Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to detail the consultation that occurred around this country starting on 29 June in Newcastle and finishing last Wednesday in Albury about this country’s refugee humanitarian settlement process, the Integrated Humanitarian Settlement Strategy contract. Consultations were held in all capital cities and six regional centres. I want to salute the effort by Vincent Giuca and Peter Templeton, assistant secretaries of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, and also Joy Puls and Nerys Jones, for their part in this process.

In most of these 12 locations there was consultation, firstly with government agencies that have impact on settlement, including Centrelink, state education departments, the police and departments of housing. Secondly, there was consultation with the settlement sector itself, including contract providers, settlement grants providers, charitable groups, youth organisations and voluntary groups. Finally, there was consultation with the refugees that went through the experience. I have to say that, around the country we had Rohingyas and Hazaras; we had people from the Congo; we had Somalis; we had Sierra Leonians; we had a variety of Burmese, including Karens and Chins. We were looking at how this country settles people—what is right, what is wrong, what can be improved in the contracts that we construct each year.

I have to say that the work of the department was exemplary in mobilising these people to attend. It is worth saying that every member of this parliament, Labor and Liberal, was invited to these consultations and a small minority of members did take up the offer. We gained much from this consultation. We go to a variety of cities and see the very obvious differences. Those differences can relate to the ability of the various contractual groups to work together and the knowledge they have of each other; it can relate to other capital cities where unfortunately there is not a seamless, transparent process between the IHSS contractor and the Settlement Grants Program contractor. Unfortunately in some capitals, as a result of contractual conflict, there are group of people who sometimes do not prioritise the clients.

At this stage, some very important points have come out of that process, and let us hope that they become part of the contract outcome. There is obviously a very deep problem with what we call AUSCO, our offshore orientation process. Perhaps we should look at another orientation onshore because the current process does not seem to fully get through. We have a housing crisis throughout the country which has a very big impact on people who do not have a rental history and sometimes are not attuned to the rental process in this country. We have the Focus in Youth, and 70 per cent of Australia’s refugee humanitarian intake is now under 30 years old. This is a very different pattern from the post-war nuclear family migration from eastern and southern Europe. We have a situation where Focus in Youth needs to be a very big of part of where we are going. We have to make sure that there is a good relationship between SGP and IHSS and adult migrant English contractors.