suggest that this new arrangement that it has with the two new skilled regional visas is, in fact, going to achieve the aim that the government has said that it will.

I want to first comment on a curious aspect of this legislation. The two new visas that the government has announced are the subclass 491 visa, the skilled work regional provisional visa for skilled people who are nominated by a state or territory government or sponsored by an eligible family member to live and work in regional Australia; and the subclass 494 visa, the skilled employer-sponsored regional provisional visa, enabling an Australian business to sponsor skilled workers to work in their business in regional Australia. It's said by the government that these two visas are going to account for some 23,000 places out of the 160,000 permanent places that are to be available each year according to the government's current target. But the curious aspect of this bill is that the bill itself does not create these two new visas, nor does the bill do anything to specify what 'regional Australia' is for the purposes of these two visas.

Instead, this bill makes consequential amendments to a whole range of other legislation that is administered by the Department of Social Services, the Department of Education and the Attorney-General's Department. Specifically, the bill amends these acts: the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999, the Disability Services Act 1986, the Fair Entitlements Guarantee Act 2012, the Higher Education Support Act 2003, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013, the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010 and the Social Security Act 1991. That's a curious position for what is said to be a very important new measure that the government is bringing forward.

What has in fact occurred here is that the government has put all the operative parts of this new measure in delegated legislation, which is a favoured device of this government. Rather than bringing before this House substantive matters as part of legislation, we get an overreliance on delegated authority. Something that should very much have been the subject of the primary legislation so that it could have been properly examined and properly debated here has been left to delegated legislation. The establishment of the visas themselves and the locations to which they'll apply are not part of this proposed legislation that's before the House today. Instead, they are subject to ongoing change by the minister, through regulation. It's not a particularly desirable legislative practice. It's something that the government has done a great deal in its more than six years in office. It's something that the government should reconsider.

To return to the substance of the scheme that this bill goes part-way towards implementing, the first proposition I wish to advance is that, despite multiple speakers and the minister having suggested that somehow this is going to form part of the government's 'congestion-busting program', at most it would amount to a drop in the bucket. Let's put this in a bit of context. Over the last 30 years, the population of Australia has increased by around 50 per cent. Over the next 30 years, the population of Australia is projected to increase by another 50 per cent. You've only got to look at the city that I come from to see the huge rise in population from around just over three million in 1989 to around five million today. That's more than 50 per cent growth in that 30-year period, and that's consistent with the projections for growth in Australia. Most of the growth will be in our larger cities. It reflects economic growth and economic opportunity. Of course, it poses a huge challenge to policymakers. It's one that Labor has been grappling with, it's one that Labor grappled with in government and it's one that all Australian governments will need to grapple with: that huge increase in Australia's population and particularly the huge increases that we are seeing in our big cities.

What we know is that road congestion is getting worse. We know that commuters in Sydney are experiencing a huge average journey of 71 minutes to and from work, Melburnians are experiencing an average journey of 65 minutes to and from work, and very many of our fellow Australians are experiencing much worse congestion and much longer journeys to work. Our road congestion costs are predicted to more than double by 2031. And what do we have by way of response from this government? We have them suggesting that the creation of two new subclasses of visa, which are going to commence in November this year, is somehow a congestion-busting measure. It is laughable! It is laughable as soon as one hears it stated.

What we actually know is that the Reserve Bank governor has called for infrastructure investment to be brought forward. He's made that call seven times since the election alone. He is making that call, of course, to try to ensure that our sluggish economy is kick-started but he is also making that call because he understands the economic imperative of doing something about the absence of public transport and roads in our big cities. That's what infrastructure spending needs to be directed to. What we know is that this same Morrison government that's putting forward a boast about the way in which these visa classes are to be something that's going to bust congestion has failed to spend a cent from its Urban Congestion Fund in the whole of 2018-19, even though $40 million was forecast to be spent in the budget that was handed down by this government in April of this year. All we are getting from the Morrison government is a feeble call for the states to do more—not actual infrastructure spending from the government, but a feeble call. It was most recently made by the Treasurer, who asked the states to identify some projects on infrastructure that they might perhaps start to do something about. What we've got is a government that's trying to use its pretend population policy and these new visa classes to cover up its utter failure to invest in infrastructure.

There is so much more that could be said, not about the actual proposition of this bill—which is a proposition that says it's a good idea if we can get migrants to go to regional Australia—but about the complete absence of policy, the complete absence of programs and the complete absence of any attention paid to services that would in any way be thought necessary to support migrants who might end up in regional areas.

See this speech in context