John McVeigh (Groom, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My home town of Toowoomba is a declared refugee welcome zone. Our schools, health services, churches and various support groups have stepped up to embrace newcomers who, in their own way, bring new experiences and perspectives to our Darling Downs community. Our community has opened its heart to those in need, especially under humanitarian resettlement grounds. But I stress that this is not without its challenges. We have to make sure we have the balance right. Some want fewer; some want more. But ultimately it's up to our community, led by our council, to have oversight of new arrivals so that we do get that balance right.

I'm very pleased, therefore, that the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, the Hon. David Coleman, has responded to my request to have a high-level departmental delegation visit our city over recent weeks to meet with support agencies, council, health and education sector representatives and others to make sure that we do in fact have the balance right and that we can plan the way forward.

There have been plenty of stories and rumours of late about what is and may not be going on. So it's important to actually get the facts on the table. Late last year, we saw some of our agencies in town unsuccessful in their tenders for the new round of refugee settlement grants. We saw others at the same time increase their funds under this particular program. But the fact is that the humanitarian settlement program is the primary funding source for refugee support and it is demand driven. In other words, it adjusts automatically to the number of people arriving in our city under the refugee status.

There are settlement grants; the Adult Migrant English Program, or AMEP; and other grants such as the fostering integration funds that I have been able to secure for the PEACEful Humans group work with Yazidi women and children who have been escaping dire circumstances in their homeland, and the employment preparation efforts of Startup Toowoomba and Canvas Coworking. They are all fixed amounts.

We need the integration. We certainly need the employment outcomes and the benefits that newcomers bring to our region. I'm pleased that the minister, the department and others have responded to my call to make sure that we have the balance right. We need to fund and support integration in our community. There is no doubt about that. We need to continue to support others in need at the same time.