Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In March this year, the Morrison government announced a reduction in the permanent visa migration ceiling from 190,000 to 160,000. Part of that announcement was the introduction of two new skilled visa classes for skilled regional visas. Labor supports the objectives of the new skilled regional visas. That certainly is a change to the geographic distribution of visa holders by increasing the number who reside outside the major cities. Significantly, it's not as if the bill is going to define regional Australia for the purposes of these two new visa classes. The minister, through regulation, will define living in regional Australia as not residing in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or the Gold Coast. So it takes a pretty broad brush to regional Australia.

Whilst I say that Labor is supportive of the objectives of the bill, I would particularly like to address, as I go on, the amendments moved by the member for Scullin. But, before that, I'll say that the bill introduces two new classes of visas. The first is subclass 491, which is the skilled work regional provisional visa, for skilled people who are nominated by the state or territory government, or sponsored by an eligible family member, to live and work in a regional area. The second one is subclass 494, the skilled employer-sponsored regional provisional visa, enabling an Australian business to sponsor skilled workers to work in their business in regional Australia. Clearly, either of those classes of people will be required, if the bill is passed, to live for at least three years in a regional area before they'll become eligible for a permanent visa. It is predicated on moving people—certainly with these visa classes—out of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The purpose of that, according to the government, is to decrease the level of congestion which occurs in those main cities. But what the government has failed to outline, quite frankly, is how they intend to provide support for the almost 23,000 visa holders living in regional Australia.

I don't represent an electorate in regional Australia. However, I do represent an electorate in outer metropolitan Sydney. I do represent an electorate that does receive the vast majority of refugees and many new immigrants to this country. One of the things I have complained often about—not only in this place but to the minister directly—is the fact that, while my electorate receives the vast majority of refugees and new arrivals in this country, it certainly doesn't get the majority of finance going to settlement services to help people properly settle into this country and to help them make a valued contribution to the nation. This is what the member for Scullin's amendment goes to: he notes the government's failure, firstly, to adequately fund settlement services and, secondly, to explain the extra services that will be made available to support regional communities and the settlement of migrants under this scheme.

I can tell you that electorates like mine did have many issues associated with improper settlement in the past. The centre of my electorate is a place called Cabramatta. Those people who have been around long enough will recall that it was only about 10 to 15 years ago that Cabramatta was the centre of the heroin trade for the country. As a matter of fact, it was also the firearms exchange centre for the nation. Much of that came about because authorities at that stage did not effectively understand the value of settlement services. It is one thing to accept immigrants into this country and to work through various agencies, such as St Vincent de Paul and Mission Australia, to ensure people have clothes on their back and somewhere to live, but the idea of being able to properly settle people in this country would have had a significant impact on not developing various crime patterns which emerged as a consequence of that.

I think we have learnt a lot about settlement over the years, particularly from the time of the fall of Saigon, when the Vietnamese came to this country and then the issues that occurred in the Balkans, where we played a significant role helping people settle, to what we see now in the Middle East. You will recall that former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, to his credit, decided to accept 12,000 people out of the Middle East—Syrian refugees. We supported that. We think he did a decent and compassionate thing for people in need.

By the way, my community received 7,000 of those 12,000 people that came to this country. I would not have minded and I wouldn't have complained so much if we had got seven-12ths of the money that was allocated for the settlement of those people. But that was not the case. The shortfall in those areas had to be made up by the various charitable agencies out there—once again, St Vincent de Paul and other agencies—who tried to ensure that people were properly settled. They are not getting paid for it. By the way, I give credit to the various churches that operate in that space and try to help people settle.

With these regional settlement visas, again, there is a void. Nothing in this bill says how resources are going to be allocated to help people settle as a consequence of that. I note that there's been concern expressed by the chief executive of the Australian Local Government Association, Adrian Beresford-Wylie. He says the bill must ensure adequate support for visa holders and 'thus take some of the potential pressure off councils, which often have to fill service gaps when these services are not otherwise available to members of the community'.

He's quite correct in that. I know that for a fact, because the mayor of the City of Fairfield in my electorate, Mr Frank Carbone, has often made the very same point to the minister and to this government. When my area receives, and continues to receive, many of the refugees coming to this country, the resources are not adequate to ensure their proper settlement. In saying that I am trying to make a constructive criticism for the government. We're not opposing the object of this bill: the object of getting more people who come on temporary employment visas into regional areas. But what I am clearly saying to the government is that, when you do that, you can't take your eye off the fact that you need to provide the services to assist that settlement there. It is absolutely critical to do that. Otherwise the consequences can be diabolical.

So we're not opposed to the intention of the bill: to ensure that people coming on these employment related visas can live outside Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and the Gold Coast and will be there for a period of three years. But make the financial investment. Make sure that the community is protected. It is one thing to simply say that we need to have a settlement service to help people so they and their families integrate within the mainstream community. But, where that falls down or where it doesn't occur, there are consequences that flow to the community itself. I think we've been around long enough to make sure we get this right. I think by and large Australia is very much an immigrant based country. People come to this country from all quarters of the globe and, in the main, they come for two reasons: a better life for themselves and a better life for their families. Clearly, people can bring their skills and talents to bear to help progress further in this nation. What I'm saying is that we should never take for granted that, coming to a country like Australia, someone simply moves out of Mascot or moves out of their point of introduction to this country and their settlement is just taken for granted.

As the Prime Minister has said on many, many occasions, and I agree with him—as a matter of fact, Tony Abbott used to say it regularly—we are the most successful multicultural country in the world. We are successful, not because we're Australia or because he was in government or anything like that. We are successful as a multicultural country because we work at it. We are conscious of doing what is necessary to make our multiculturalism work. Part of that is affording those who arrive in this country access to proper settlement services. That's been one of the things that we have learnt over many, many years now, and which has contributed to us being a most successful multicultural country.

As I say, I'm trying to be constructive about this, because, regrettably, none of this is actually in the bill. But for all those people who are going to be invited to go to regional Australia, whether by family members or by businesses, governments or academic institutions, I think we owe it to those regional communities where people are going to go to make sure that they have the appropriate resourcing and the appropriate ability to properly settle people, peacefully and successfully, in their respective communities. I think we've got a vested interest, and we want to make this work. We want to make it work for those who are coming in on the visas. We want to make it work for those who are going to be employing these people. But, above all that, we want to make sure it works successfully for those regions where people are going to be living.

So I just think this can't be what we've seen elsewhere with the issue about settlement, where the government has gone on its way in cutting funding for critical services so that they can no longer provide adequate services in particular areas. By the way, the area where I live is one of those. What I'm saying is that if the government is right in what it wants to do here—getting people out of Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and the Gold Coast as the points of destination for these work visas—you've got to properly resource those organisations and not be in this realm of continual cutbacks and simply thinking that everything is going to work because people have come in on these temporary visas. We need to make sure that it works for them, it works for their sponsors and, as I say, it works for the local community they're going to be going to.

So my request of the House is that it think seriously about this. Whilst we won't stand in the way of the passage of these bills, because I understand and support the intent of them, I would ask the House to look seriously at the amendment moved by the member for Scullin:

…"the House notes the Government's failure to:

(1) adequately fund settlement services; and

(2) explain what extra services will be made available to support regional communities and the settlement of migrants under this scheme".

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