Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure today to speak on the Social Services Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Australia's Engagement in the Pacific) Bill 2023. It provides important social supports to Pacific migrants who are entering Australia. I'll just give a brief overview as to what those social supports will be for those Pacific migrants. Those supports are going to be provided to permanent migrants arriving in Australia under the new Pacific engagement visa and, secondly, temporary migrants under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme. These two migration pathways, the Pacific engagement visa and the PALM scheme, are key elements in Australia's engagement with the Pacific. They provide significant benefits not just to our Pacific neighbours and our Pacific friends but also to the people of Australia and to our nation. In particular, they benefit Australian employers who are facing labour shortages. We know that's a big issue right across the country. Businesses are crying out for workers. This is one of the ways that we can address that shortage.

It also benefits regional communities, with workers coming from the Pacific into those communities, in various different industries, helping to fill that short fault—industries like agriculture, meat processing and aged care, which are all vital and very diversely spread right across our economy. They're also going to help our Pacific island partners by providing those migrants opportunities to work within Australia and to learn new skills. I just mentioned those few industries before: agriculture, meat processing and aged care. It's also important to send remittances home to their families and their communities, which really does support Australia's role as a global citizen and a regional leader in the Asia-Pacific region.

This bill supports the migration programs by ensuring Pacific migrants will have positive experiences in Australia. I want to touch on the importance of Australia's friendships in the Pacific with our partner nations. We know the Pacific has had long-standing challenges. We've seen economic underdevelopment. We've seen geographical isolation, distances covering vast oceans between islands. We've also seen significant environmental pressures, which have been exacerbated by climate change. Further, they've also been exacerbated by the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, which is something that I'm acutely familiar with, as are many members in this chamber here this evening.

I'll go back to climate change because it's not just the insidious nature of climate change running in the background; it's also the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events that we've seen as a result of climate change. I also want to touch on the security challenges of this region. We look at transnational crime, illegal fishing and, more importantly, geostrategic competition in the Pacific.

We also have strengths. Australia has unique strengths in Pacific relations, including the fact that we have shared values between our nations and historic connections in both peace and in times of conflict. Also, I think of the cultural, sporting and religious links we have with countries in the Pacific. I think of the sport I played in high school and also in university, rugby union. It's something that I still enjoy doing, although I can't walk for many days after I play a game now, but that's beside the point. Those sporting relationships through the Pacific are absolutely vital.

We have close people-to-people links. We have a vibrant Pacific diaspora living within Australia. I think of my own electorate in Robertson and right across the Central Coast. When we look at census figures from 2021, there are 160,000 Australian residents who were born in Pacific island nations and Pacific countries. Around 270,000 people have at least one parent who was born in a Pacific country. These communities in Australia provide those direct personal connections and relationships between Australia and our friends throughout the Pacific. In addition, there are around 40,000 Pacific nationals working within Australia under the PALM scheme. They are providing vital support to our industries right across the board, but in particular in our regional communities and in our regional industries that are so important for economic productivity in this country and so important for economic productivity within our states. As I said before, they're learning new skills to support their own countries when they return home, and part of Australia's responsibility is to make sure that we are providing that opportunity for people in our part of the world.

It goes to show the Albanese Labor government's comprehensive Pacific agenda, which I know has been promoted by the Prime Minister and also by the relevant ministers, including Minister Conroy, the member for Shortland. I like to remind him that the bottom third of his electorate is on the Central Coast, so he's part of team Central Coast. When the Albanese government came into office we had a comprehensive plan to strengthen our relationship with Pacific countries. We're getting on with implementing that plan, and that's what this bill is. Our comprehensive Pacific package includes stepping up Australia's defence cooperation with the Pacific, so the ADF, the Australian Defence Force, will be providing new training opportunities for members of the Pacific defence and security forces.

We are also making sure that we are assisting Pacific countries by helping them protect one of their most valuable environmental and economic resources—their vast ocean territories. What the Albanese Labor government is doing is doubling the funding for aerial surveillance of Pacific countries' exclusive economic zones under the Pacific Maritime Security Program. What this is going to do and achieve is help us tackle, as a team, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, which costs Pacific countries hundreds of million dollars in lost revenue. That's less money for our Pacific neighbours, a decrease in economic productivity and the like. It also helps tackle other security risks in the region—for example, looking at illicit activities by transnational criminal networks, which are so damaging not just to Pacific nations but also to Australia.

The next phase, the next stage, of this plan, which we're already implementing, is taking climate change seriously and making sure that we are tackling climate change and helping our Pacific partners. This includes establishing the new Pacific Climate Infrastructure Financing Partnership and making sure that we're supporting climate adaptation resilience projects within our region. It includes making sure that we are amplifying the voices of our Pacific partners in international climate change forums and in negotiations that we see right across the world, including the Vanuatu government's request to the International Court of Justice for an advisory body on climate change. We're also bidding to co-host with the Pacific a United Nations climate change conference, to make sure that we are getting that global spotlight and that there's a global view on the impact of climate change, particularly on our region.

We're also supporting economic, social and human development within the Pacific. We're increasing Australia's official developmental assistance budget for Pacific countries by $900 million over four years. We're also providing $1.9 billion in development assistance for our Pacific neighbours in 2023-24, making us the region's biggest developmental partner, because we take these relationships with our Pacific friends seriously. What this does is provide critical support to low-income Pacific countries in areas like health care and access to health care, preventive medicine, education, water, sanitation and infrastructure—those areas of economic and social need that are so important for a growing and developing country.

So how does this bill support the PALM scheme? That's an important question to answer. The PALM scheme is one of our most important Pacific policies. It provides Australian farmers with a vital source of labour to harvest their crops and make sure that they can get their goods to the market. What it does is deepen the links within our region by allowing thousands of Pacific workers to come to Australia to earn decent incomes and, as I said earlier, gain valuable skills that they will use here and then, also, use upon their return. That's why the government is expanding and improving the PALM scheme. When we came to office in May last year, there were approximately 25,000 migrants in Australia under the PALM scheme. Since then, that number has risen to, I think, about 40,000 people. Our policies to expand the scheme have reduced the burden of travel costs on employers. We have expanded the scheme into new sectors like aged care, making sure we're getting workers into those vital sectors where we really need to make sure that we're looking after our elderly and our most vulnerable and also improving protections for Pacific workers.

We're now introducing a pilot program that will allow PALM scheme workers to bring their families to Australia. Workers under the PALM scheme provide essential support to the Australian economy, but so, too, do the families that many of them have had to leave behind in the past. The new family accompaniment program will allow PALM scheme workers on a one- to four-year placement to bring their immediate families to Australia. We're starting with a pilot of 200 families so we can monitor the new measure to ensure that it's working for everyone involved in the scheme. The bill is going to ensure that PALM scheme workers participating in the family accompaniment component will be able to access appropriate benefits, so the bill is going to amend the A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999 to allow eligible PALM scheme workers taking part in the family accompaniment program to access family tax benefit parts A and B and also to access the childcare subsidy. This is going to help PALM scheme workers with the cost of raising a family here in Australia and make it easier, too, for their spouses to participate in the workforce, making sure we're getting people into the workforce if they so choose, which is going to be good all round for employers who are facing the labour shortages that we have seen now for quite some time.

Also, this bill is going to support the government's new Pacific engagement visa. That's going to allow 3,000 nationals of Pacific countries and of Timor-Leste to come to Australia as permanent migrants each year. This visa is a signature initiative of the Albanese Labor government's plan to build a stronger Pacific family and stronger relationships with our Pacific partners. It's designed to grow the Pacific and Timor-Leste diaspora here within the Australian community. As I was saying with regard to the PALM scheme, it will provide employers with a bigger pool of labour, making sure that we're filling those labour shortfalls in our communities. It's also going to address the underrepresentation of some of our closest neighbours in Australia's permanent migration system. I'm just looking at the eligibility criteria for that. It's being aged between 18 and 45, having a job offer from an Australian employer, having basic English language proficiency and meeting standard immigration health and character requirements.

In conclusion, this bill is going to support the expansion and improvement of the PALM scheme and support the new Pacific engagement visa, all of which is going to strengthen and deeply enrich our connection with our Pacific partners and members in our region. They're all part of the Albanese Labor government's comprehensive plan to help Pacific countries meet their economic, development and climate change challenges and the security challenges within our region.

See this speech in context