Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Migration Legislation Amendment (Information and Other Measures) Bill 2007 is fairly straightforward and makes various minor amendments to various pieces of legislation, but it raises some concern about the government’s administration of this portfolio and, as has been put by members from this side, given the fact that the government believe there to be serious deficiencies in some of the amendments that they made in early 2004, why has this legislation taken three years to come to this place? The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship’s second reading speech indicated that, with respect to those measures which were put in place by the Migration Legislation Amendment (Identification and Authentication) Act 2004:

The provisions impose criminal penalties in relation to the access and disclosure of personal information, unless that access or disclosure is expressly permitted.

The minister went on to say:

It has become apparent that the list of permitted disclosures and access grounds is too limited. My department’s ability to continue normal working practices is being seriously hampered.

This was because they could not get access to the information on personal identifiers such as signatures, photographs, height and weight measurements, fingerprints, iris scans and audio and video recordings for some of the processes that they would require to investigate and prosecute under other pieces of migration legislation. So we have the situation in which, three years down the track, we are having some appropriate changes put in the legislation to enable this data to be used. We have the situation in which there is an amendment to ensure that somebody who asks for the disclosure of their own identifiers can do this without having to resort to an FOI application.

The bill also makes amendments to other pieces of legislation—such as the Fisheries Amendment Act, the Torres Strait Fisheries Act and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act—of a similar nature to enable those things that have been done in the pursuit of illegal fishers to be carried out. I think that we have seen the need for strong legislation in this area that stacks up against appropriate privacy provisions and that is as transparent as is possible. Other agencies and even the Defence Force have to be able to use the pieces of legislation with some certainty to ensure that the tasks that they have been given are able to be carried out.

The pursuit of illegal fishers, especially in northern waters, has become a very important activity. It is an important activity not only because of economic reasons, environmental reasons and damage to the fishing areas but also because of the fact that there is a large crossover between illegal fishers and the potential for these boats to be illegally used for the movement of human cargo, as desperate asylum seekers pay these illegal fishers to reach our shores.

As I said, the Navy need to be certain, for instance, that when they are carrying out their tasks, they have legal backing. Over the last 12 months or so we have had discussion on floating brigs in northern waters. Fortunately, I think there has been dampened enthusiasm for that, and we are continuing business as usual. There needs to be sufficient ability and capacity for the boats that are making the interventions to bring illegal fishers onshore to the detention facility in Darwin, for instance. The capacity of the Navy, through the change from the Fremantle class to the Armidale class vessels, is important in this endeavour.

I have been interested in following this debate, and last Thursday I was a little surprised by the intervention by the honourable member for Moreton in this debate which, despite the narrow nature of the piece of legislation, has managed to be a wide-ranging debate about the nature of our migration program. I thought it was a little over the top for the honourable member for Moreton to characterise the attitudes to migration of either side of this place as being something of great difference and moment. For instance, he made the assertion that the Liberal and National parties see migration as a nation-building exercise, whereas—he went on to say—the Australian Labor Party, through their efforts in office, have always seen it as a constituency-building exercise.

I thought that was pretty much low-rent. I did not think that it added anything to the debate, especially coming from the member from Moreton who, as a former minister in this portfolio area, should know a great deal better. It ignored the history of modern Australian migration. It ignored the important decisions that have been made in the past by the Australian Labor Party, where there had to be conscious change of policy to move towards a non-discriminatory attitude to migration. We have always seen migration as an important aspect of the way in which this nation progresses. To characterise our attitude in the way that the honourable member for Moreton did was monstrous.

If we look at many of the areas that are represented in this place by members of the Australian Labor Party, we see that members on this side represent parts of Australia that are as diverse as we can imagine. To dwell on the electorate of Scullin, which I have the honour of representing in this place, the diversity of background of the people of Scullin is one of its great strengths. These are people who have migrated over the last 60-odd years, from before the Second World War, with a large burst of migration, mainly from southern European countries, post the Second World War. We have then seen waves from every part of the globe which continue to this day and will continue in the future.

These people have undoubtedly made a contribution to the way in which Australia has developed economically. But, importantly, they have made a great contribution to the way in which Australia has developed culturally. That is something that people cannot argue about. It is there; it happens. It is of no use to talk about the types of words that we use for it. At the end of the day, my electorate is multicultural. But those people absolutely understand that they are Australian, that they play a part and a role in the development of Australia in the 21st century. And they understand that their migration to Australia and the contribution of their families are part of a nation-building exercise—a nation-building exercise that has had the support, right throughout the decades, of the Australian Labor Party.

The member for Moreton then went on to regrettably indicate that he believed that, in some way, when there are concerns expressed about the support given to new arrivals, if this was done by a state government agency or somebody representing a state government, it was a form of shifting the blame. At the end of the day, the migration program is something that is controlled by the Australian government. Welcoming new arrivals and assisting them to stand on their own within the communities that they live is a shared responsibility, and I acknowledge that. But it is dictated by the level of migration that the Australian government decides on and the regions to which these new arrivals go.

The member for Moreton gave us an example, from when he was the minister, of a discussion he had in Shepparton about Iraqi arrivals getting drivers licences. He has to understand that even in small numbers the addition of those Iraqi women in a relatively small township like Shepparton is something that would stretch the resources of that community. Whilst there is and has been for quite some time an Iraqi community in Shepparton, what was really being put to him as minister was that assisting these people into the community requires additional support and that the Commonwealth government, the Australian government, could act in partnership with local agencies and the local community.

Later in his speech, the member for Moreton, in talking about his local area in Brisbane, gave an example where he lauded intervention by the Commonwealth government in assisting new arrivals with haircuts, of all things. I am not being demeaning, because this is something that must have been a problem for the local community. It is something that we take for granted, something that is not earth shattering, but for cultural reasons the local community needed to address it. It is proper and appropriate that the Commonwealth government is involved in partnership to address those sorts of problems.

The northern MRC cover my electorate and a large part of northern Melbourne. They were quite proud that they were educating new arrivals on what the city of Melbourne had to offer for recreation and the like. They thought they were opening doors in Melbourne for new arrivals. They would put the latest batch of new arrivals on a bus, take them down through the member for Melbourne’s electorate to places like Lygon Street and then to Melbourne Ports, to St Kilda, and different places in the city. When the MRC did a follow-up, they found that none of the families on those introductory tours had ever left their homes in East Preston, Thomastown or Lalor, and the MRC said, ‘Are we wasting our time?’ They realised they had done these people a disservice by hiring the bus, putting them on it and taking them to these places. With a bit of lateral thinking, they found it was of greater value to take them on excursions using public transport, introducing them to public transport.

Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I do not think I need to tell you that, whilst that is an interesting aside, local communities with limited resources have great difficulties in assisting these people. My contention is: if you take the northern suburbs of Melbourne, for all of the post-World War II period, whether it be the inner suburbs of Carlton, Fitzroy or Collingwood, right out to the outer northern suburbs of Epping, Mill Park, Lalor and Thomastown, we have received and welcomed greater than our fair share of new arrivals. That is the nature of the migration program. It is not earth shattering, it is not rocket science, but some communities are called upon to have greater input and responsibility than others.

If the member for Moreton, a former minister for multiculturalism, cannot see that the Australian government needs to be involved with those communities in providing opportunities for new arrivals, I think he misunderstands the nature of modern migration in Australia in the 21st century. If people arriving in Australia with little concept of paper money are told that in order to gain Centrelink benefits they have to have a bank account, it is a completely alien notion to them. They are then told that their bank account will be accessed through a plastic card that they put in a machine. These are very large hurdles that take a great deal of time to explain to and educate people about the way things are done in the Australian context.

These are simple matters in the day-to-day lives of new arrivals, but when we have to house these people, assist in training them to gain economic benefits through fulfilment in employment, these are extensive hardships on local communities that have ended up taking greater numbers of new arrivals.

Having been enraged by the comments of the member for Moreton, I hope that, in further discussions about this important area of public policy—that is, migration—we do not have sideshow debates that inflame people into thinking that there are any improper motives for promoting migration. It is important that, when we have a large debate going on, people are reminded of the tolerance and harmony that have welcomed new arrivals to Australia. I would much prefer that the honourable member for Moreton look at the speech of his colleague the honourable member for McMillan, who talked about the positive nature of migration and the positive efforts that are made by local communities to welcome those new arrivals. To the extent that the provisions within the legislation that we are debating tonight are delayed a little, they are at least appropriate. I hope they are covered sufficiently by the overarching privacy legislation but enable the use of the information in proper and appropriate ways so that this piece of legislation can go forward.

One of the great challenges that the Australian parliament will face is the way in which the forms of identifying information that are spoken about in this legislation, illegal migration matters and the like are expanded upon to the wider community. As a transit passenger through Los Angeles airport three or four weeks ago, I was fingerprinted and a photograph was taken of my retina. After 14 hours on a plane, I did not have the opportunity to argue the toss about what the information was going to be used for. There are going to be large databanks throughout the globe that have this information. What this debate today has to be about—and continue to be about—is the appropriate use of that legislation to ensure that those who have done something wrong pay a penalty and that those who have not done anything wrong do not have their information misused. With those comments, I indicate my support for the legislation.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are dealing with a number of amendments to the Migration Act this evening in the Migration Legislation Amendment (Information and Other Measures) Bill 2007, which the opposition broadly supports. These amendments relate to the requirement for people who are seeking to enter Australia’s migration zone unlawfully to provide identifying information upon apprehension. These identifying requirements refer to things such as photographs, fingerprints and the like. There are also some technical changes proposed to the rules governing records of individual movements and some changes with respect to offences relating to illegal fishing.

The immediate backdrop to the provisions that are put before the parliament this evening is the ongoing debate about asylum seekers and people smuggling, the requirements of border protection in this country, and section 457 visas and the introduction of temporary skilled—and, in some cases, not that skilled—workers into Australia for the purposes of filling positions in areas of skills shortage. These issues that I have identified as the wider backdrop are highly charged. There has been vigorous debate both inside and outside the parliament over a number of years about precisely how the government ought to deal with these questions of asylum seekers, border protection, illegal fishing, immigration arrangements and skilled workers.

I would like to deal with a matter this evening that is part of the wider backdrop to these debates from a more historical perspective. It is an important element in the wider picture of debate about the rules for immigration in this country and our attitude towards multiculturalism, race and immigration. Some of these issues were canvassed by my friend the member for Scullin; they are all part of the same wider picture. I speak this evening without any intention to criticise the government on some of its positions on these matters—not that I am uncritical of the government on a number of aspects of its policy in this areas, but that is for another time.

This evening, I want to place on the record some observations with respect to a very important historical event that occurred yesterday: the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire. Legislation was passed by the House of Commons and the House of Lords in 1807, and that decision really set an underlying foundation for a whole lot of debates—both in Britain and in countries that are derived from Britain, such as ours—over the ensuing 200 years. It has echoed throughout those debates on race, immigration and racial discrimination for 200 years. It is very important that we in this parliament acknowledge the crucial nature of that decision and its importance to the evolution of attitudes in our nation, particularly as it occurred at a very early stage of Australia’s history and reflected the role of a number of people, including those who were crucial to the establishment of Australia. It is an important thing for the Australian parliament to acknowledge.

Britain was not the first nation to abolish the slave trade. It is probably true to say that there were some societies and communities in that era where slavery was unknown. It is important to recognise that the first substantial nation to abolish slavery was France, in 1794. On 4 February 1794, the Jacobin regime, after having already seriously restricted the slave trade, voted to completely abolish slavery throughout the French Empire. Sadly, that decision was one that was ultimately reversed by Napoleon, and it was not until 1848 that the French Empire finally returned to its position of 1794 of complete abolition of slavery. It is also important to note that several of the British colonies, as they then were, in the United States—they were in the process of moving from being British colonies to being part of the United States—had abolished slavery prior to the British decision. They included New Jersey and Delaware, which abolished slavery outright, and Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island, which abolished the slave trade. Also, apparently, Denmark abolished slavery in March 1792, with respect to both its own territory and its colonies, although it is probably true to say that Denmark was not exactly a major imperial power at that time and there were probably not very many slaves within Danish jurisdiction. Nonetheless, it should be acknowledged that the Danes were early movers on this very important front.

Given the British heritage that is still proudly at the heart of the Australian nation and certainly something that I hold very dear, and given the ongoing debates in this country about race, multiculturalism and the nature of immigration, I think that the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery is a very important milestone and one that the Australian parliament should acknowledge. It is worth noting that slavery was made illegal in the United Kingdom itself in 1102—a very long time ago—and the practice of villeinage, as it was called, endured until the early 17th century, but the formal institute of slavery was abolished at a very early stage in Britain. In 1562 Sir John Hawkins led the first British slave voyage, which kidnapped people from what is now Senegal and Sierra Leone and took them to British colonies in the Caribbean. By the early 18th century, slaves were being brought to the UK to serve as domestic servants in cities like London and Edinburgh, and there were thought to be somewhere between 10,000 and 14,000 slaves—overwhelmingly black Africans—in Britain at that time. But in 1772 Lord Chief Justice Mansfield ruled in Somerset’s case that a slave who had been in the United Kingdom and had escaped could not be returned to his erstwhile owners because British law did not recognise slavery and there was no legal entitlement on the part of the slave’s owners to reclaim his person. That was an important landmark in British law in the process of the abolition of slavery.

The antislavery campaign in the UK originated with the Quakers, interestingly enough, in the American colonies in the 1740s and 1750, and then spread from the American colonies into Britain itself. In 1783 the Society of Friends, or the Quakers, as they were called, petitioned parliament against the slave trade, established a campaign committee and began to distribute leaflets and undertake lobbying against slavery. In 1787 the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was established. Other groups such as the evangelical or Clapham Sect wing of the Anglican Church and the Wesleyan Methodists began to be drawn into the campaign during this period in the mid-1780s.

In 1787 Lord and Lady Middleton, who had been drawn into the campaign by their own priest, persuaded William Wilberforce, who was a Tory, to move in parliament for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. He was also influenced by a number of other key figures who had become very prominent in the campaign, such as Thomas Clarkson, who in many respects deserves recognition as perhaps the great unknown hero of the campaign to abolish slavery. Wilberforce, rightly, is revered around the world for his role—and there is no challenge to that on my part—but many others were involved in the campaign and often received little serious acknowledgement for their contribution. I will refer to Clarkson again in a little while.

Wilberforce moved his motion, and in 1788 parliament voted on it. Because Wilberforce was ill at the time, William Pitt the Younger took over as the mover of the motion. The motion was supported by such luminaries as Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox—so some of the great figures of the day in the British political scene supported the motion. It passed the House of Commons but failed in the House of Lords, which was a fate that would meet subsequent attempts to abolish the slave trade on a number of occasions. The campaign continued and attracted support from other very prominent figures in British society, such as Josiah Wedgwood and John Wesley. It is interesting that Wilberforce was a Tory—he was a conservative—but largely relied on the Whigs for his support, including many of the most prominent figures of the day: Henry Brougham, who went on to be a major education reformer, Richard Sheridan and William Grenville. Several attempts were made, particularly around 1804-05, to pass the legislation, but, again, the Commons passed the legislation but it was lost in the Lords. Finally, after an extended period of Tory government and notwithstanding Wilberforce being a Tory—Wilberforce was unable to persuade enough of his own party to support his position—there was a brief interlude from 1806-07 of Whig government under Lord Grenville and finally the legislation that had been so long promoted by Wilberforce and others passed the House of Commons and then the House of Lords.

The campaign continued in that this legislation was merely to abolish the slave trade, so it did not actually remove the status of ‘slave’ from individuals who were legally in the British Empire as slaves. What it did was to abolish the capacity for people to trade—to buy and sell. It was not until 1833 that, finally, the legislation was passed to abolish slavery altogether throughout the British Empire. Sadly, in that year William Wilberforce died. Several years later, in 1839, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was established, and it continued the battle to oppose and eradicate slavery throughout the British Empire, because the mere passage of legislation by itself was not necessarily a guarantee of what would occur on the ground, particularly given the far-flung and disparate nature of the British Empire at that time and, subsequently, in the latter part of the 19th century.

To conclude on this point, there are a number of points that I think are worth noting. The first is the enormous role played by slaves themselves in their own liberation, the most famous of which is of course the slave revolt in 1791 on the then French island of Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, led by one of the most amazing early revolutionary leaders, Toussaint L’Ouverture. That revolt in effect established Haiti as the first independent nation in the Caribbean and was perhaps the trigger for that 1794 decision by the French regime, the Jacobins, to abolish slavery altogether.

It is also important to note that, sadly, as well as black Africans playing a major role in opposing the slave trade, fighting against it and resisting it, many were of course involved in the trade. We need to acknowledge that it was not just Westerners, it was not just imperialists, but there was a very substantial involvement in the institution of slavery, in the trade of slavery, on the part of people in places like Ghana, Senegal and the like. Also, slavery and the slave trade did persist in many parts of the British Empire after these decisions, in some cases with the active connivance of the British authorities. For example, in Mauritius, which was captured from the French in 1810 and which had a slave based economy, there was active looking the other way with respect to the continuation of the slave trade for some time. It is also important to note that, sadly, slavery can be found in many guises in many parts of the world today. That is something that we ought to keep in our minds when we are considering this very important 200th anniversary.

I mentioned Thomas Clarkson before. It is important that we acknowledge that, although Wilberforce has ended up being the person who has received the credit for this decision and for the campaign, and he clearly deserves all the credit he has received, there are many others who also deserve credit and who have largely lacked it. Thomas Clarkson is perhaps the most outstanding example—a man who literally spent years hanging around the docks in Liverpool and in Bristol, gathering evidence of the appalling nature of the slave trade, the appalling denial of human dignity, the appalling denial of human rights. He gave hundreds of public lectures. He put together enormous dossiers of factual material, exhibits of things like leg-irons, and diagrams of slave vessels and the extent to which individuals were crammed together in circumstances that are almost beyond belief. Clarkson also organised what is possibly the first known consumer boycott, where somewhere in the vicinity of 300,000 Britons signed up to a campaign to refuse to buy and use slave-produced sugar. So he is a really crucial figure in this history and is very little known. I think it is important that we acknowledge the contribution of both him and others.

It is also important to acknowledge that—as came out in an article by Keith Windschuttle in the Australian on the weekend—numerous key figures in early Australian history had a significant position on these issues. Prior to the settlement of Australia, Governor Arthur Phillip—who of course led the establishment of the colony at Sydney Cove in 1788—set out very clearly in a memo to Lord Sydney, the Colonial Secretary, that he would vigorously oppose any slavery in Australia. That is not as silly as it sounds, because at that time slavery was a widespread element in British colonies in many parts of the world, particularly in the Caribbean. So that position on the part of Governor Phillip is important to acknowledge.

Equally, there was Governor Lachlan Macquarie, whose second wife, I think, inherited some slaves. Macquarie and his wife took the decision to free those slaves. Other governors of early New South Wales also took a strong position in opposition to slavery. It is important to keep in mind that, at that stage, the governors of New South Wales were part of a military establishment and, in a sense, moving backwards and forwards between Britain itself, other posts and New South Wales, so they were part of a wider debate that was going on within the British Empire about the institution of slavery. We can be proud that the people who were the early leaders of what became the Australian nation actually played a role in opposing slavery and contributing to the public debate that ultimately led to its abolition within the British Empire.

I think this debate is a very important part of our history both as a nation and as part of the wider British Empire for an extended period of time. It also reminds us how important it is that we take action on issues of slavery in the modern era. It reminds us of how insidious, how appalling, how vicious the notion of racial inferiority is and what appalling human consequences it has led to both in recent times and also, more particularly, in that awful era from the mid-16th century through to the 19th century. In that era, thousands upon thousands of human beings from Africa were kidnapped, treated with the most unbelievable brutality, torn apart from their families, in many cases killed or starved, and mistreated beyond belief—all as the basis to establish an economic advantage in the New World; all as the basis to build a plantation economy in many parts of the Caribbean and other parts of the New World. It was all based on values of greed and brutality and total contempt and disdain for the lives, the communities and the families of others because they were different, because they were not industrialised, because they lived in a different social context, because they did not have the same military technology and were susceptible to being conquered, brutalised and mistreated.

So it is very important for us today to acknowledge this part of our history, to acknowledge the great courage and the great dedication, commitment and persistence of the William Wilberforces and the Thomas Clarksons of 200-odd years ago. Their dedication has helped to shape the modern era and helped to make us realise just how crucial these issues are, how awful racial discrimination is and where ultimately it can lead.

I just wanted to acknowledge the importance of these sentiments, as we debate the intricacies and the details of issues like asylum seekers and immigration, and acknowledge that people of goodwill on both sides of the parliament consider them. We must commit ourselves always to eliminating all forms of racial discrimination; to ensuring that nobody, anywhere in the world, suffers from slavery; to ensuring that we treat people of different races who come to this country with compassion and decency; and to ensuring that our children are free of the kinds of racist mentalities that, in years, decades and centuries gone by, have led to the kinds of barbarities of which slavery is perhaps the most extreme.

Teresa Gambaro (Petrie, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to acknowledge the member for Melbourne for his illustrative and informative speech about the ugly past of involuntary immigration, which is slavery. He spoke of the 200-year anniversary of the abolition of slavery. In summing up the Migration Legislation Amendment (Information and Other Measures) Bill 2007, I would like to thank members on both sides of the House for their contributions to the second reading debate on this bill, and I thank the opposition for their support.

The bill amends the Migration Act 1958 and mirror provisions in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, the Fisheries Management Act 1991 and the Torres Strait Fisheries Act 1984 to address serious limitations in the provisions dealing with access to and disclosure of identifying information. Identifying information includes personal identifiers such as a person’s photograph, fingerprint or signature. Under all four acts it is an offence to access and disclose identifying information unless the access or disclosure comes under a list of permitted accesses and disclosures. The limited grounds upon which this information can be accessed and disclosed is affecting my department’s ability to continue a range of normal working practices, such as disclosing photographs and signatures to other very important agencies.

The bill deals with this problem by adding some additional access and disclosure grounds to the four acts. These additional grounds are targeted at alleviating the most pressing difficulties being experienced under the current arrangements. For example, access and disclosure will be permitted where it is done to prevent or lessen a serious or imminent threat to life or health. My department will be able to disclose identifying information to the Migration Agents Registration Authority to assist in investigations into complaints against migration agents. Disclosure of identifying information to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions will also be permitted to assist in investigations and prosecutions.

The amendments in the bill to replace ‘noncitizen’ with ‘person’ in various disclosure grounds is to ensure that a permitted disclosure can still occur after the noncitizen from whom the information was collected has become a citizen. However, the act will continue to allow personal identifiers to be collected only to identify noncitizens. The bill will also broaden the ability of my department to disclose to a person that individual person’s movement records, thereby avoiding the need for the person to access their records through the freedom of information process. This will improve the service my department can provide to clients. The bill will also amend the definition of ‘fisheries detention offence’ in the Migration Act to ensure that enforcement visas are granted to noncitizens who have been brought to Australia in relation to new fisheries offences recently incorporated into the fisheries legislation.

In summary, by expanding the currently limited grounds upon which identifying information can be accessed and disclosed, we will improve the efficiency of the operations within the department. The bill will also enhance client service by enabling the disclosure of an individual’s movement records to the individual to whom they relate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.