Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That Schedule 7 of the Migration Amendment Regulations 2005 (No. 8), as contained in Select Legislative Instrument 2005 No. 221 and made under the Migration Act 1958, be disallowed.

This motion, for which notice was first given, I think, in late November last year, seeks to address one schedule amongst a range that were put forward in the Migration Amendment Regulations 2005 (No. 8 ) from October last year. This schedule changes the criteria in regard to remaining relative visas. Currently, prior to these regulations coming through, an applicant could apply for a remaining relative visa if they, together with their spouse, did not have any overseas near relative residing in the same country as them, did not have more than three overseas near relatives and had not had contact with those relatives within a reasonable period before they applied for the visa. The effect of the schedule, which the Democrats seek to disallow, is to restrict eligibility for the remaining relative visa to people who have no other near relatives living outside Australia at all. It is said that this needs to occur to address so-called integrity issues associated with the visa category and ensure that only applicants left in genuinely isolated situations overseas will be eligible.

This is not an earth-shattering, world-changing regulation overall. It is not going to affect a massive number of people, but if we look at the total numbers of our migration intake with permanent visas—and indeed the even much larger number now coming in on temporary residents visas—we see more and more that a component of the intake is being tilted further towards business and skilled visas. The family component as a proportion of the total has certainly shrunk dramatically in recent years. As I said, this individual change in itself will not affect huge numbers of people, but it is a further tightening of family migration for people wanting to reunite with remaining relatives. I do not believe that is desirable in terms of the balance of the migration program nor from the point of view of multiculturalism.

I do not want to range too broadly in this contribution as I want to keep my contribution reasonably short, but the broader issues of multiculturalism and ensuring a harmonious, well-integrated society in Australia with migrants from a large and diverse number of backgrounds are not helped if we unnecessarily restrict family intake. Family migration, having relatives living together in Australia, is a significant glue that helps to maintain the fabric of multiculturalism and I believe that this change, while small, will be to the detriment of that. I do not wish to overstate the case and to say that it will have monumental impacts of a negative type, but I believe that we are unnecessarily restricting family intake when there are people wishing to migrate to Australia to join other near relatives—and near relatives are defined in the regulations—and that we should not be making that unnecessarily hard for people.

This restriction, which comes in through the schedule of this regulation, makes it unnecessarily hard for people to shift from having three near relatives in other countries who they have not had contact with for ages to having no other relatives overseas at all and those near relatives being normally resident in Australia. That makes it unnecessarily tight. It might address the so-called integrity issues but it does that by basically making the purpose of the visa unnecessarily restricted in the process. All of these things are a balance, and I believe we have things out of balance in regard to family intake in the migration area.

That is not to criticise skilled migration and it is certainly not to criticise migration in general. Some time many years ago, at least some in the Democrats had a very strong anti-migration viewpoint and sought to dramatically reduce the amount of people allowed into this country. That is not a view held by any Democrat senator now—indeed any Democrat senator who has been in this place for quite some time—and it is not a view reflected in our party’s policy. We need to have a migration intake that allows our population levels in Australia to be sustainable. I believe the current levels of migration combined with the current fertility rate enable us to establish a sustainable population level in Australia. But part of it is also about ensuring that the mix within that intake is a balanced one.

Whatever size you think our migration program should be, it is always going to need some limits put on it. We certainly cannot at this stage have an open-slather approach. We need to put criteria in place in regard to eligibility for migrating. But I believe it is undesirable to tilt that, as has happened, too far towards skilled and business visas. Further restricting the ability of family to reunite and for people to migrate and contribute to Australia in conjunction with relatives they already have here does not help our national self-interest. It will unnecessarily lead to more isolation with people spread out over different parts of the world when they do not want to be in that situation.

So the Democrats believe this change is not a desirable one. As I said, it is not a massive component of the entire migration program, but it reflects a wider trend that we have concerns about. We believe in this instance it is appropriate to disallow this change and allow the remaining relative visa to apply more widely than it will under the schedule contained in these regulations. I urge those senators who support the concept of a reasonably broad family intake in our migration programs to support the Democrats’ motion to disallow this unnecessarily restrictive change.