Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm really pleased to follow the member for Bendigo, because I know that in her community she has worked incredibly hard to bring the diversity in her community into the mainstream workforce, and I've heard stories of the wonderful work she's done with local businesses and particularly some of our newer Australian migrant communities in Bendigo. I want to do three things today. I want to just very briefly outline what this bill, the New Skilled Regional Visas (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019, is about and why we reserve our final judgement until after the Senate committee has conducted its inquiry. Then I want to talk about the model that the government has used in putting this together. It's an extremely industrial model, and I want to explain what I mean by that. Then I want to talk about my community and why the approach the government is taking underestimates the needs of my community in Parramatta and the contribution that many of them could make to regional centres if those centres had the services that they need to do well.

Firstly, the bill is essentially about reducing the permanent migration ceiling from 190,000 to 160,000. They've done that already, and as part of that announcement they're announcing two new regional visas. Their purpose is to change the geographic make-up of visa holders by increasing the number of people who settle outside of major cities, in regional Australia. 'Regional' in this context means not Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, the Gold Coast or Perth. It means not the five big economies. The two new visas are subclass 491, which is 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. These two visas will account for 23,000 places out of the 160,000 permanent places available. But there are many aspects of this approach which are unclear. They are of course provisional visas; people won't receive permanent visas until they've spent three years there. But, again, there's very little information on whether there's going to be market testing, whether it's going to be big business or small business, and how it's going to work. The detail really isn't here.

It risks the same sort of failure that we've seen many times with programs which, with some sort of incentive, encourage people to move into a regional area for a short period of time, but as soon as that period is over they move back to the city. I have known people in my community where, for example, one partner is a doctor and needs to work in a regional centre for a period of time but their partner remains in Sydney, and they literally join each other on weekends. They are only there for as long as they need to be, because the services simply aren't there, their community isn't there and the opportunities for their family aren't there.

Secondly, I want to talk about the model that the government is taking here, which I call an industrial model, and I'm going to tell a very brief story that explains that. When I worked at the Australia Council many, many years ago, we had 35 grant programs. This was because the Australia Council and the government would decide what the answer was to a particular problem and then they would put out a grant program which specifically solved that problem, according to the solutions they'd found. So, if you fitted into their solution, you could apply for funding. I came to the conclusion that that was an extremely industrial model and that the whole sector would work better if the government decided what the outcome should be and gave people the opportunity to put together their own projects that would meet that outcome.

Now, this particular model is saying, 'We can solve this problem by simply having these two visas, and, as long as people fit into those, the problem will be solved.' It won't. The problem is really complex and needs a far more nuanced approach—probably a range of approaches, because each community is different. As the member for Bendigo said, there is the really big regional town of Bendigo. If you're further down the Murray, at Echuca or Rutherglen, they're great little towns. But, if you're further up, the support services simply aren't there. If you're Muslim or Hindu—in my community, we have probably 10 Hindu groups, and they're all slightly different—there is no place for you to worship; there is no place for you to assemble. There are very complex matters when you move into regional areas, so we need a far more nuanced approach.

I want to talk about my community, because my community is incredibly diverse. The majority of people in my community have parents who were both born overseas. We have a highly skilled population, but many of them are not working anywhere near the level that their skills would warrant. The banks tell me that the bank teller role is supposed to be for those straight out of high school. Well, in Parramatta, bank tellers have PhDs. In banks in Parramatta, people who couldn't get work elsewhere, who are far too qualified for that job, are occupying that entry-level job because that's the only job they can get. We have engineers who can't get their foot in the door. We have accountants that can't get their first work experience. We have an incredibly underutilised skill base in Parramatta of people who have come to Australia to build a better life and simply cannot get the kind of work they should be getting.

We also have lots and lots of farmers, which is surprising because Parramatta, of course, is not a farming community. But we have many, many farmers, from the countries of Africa, from Nepal, from Burma—farmers by the thousands actually—living in units in Parramatta. They tell me that sometimes their need to touch dirt, their need to get their hands in the soil, is almost overwhelming, and they can't do it in Parramatta. I've asked them, 'Why don't you move to northern Victoria, where there are huge hydroponics companies desperate for workers and there's lots of land?' and they say to me, 'I might stand out, and my family is here and my temple is here and my children are still learning English.' And that's before you get to really basic things like food.

I spent the last two weeks down on the Murray. I took my first break in nearly two years and spent two weeks on the Murray. I learnt to cook in Parramatta, and I get really frustrated if I can't find tamarind or fresh coriander. I got really frustrated because even the basic things that I need to cook the meals that make me comfortable just aren't there. I say sometimes that, if I lived there, I'd have to go in to Sydney regularly to shop because even basic things like that aren't there.

The ability to have your child learn as they grow the language of their grandparents, if their first language is Bahasa, Vietnamese or Dinka, and the ability to share your cultural heritage with your children in places where you are a very small group is less if you live in regional centres. Many of them tell me that they think about it but feel uncomfortable. They are not quite certain they'd be accepted and they don't know where the services are. As Australia, we miss an extraordinary opportunity when we underuse the extraordinary capacity that we have in places like Parramatta which are incredibly diverse and where people have come from all over the world. When I use the word 'Australian' in Parramatta, it means everybody. If they got their citizenship yesterday, they are Australian. We have Australians here that would welcome the opportunity to work in regional centres if they believed the services were there.

If Australians who already live here won't move to a regional centre and stay there because the services aren't there, why would people who come from overseas pick up their entire family and move there for three years if the services aren't there? They would only do that, I would suggest, if they believed they could stay for three years and then move. Again, I would suggest to you that you will see exactly what you see when we require doctors to work for three years in regional centres before they can come back and work in the city—families will be split. The families will be split because quite often with your skilled migrant visas, in particular, both parties, both the husband and the wife, are skilled. They're both skilled. With the skilled workers that came in to work at Westmead Hospital, we found, whether they were male or female, their partner was also highly skilled. That's the nature of this community and, unless both partners can work in the regional centre, one will move to the city.

They will also move, quite frankly, in many cases to the best school zone. Quite often skilled migrants come to Australia for the future of their children as much as for their own. They come here because they believe they can make a better life for their children. You will find in various groupings within the Parramatta community that they choose one school or another. There are a couple of schools in Baulkham Hills and people try to buy in that particular school zone. Westmead Public School is an incredibly good school and you will find people move into Westmead in order to get their children enrolled at that school. They move later, but they enrol their children at that school. I notice even on realestate.com and domain.com now you can search by school zone as much as anything else. That is a real indication of how much emphasis is placed on that. Again, we have some very good schools in regional Australia, but they are going to be competing with Westmead and James Ruse Agricultural High School, which are some of the best in the country. They are recognised as the best in the country. You will find families are split because one parent will go where the children will get the best education they possibly can and where the wife can work.

You are also going to get rorting or exploitation of people who feel they have no choice, people who have given up a life in their first country and moved to Australia on the understanding that they would work in regional areas for three years. Without a doubt, you will find exploitation, because we've seen it in every field where visa holders are compelled to work for a company or lose their visa rights. You will find people who are underpaid, are exploited and work too-long hours—all the things that we know happen already in our communities under these programs.

So I would suggest to the government that, if it thinks this is a possible solution, it also widen its scope and consider people like those in my community, people who are farmers, people who have skills with new crops and people who are experts in African heritage vegetables. Ask my Kenyan farmers about kale—they think we are hilarious because they have been growing it for millennia. There are new products coming in from all around the world. We have coffee grinders in Parramatta who are desperately trying to find ways to do their work here. There are lots and lots of skills that we simply aren't using in our cities and we're not finding ways for those people to build homes in some of the great regional areas we have.

I quite often talk to my communities about what they would require to pick up and move. We've seen examples of it; we've seen large Sudanese communities go to some of the meatworks in Rockhampton and be wonderful workers in those communities. We've seen it here and there. But we, as a country, can do much more to make sure that Australians of all backgrounds, with all of their skills and all the wonderful experiences and knowledge that they bring to this country, are used to the full before we find ways to bring in other people and keep them out of the workforce. That's, unfortunately, what I think this particular program will do. It will deny my people an opportunity to find permanent and wonderful lifestyles in regional Australia. I travel out there enough to know how wonderful some of those regional towns are, how extraordinary they can be, how beautiful they are, and how interesting, kind and welcoming the people are. But we've got a long way to go before we find work paths to new lives for the Australians who are here already—who came to Australia to build a life and who are currently struggling to do that.

We on the Labor side will wait until the Senate inquiry has concluded before we make a final decision. There's a lot of detail that's simply not there. There are a lot of questions to be asked and a lot of safeguards to be put in place to prevent exploitation of people who feel that they have no choice—that they can't leave and they can't stay. People are being exploited. We've seen some terrible examples in regional towns of exploitation of seasonal workers and of student backpackers. We know it takes place. We wouldn't want to see this program turned into that. There are a lot of questions to be asked and answered, and we will be asking them.

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