Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few comments on this Joint Standing Committee on Migration report that has been tabled. I acknowledge the work of the committee in what has been tabled today. It's an incredibly hard time for all of our committees. What do we do with all the work we did pre-COVID? The world has changed. For so many of us, whether it be in immigration policy or education policy, there's life before COVID and life after COVID. I thought that, given the situation our country is in, it was premature to table any recommendations based upon the evidence in the hearings that they had. I want to make a couple of comments on some of the inquiry outcomes that were raised. I am a regional MP and regional migration is very close to the hearts of my electorate. I believe that this country has not got the settings right. This report suggests that a lot of the stakeholders who met with the committee were saying the same thing. Particularly I want to draw attention to the Regional Australia Institute, which I have met with several times, and the evidence that they raised. There is economic gain for regional communities in having regional migration. They were saying that you help people choose the regions by putting the regions up first. We do have a problem in our country because of the nature of our migration system and because of the way it has been cobbled together over years. When people arrive they go to where their support is and where they feel that there is a community. We haven't done enough as a country for long enough to make sure that we have the resources and support to help people migrate to regional communities. What's heartbreaking is the fact that we used to do this really well as a country. You travel all over regional Australia and you meet third, fourth, fifth or sixth generation people whose ancestors moved to our country. In my part of the world, in Bendigo, the gold rush area, we are known for our Chinese, who moved over here to become part of the gold rush community. People moved from the United States to California Gully. They settled and they stayed. I think of the Jack family, who are more Australian than I will ever be. They have lived here now for six or seven generations, whereas I'm the first in my family to be born in Australia. That's that migration story. We used to do this quite well as a country. You think about Wagga Wagga, you think about Griffith, you think about all these great regional towns. Post the Second World War, throughout our entire history, we had migration policy that worked, that attracted people, not just to Australia, but to the regions. We have to unpack why it worked then and not now. It comes down to the kind of visa that they had and the support services that were around.

One of the reports that I want to raise in my comments, which relates to some of what came up in the inquiry, is the report Regional futures by Deloitte Access Economics in partnership with AMES. It focused on my town and the town of Nhill, where we've been successful in having Karen people moving to our region and calling our region their home. They identified six key areas that really helped people and were the reasons why it was a success.

First of all was employment. We had jobs. We hear time and time again from people that there are jobs in regional Australia. But it's not enough just to have a job. We also have to have accommodation for them. We know housing can be more affordable In regional Australia. But when these communities first arrive, the concept of renting a home or owning a home is not something they're used to, particularly if they've grown up in a refugee camp like our Karen people. It's about having that leadership locally, people to work with the real estate agents to match the families to decent, effective accommodation.

Leadership: having leadership in the community, having the mentors in the community—these are part of the critical six steps. Also, pathways for young people: making sure that they not only had educational opportunities, in terms of access to good schools or language program, TAFE options, vocational options if they wanted to, work options post-secondary; but that they also had activities to engage in. In my part of the world there is a very successful Karen youth organisation that has really helped to keep young people connected.

Responsive services: making sure that the health services and the employment services all have the ability to reach out and that they have got people who are trained in health services who are from that Karen community—not just people in the health community who can speak Karen, but the other way around. It is critically important. We might not be in the crisis we're in in Victoria if we had more people from multicultural communities, new and emerging communities, who had been trained in the health skills and knowledge. It's coming up and it will come up in the future. It is critical going forward.

There are the natural advantages of regional centres. We have strong job prospects. We've got a community that is committed to seeing these people succeed. We are making sure that we have the comprehensive health care. More importantly than anything, we need these people. That's where I think that, whilst I know we've got these benefits in the regions, it is one of those challenges of trying to get the people in the city to understand this way we've cobbled together our migration system. It would be great, because we've had this pause in temporary migration—that's largely what our migration has become—that we step back and say we will need people to migrate here in the future. We do have a skills shortage because we have not successfully trained people who live in our country, whether they be Australians or permanent residents, to match the skills we need. Until we do that, we are going to need some skilled migration. Let's look at family reunion. Let's look at bringing more partners here. Let's look at working with the families already here to see if they want to sponsor families to come over. It's worked in the past and it could happen in future.

When we have labour market testing and we talk about it, let's make it genuine labour market testing so that we're not bringing people into our country to do jobs that already exist. Let's actually reward, thank and embrace the people who are currently stuck here. Yes, we're not letting people into our country but we're also not letting people out; our borders are closed. There are no flights. We have a million-plus international students, temporary migrants, people who are here on various different visas, who have had them extended, who are working in some of our industries that are keeping us fed. They should be embraced by us. It's a proposal that has been put forward by the United Workers Union. Let's talk about an amnesty. These people have helped us get through the crisis, particularly farm workers. We should be looking at how we can embrace them, encourage them to stay and give them the opportunity to become permanent residents.

Let's be real about international students. I cannot believe that this government is letting more international students in when 60 per cent of the international students already here are starving. Report after report are talking about that. Rather than helping to fund our universities, we're looking at bringing more international students in. Why does this matter to this report? Because our international students go on to be our skilled workers, go on to be our permanent residents and then go on to be Australian citizens. When they get to that point, they are so excited because it's been a 10-year journey. It doesn't need to be that long.

I really look forward to the work that this committee does in the post-COVID environment. There's been a pause on migration at the moment in our country and it's an opportunity for new thinking, or for old thinking that worked. This country had a great migration program that really embraced people moving here and allowed them to bring their families. Let's do it again.

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