Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Australia's Engagement in the Pacific) Bill 2023. This bill supports our engagement with many countries in the Pacific, including countries like Timor-Leste. It will implement family accompaniment under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme, commonly known as the PALM scheme, and it will introduce a new Pacific engagement visa.

Australia's Relationship with Timor-Leste is very close. Timor-Leste's success is very important to Australia. We share a region and a future. It's very important that both nations are prosperous and peaceful and that there is deep respect, friendship, and solidarity. A strong and prosperous Timor-Leste is of fundamental importance to our country. We are Timor-Leste's leading development assistance partner, and we support its economic diversification and private sector growth through our development cooperation program and labour mobility scheme.

We're expanding access to Australia for Timorese workers under the PALM scheme, which began under the previous Labor Government. Almost 5,000 Timorese workers are currently in Australia, employed across rural and regional areas, remitting more than $37 million each year back to their families. That's just one example from one country. We're expanding opportunities for seasonal workers to gain valuable skills and improve workers' rights and conditions. This will support an additional 35 Timorese to complete formal qualifications in aged care, which will build critical skills and bolster economic resilience. We've recently doubled our Australia Awards Scholarships from 10 to 20. We created 18 places in that fellowship program. We're creating new scholarships for Timorese to the Australia Pacific Training Coalition. Our cooperation extends not just to Timor-Leste but across a whole range of sectors in the Pacific: security, health, agriculture, human development and economic resilience. We are expanding our cooperation through major infrastructure projects.

Australian values are very important, and we also value our partnership in the Pacific with our Pacific family very deeply. We're grateful to our Pacific partners for their stewardship of the seas and for preserving the region's biodiversity. They're custodians of some of the planet's most ancient cultures and many of the world's languages. We have a profound sense of kinship with the Pacific, of wanting to connect with the Pacific as part of one family. We have a longstanding bond, and this has been forged through times of crisis and sustained in peace and prosperity.

These bonds are evident in the dynamic contributions of the Pacific diaspora to Australian life in music, sport and culture. You would only have to go to a football semifinal in what I've often described as rugby league or rugby union states, Queensland and New South Wales, this weekend to see that. This weekend I will be popping into the rugby league grand finals in Ipswich, and I guarantee you that a large proportion of the players in the grand finals through various grades will be from the Pacific community. We value the contributions that they make in sporting, cultural and religious and spiritual life. Schools in my electorate, for example in eastern suburbs, are full of people from Samoa, Tonga and other parts of the Pacific. Indeed, when Samoa upset England in the Rugby League World Cup, you could see Samoan flags everywhere when driving around particularly the eastern suburbs of Ipswich in that period of time—not quite as many there after Australia beat them in the final in the men's world cup! Certainly, it was a demonstration in my local community, not just in the schools or on the football fields or the various church and faith based organisation, that the number of people from Pacific communities living in my electorate is very high. There are schools where up to 40 per cent of the school cohort are from Pacific communities.

We're going to ensure that Pacific workers are treated fairly and with better conditions. This will allow workers to bring their families and provide a pathway to permanent residency for 3,000 members of our Pacific family every year. These people have been contributing to our culture for generations, and we haven't always treated them as well as we need to. There is a long history in my home state of Queensland of people not being treated well, particularly in North Queensland.

To work with nations of the Pacific to recover from the pandemic is very important. These countries, like our country, are still feeling the after effect of the pandemic. The Albanese Labor government will increase our overseas development assistance to the Pacific by $525 million over the next four years. I know, from speaking to various high commissioners and ambassadors from these regions, that this is deeply appreciated. Pacific women have played a key role in economic and recovery efforts. Economies and communities work well together when we remove barriers to women and girls in national life.

We stand with the Pacific islands in dealing with the climate change crisis. As stated in the recent Pacific Islands Forum's Boe Declaration on Regional Security, 'Climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific.' We share the view of our Pacific friends that climate change is not an abstract threat but an existential one. We must take serious action not just to reduce emissions and transform our economy but to assist them to transform their economies. Nothing is more important to the security and the economies of the Pacific.

During the last election I spoke at a Politics in the Pub candidates event at the Esk Grand Hotel in the Somerset region in my electorate. One matter raised there by the local farmers was the PALM scheme. I note that PALM workers were earning an income developing skills and filling workforce shortages across 28 industries. These include agricultural and meat processing at several locations within Blair. It's an important issue, and the farmers in my electorate want to see reform. That was the main topic of conversation at the candidates forum in Esk.

In the Pacific region, more than a third of people live on less than $3 a day. The PALM scheme and similar programs enable some of the workers from the Pacific to send home more than $10,000 each year. That's at least 10 times $3 a day. It's a huge economic boost for these families and the whole region. Going into the 2022 election, the Labor Party promised to make it easier for Pacific workers to fill labour shortages across Australia and to enable them to bring their families here, and that's exactly what we're doing with this bill. The measures in this bill and related legislation give effect to our commitment to expand reform and improve the PALM scheme.

The PALM scheme is central to Australia's relationship with the Pacific nation. It helps develop skills and addresses youth unemployment and supports economic integration of our region. The scheme allows Australian employers to recruit workers from across the Pacific. It gets the nation signed up for short-term or seasonal worker placement for up to nine months and long-term placements between one and four years. All PALM scheme workers will be granted a PALM visa. There are other visas within this subclass for those not participating in the PALM scheme, and some PALM scheme workers are on a repeat PLS visa.

The Albanese government is committed to expanding and approving the scheme through a family accompaniment policy, which is really important for workers on these long-term placements. This initiative will reduce the social impacts of family separation for extended periods of time. The rollout of family accompaniment will begin with a pilot, including a limited number of families. The initial stage of the family accompaniment policy will include about 200 families. Participants will be selected according to certain program criteria, which will be used to limit the number of approvals. The initial stage of family accompaniment will allow program settings to be tested and adjusted over time to ensure that the program is delivering on its objectives, resulting in a positive experience for families.

The scheme workers on a long-term placement will need to meet additional program criteria to be eligible to bring their families to Australia. This will include the workers having spent a certain period of time in Australia or holding a work contract with at least 12 months as well as proximity to education for their dependent children. The bill amends residents requirements and the newly arrived residents waiting period under the tax laws.

It will enable scheme workers to access additional assistance. Most temporary skilled visa holders do not meet the resident requirements to qualify for family tax benefits and the childcare subsidy, and this includes people on the PALM scheme. The bill will amend these requirements to include subclass 403 visa holders who are PALM scheme participants or family members of PALM scheme participants. That is really important because it will allow those entitlements, from the family tax benefits to the childcare subsidy, to be given to those families. Applicants will need to meet certain conditions specified by a legislative instrument, and this will enable some of the visa holders to qualify. The conditions to be specified in the legislative instrument include that the applicant be approved by the department to bring family members to Australia under the policy or that the applicant is a family member of such an individual. These will be set out in the legislative instrument. It's very important.

Today, I was speaking to John Berry at JBS, who's known across the chamber here by many people. JBS is a big employer in my electorate. It employs currently 1,200 to 1,300 workers at Dinmore, one of the biggest meat processing plants in the country if not the biggest. I also have Kilcoy Global Foods up in Kilcoy, which is a huge meat processing establishment as well. John was telling me today that they are looking to expand back to two shifts in that meat processing plant.

Of course, the Chinese government's attitude in relation to health certification requirements meant that they, along with Kilcoy, were two of the four meat processing plants in the country who were the target of Chinese embargoes, if I can put it like that. This meant that both JBS at Dinmore and Kilcoy had to look for diversification in terms of their market and did so. But it had a consequence for my electorate, particularly at Dinmore where nearly 700 workers lost their job as a result.

I asked the former Prime Minister what he was going to do about that, and he said people could get JobSeeker because JBS weren't eligible for JobKeeper at the time. This meant that those workers lost their job.

JBS is looking to expand and were going to first look at workers in the local area. We have a lot of big high schools, and they're engaged with those high schools to get workers in the meat processing industry. You can have a great career in the meat processing industry. People go from labouring to semiskilled to skilled processing. The boners and slicers and other people are so skilled at what they do. There is great career progression through that area.

One of the options that JBS is looking at is this particular scheme, and this is very important. Many people who come to this country and work in meat processing end up becoming Australian citizens, and there are pathways to permanent residency. This is why this sort of scheme is really important.

About 51.5 per cent of Australians are either born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas. Just last week in the meat processing industry, which is a real topic of this particular bill, we had 38 people become citizens in a country town called Esk in my community. Thirty of them were meat processors who were involved in the meat processing industry and became Australian citizens. The delight on their face when becoming Aussies was just amazing. They brought their family members as well. This is a kind of Australia we want to build up. This is a generous nation that does schemes like this, schemes that help our neighbours with almost a—I mentioned the spiritual before—good Samaritan type of assistance, acknowledging we are all part of one family in the Pacific and we have to take action together on economic security, climate change and on the economy. If we can assist through schemes like these, which allow families to come so that people are not separated by geography—it's a long way from the Torres Strait to Tasmania and Brisbane to Broome, so just imagine these families being separated by this scheme—if we can bring people here and keep them together, it's good for their family, it's good for their spiritual welfare if I can put it like that, it's good for their personal and domestic lives and it's good for the children to have their parents and their extended family there amongst them.

Whilst this particular legislation might seem obtuse, turgid and might not be seen as the most sexy piece of bill we have in this chamber, it offers real, practical help for people in our region and it shows our country's generosity, our decency and our humanity. It also shows that we are thinking not just about ourselves but our neighbours and that good neighbourly policy. It's almost like we can express our concern, our affection and our love for our neighbours with bills like these that help our neighbours and support them in their economy and economic development, but it also means that when people come to this country and contribute to our economy, our society, our culture, our football, our faith, they can bring their families here, and this bill will help them do so.

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