James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the amendment to the motion for the second reading of the Migration Amendment (Australia's Engagement in the Pacific and Other Measures) Bill 2023. I will just start by commending the member for Fisher for his contribution and, somewhat lazily, attach myself to all of the excellent points that he made, just so that I can use my time to expand on some other points. But I do commend the tenor of exactly what he has said, and I think he's captured very appropriately the concerns that we in the coalition have around this policy approach. Frankly, it is something very important to push back against at the first opportunity. Not only do the principles of this policy approach, specifically, worry me, but, potentially, if this approach to pathways through our migration program started to become more common from this government, then we would have some very concerning issues to confront as to the principles around migration policy.

I worked for a number of years in the textile industry with some excellent companies in Fiji. Fiji has a number of economic industries to be proud of, some of which, such as tourism, are more well-known. But the textile industry and the apparel and garment industry are very significant ones in Fiji. They have done an excellent job of working with Australian businesses and the market in Australia to create a really impressive supply chain capability in Fiji, competing against bigger nations, bigger economies, in that sector in Asia. Their niche, of course, is that they have better and closer links to Australian businesses and, equally, have the ability to have a much more rapid supply chain response capability, and to be able to do smaller quantities, which is a relative term in textiles—rather than quantities of millions, they do quantities in the tens of thousands, which most of us would consider to be significant, but which, in apparel, is a small production run. So I learnt a lot and had some great experiences. I have some excellent ongoing connections with people in that industry in Fiji. I say that because it's an excellent example of the economic opportunity that we should be supporting throughout the Pacific, as a nation that has the largest economy in the Oceanic region, and has a significant history—and both positive and negative things in our relationship—with the various nations in the Pacific sphere.

Important points have been made by other speakers, not just about our past but about our future in the area and the important national security elements and developmental opportunities that we have to support all of our very good friends in the Pacific family, for them to achieve the destiny that they want. I don't believe that it's the ambition of the communities of the Pacific to leave the Pacific and to come to countries like Australia. I'm very confident—having had my direct personal connections with people throughout the Pacific—that they want their future to be in the Pacific. Their governments also want their future to be in the Pacific. They want to grow their economies. They want to establish existing and new industries that give the people who live in the Pacific a hope and confidence and an ambition for their future to be exactly where they are, which is their home.

This policy is, effectively, encouraging the absolute opposite of that. It's saying that we want to offer people some kind of lottery opportunity to leave their community, to leave their economy, and to make their future in Australia. We very proudly welcome people who want to make their future in this country. We have two elements to our migration program: the economic skill side and the humanitarian refugee side. I want to see us enhance that program to have that program doing exactly what it is meant to.

The principles in this bill should be an anathema to what we're seeking to do when it comes to both elements of our migration program. We do not want to be flippantly conducting lotteries for people to come to our country and we don't want to encourage people who have the ability to be the future of their own country to leave that country, unless they're in situations—and this is not the case amongst our Pacific nation friends—where they need a humanitarian pathway away from where they currently are to our nation.

Essentially what we're saying here is that we want to go to our Pacific neighbours and say to their population, 'Enter a lottery to leave your country and come and make your future in our country.' It would surprise me if the governments, leaders, communities and societies amongst the Pacific nations view that as being something that a good neighbour like Australia should be doing to their communities.

We have a very good, strong tradition of great economic partnerships with Pacific nations. There are economic opportunities. The PALM scheme is one that everyone would be aware of. It provides employment opportunities on a seasonal basis in our nation. In agricultural communities this is absolutely vital. The PALM scheme provides seasonal labour in places in this country with great shortages in and great demand for seasonal labour.

Obviously the PALM scheme provides a pathway for people from Pacific nations to come to Australia on a seasonal basis to earn a significant income here in this country—compared to the income that they might earn on an ongoing basis in their own nation—and to remit their earnings, net of the costs that they have living here whilst they are on that visa. That provides an enormous economic injection into the economies from where they come and also provides them with the capacity to use that as a way of building their economic future in their own country.

A lot of anecdotal stories have been shared by colleagues who represent electorates where this scheme provides a lot of labour and where people have come. Through the PALM scheme people might come to the Leichardt electorate for a couple of seasons and earn an income that supports their family and that they invest in their country of origin to build their economic future there.

This policy effectively says that, instead of that being the focus of opportunities for people in the Pacific in this country, which works very well for both economies, we want people in Pacific nations to participate in a lottery indiscriminately to leave those nations permanently and come to Australia. We have a skilled migration program, which is important, and we do have significant skilled labour shortages in this country. The way in which we undertake that can always be improved. I have looked very closely at, and am very interested in, migration reform opportunities that are demand driven and led by businesses, where employer sponsorship is at the heart of filling shortages in labour, both at the skilled level and at the geographic level.

We in this country are not as good as we need to be at ensuring that people who come through the skilled migration channels are in fact honouring the principle of why we want them through the skilled stream to come here. That's really a geographic issue. There are a lot of people who come into the country through the scheme that is trying to address labour shortages in regional Australia, and even in my home city of Adelaide, which some might not consider regional. At times we have been designated as regional under the migration system, because, regrettably for someone who is not from Melbourne, Sydney or South-East Queensland, we find that those regions are a magnet for people coming into the country, and, while people might be coming under the pretence of helping to address a skill shortage in somewhere like my home state of South Australia, they are free to ultimately end up in the suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne. So looking at and considering regional rules and geographic rules around skilled migration is something that I would commend to all of us as policymakers.

Of course, having that employer sponsorship as a focus means that people are coming here to fill major shortages in jobs that exist that can't be filled by Australians, after we've demonstrated that that business has exhausted all avenues to try and fill that job with an Australian first. Certainly, when I work with employers on these challenges, I've never come across a business whose preference isn't to employ an Australian first and foremost. It is an enormous cost and an enormous risk to sponsor someone to come into this country on a visa and employ them rather than employing an Australian. There is no benefit or the like from not having an Australian first and foremost, but there are significant issues around skills shortages et cetera that can be addressed through that channel. Equally we've got our humanitarian responsibilities, which we take very seriously, and we participate through the international frameworks that are in place for us to have our fair share of humanitarian intake. That's what the focus of our migration policies and the migration schemes that we operate needs to be.

This is none of that. This doesn't do any of that. What this is doing, as I say, is seeking to cannibalise, potentially, some of the people who could make an enormous contribution in the countries that they currently live in and entice them away from contributing to their nation and their economy by giving them this lottery system to come to Australia. We are now deciding that we will have some randomised lottery process doling out Australian residency and Australian citizenship. We have a government that has such a low regard for the standards that we should have and the control that we should have around people coming into this country that we're now going to have some kind of randomised ballot system to select people to come into our country. I think it is paternalistic and, frankly, morally bankrupt. It is essentially saying that we don't believe that there is any way of determining what the priority is for who we select to have the great honour and opportunity of a pathway to residency in this country in their future. We're almost encouraging people not on the basis of the economic need in this country or their humanitarian circumstance, where they might need to have a future in a nation like Australia over where they are, and instead we're saying, 'Enter this random lottery system to come to Australia and leave behind the life that you've got in the nation that you're in.' I and all of us in the coalition very much reject that approach to our migration system. We reject the paternalism of that. This is the sort of thing I thought was left in the 19th century, frankly. Whilst I am not reflecting on all the good things that were done by the British Empire, these sorts of paternalistic policies remind us of an era that we thought we would not see in the year 2023. Nonetheless, the Albanese government are proposing it here before us today, and that is why I urge the House not to support the passage of this bill.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 1 5 : 59

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