Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

In this budget, the Albanese government is investing in a safe, secure and resilient future for the entire Australian community. As my colleague and friend Minister O'Neil has spoken about, many of the funding measures and programs in the Home Affairs portfolio are directed at these ends. In my remarks I want to focus in particular on three parts of this budget. The first one is improving economic and social outcomes for migrants.

The Albanese government will be investing $120.9 million from next financial year on a number of proven programs to deliver better economic and social outcomes for refugees—a matter that I know is of keen interest to you, Deputy Speaker Chesters. This funding includes $86.6 million to improve the sustainability of settlement services, which have been under so much pressure for so long, and $27 million to extend successful programs, including the Youth Transition Support program and support for refugee and migrant women who have been experiencing domestic and family violence. These are all critical programs to support new people who are coming to Australia, often in very difficult circumstances, and these investments will deliver a real dividend.

Additional measures will include conversational English classes in community hubs and further support for the Community Refugee Education and Settlement Pilot, supporting the government's commitments on complementary protection. These investments ensure newly resettled refugees in Australia are provided with the support they need to succeed and thrive in our communities.

The government will also provide additional funding of $15 million for an information and education package to help combat migrant worker exploitation. This builds on our strong agenda more broadly of protecting vulnerable migrant workers who speak out and cracking down on those rogue employers who do the wrong thing and seek to profit by that. Our tough new laws, cracking down on these employers who do the wrong thing, passed the parliament recently.

As outlined in the Migration Strategy, the temporary skilled migration income threshold will be indexed on 1 July, further increasing wages for both Australians and workers holding temporary skilled visas. The figure will be $73,150. After a decade of the former government deliberately holding down wages by refusing to index the TSMIT, I'm so proud to be ensuring that wages are moving again in Australia—and to say to the shadow minister, of course, that real wages are going up right now under our economic management and our plan to secure better living standards for all Australians.

I firmly believe that the best way to tackle exploitation is to ensure people being mistreated can speak up. That's why I'm looking forward to introducing new rules in the coming months so that people with temporary visas don't need to worry about losing that status and can speak freely.

In the time available to me I want to highlight a couple of additional matters. One of them is the progress being made in addressing shortages in the aged-care sector. First and foremost, salaries have increased substantially following the decision of the Fair Work Commission to increase wages and the Albanese government's historic commitment to increase funding for these hardworking—predominantly—women. To complement this, the Albanese government has introduced the Aged Care Industry Labour Agreement. This is the first tripartite labour agreement where business, unions and government are working together to address workforce shortages in a collaborative manner in the national interest.

Under Labor, I'm pleased to say, almost 70 agreements have been struck with aged-care providers who've signed memoranda of understanding. In the little over a year since the agreement was launched, this has resulted in about 1,000 visa applications being lodged, with many more to come. For these aged-care providers, there's the ability to sponsor up to 22,000 workers over the next five years, should we need the workforce to care for those Australians. This is in stark contrast to measures under the former government. The then minister, Minister Coleman, announced in early 2019 that aged-care providers could apply for labour agreements, and a grand total of seven such agreements were struck until May 2022. Those agreements covered fewer than 200 visas.

More broadly, we've slashed waiting times from months to days for essential workers, reducing uncertainty. I really want to touch on the contribution of essential workers in health care, education and construction. They are so essential to everyday lives and to the functioning of our economy: the houses we live in, the care for our family, the education for our future. That's why I'm so proud that our government has focused on ensuring visas for these workers, including over 10,500 workers in construction, broadly double the number previously. This year, we're on track to match these figures.

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