Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

A report by the Forum of Australian Services for Survivors of Torture and Trauma, Out of the Abyss, states, in relation to torture and trauma impacts:

These impacts can present profound barriers to settlement in a new community. They can make it difficult for survivors to learn a new language, seek and keep employment, and make new social connections.

The way that the Australian government and the way that the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs are dealing with torture and trauma is of very significant concern to the groups around the country that I have been visiting. That is why I asked a question in the budget estimates of this year about the uptake of counselling for these issues. On 19 July 2006 I received a reply from the department that shocked me, even though I realised that the uptake was not as good as it should be. It was that only 18 per cent of those refugees and humanitarian entrants coming in were receiving such counselling. The reason for this is that DIMA and the minister were unprepared at the time that they let out their contract in October last year. The new IHSS services were poorly put together in many cases and were not properly implemented.

It does seem that, unless there is a crisis, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and its minister do not act. I certainly hope that it does not take a crisis in this kind of area for the department to act. We are constantly getting lectures from people in the community, and particularly from members of the government, about the necessity for migrants to this country to learn English and to integrate into the community. For those survivors of torture and trauma, this kind of counselling is essential to enable them to do that.

This is a critical issue and one that the minister’s parliamentary secretary, Mr Andrew Robb, seems to understand. He understands how critical it is that people from Africa and other countries who have been the subject of torture are given special assistance. Indeed, Minister Tony Abbott provided extra assistance to services providing counselling upon the release of the report this year. But where is the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Amanda Vanstone, in this? Does she not talk to the people in her department who produced the answer to the question? Does she not talk to the people in the area of refugee and humanitarian settlement—those people who are out in the field dealing with such people every day? Does she not even spend time with them or, if not with them, with the refugees who are affected? Does she not know that many of them are not receiving the counselling they require?

It is not only the minister who is lacking in this kind of understanding. Many of her backbenchers also lack that kind of understanding. Mr Don Randall, a member in the lower house, linked the now failed Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006 to terrorism. He was saying that we have to keep out terrorists. That is an illogical statement that completely flies in the face of the facts and revives the old Tampa debate about illegal immigrants being terrorists, when there is no shred of evidence to show that that is so. All of the people who were arrested in Britain in relation to the latest aviation incidents were actually born in England. They were British residents.

It is hard to see how this minister can educate the public in Australia about why we take in refugees and have humanitarian intakes, and why we provide the services they require to properly integrate them into society to provide a contribution, when her own backbench does not understand the basics of this process and is really content to inflame hard feelings against immigrants. We get letter after letter to function after function from government members claiming that they care about migrants and support multiculturalism, yet in instances like this the facts slip through the minister’s fingers. She is not aware of the problem and she appears not to be willing to do anything about it. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.