Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to move the Australian Greens amendment on sheet 4911:

(1)    Schedule 2, page 9 (after line 9), before item 2, insert:

1A At the end of section 73

Add:

        (2)    If:

             (a)    the Minister has granted a bridging visa E or equivalent in accordance with subsection (1); and

             (b)    the applicant for the bridging visa E or equivalent has been in possession of the visa for more than 28 days;

                 the regulations must provide that the applicant be permitted to work in Australia for the period of the visa.

This amendment deals with the issue of people who are in the community on what is called bridging visa E. These people are asylum seekers and going through the process of having their protection visa assessed by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. The decision is granted that they will be able to live in the community whilst that process occurs and they are given a bridging visa E.

As I outlined in my speech in the second reading debate yesterday, people who are on bridging visa E do not have work rights. They can apply to the department of immigration in order to get work rights but there is no automatic access to work rights for people on bridging visa E. In the Senate inquiry that looked into the Migration Act earlier this year, this was a significant issue for us. At that time, the department of immigration provided figures to that Senate inquiry to indicate that last year there were nearly 8,000 people who were living in the community on bridging visa E—that is, without having any automatic access to work rights—and trying to survive.

Yesterday I spoke a little bit about the impact of this for those charity and community groups that seek to support these people, who are given no opportunity to get support by being able to work and provide for their families and who are utterly reliant on charity from a number of these church organisations. When the Senate inquiry looked into this issue at the beginning of this year, we heard from a number of these organisations that provide care for people in our community who are living in these circumstances. One example that I spoke about yesterday was the Melbourne Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office. They told the Senate committee that research has found that ineligible asylum seekers live in abject poverty with virtually no mainstream supports available to them. The impact of this, coupled with prolonged passivity, has caused high levels of anxiety, depression, mental health issues and a general reduction in overall health and nutrition.

Though the bridging visa category E was originally intended to be only three months in duration, there are some asylum seekers who have been on a bridging visa E for over eight years. The burden to support these people has been left to underresourced community and church groups and is unsustainable, particularly for the needs of growing children. Most people seeking Australia’s protection in this situation are completely reliant on charity. This is an issue that a number of these groups have looked into to see what benefit would be provided for the whole of the Australian community if these asylum seekers were able to work whilst living in the community and having their asylum claims assessed. Clearly, there are enormous benefits that would come to asylum seekers and their families in being able to work, be independent and have some dignity and respect rather than continually relying on organisations, which many of these proud individuals do not want to have to do.

There are also benefits to the whole of the community. As I indicated yesterday, the Uniting Church commissioned some independent research into people who were living on bridging visa E within the community. In their research, which was released earlier this year, they indicated that the denial of work rights to asylum seekers in Australia equates to a potential loss of $188 million to Australia’s GDP over a three-year period. They went through a particular cohort of asylum seekers living legally in Australia in Victoria and New South Wales and found that 71 per cent of them have skills that Australia needs. Almost half of them have skills that are in high demand according to the federal government’s own migration occupations in demand list. The leader of the Uniting Church in Victoria and Tasmania at the time said:

Australia is placing most asylum seekers and their families in a position of devastating poverty. Although lawfully in the refugee determination process, they are given no means to survive. They have been given a Bridging Visa E (BVE), but this allows them no access to work rights, healthcare or any form of income support, and the church and the community are picking up the bill.

The Uniting Church indicated that its members are donating thousands of dollars to support asylum seekers living in the community who have been denied the right to work to support their families. The Uniting Church’s Justice and International Mission Unit estimates that, through its members—and this is just in the synods of Victoria and Tasmania—it spends over $1 million dollars of financial and in-kind support on this group of people. The leader of the Uniting Church in Victoria and Tasmania goes on to say:

The solution is simple ... providing work rights to asylum seekers whilst they await a decision on their protection or humanitarian visa, would enable individuals and families to live independently, save the community millions of dollars, and would contribute to the Australian economy.

The Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee inquiry that looked into this issue earlier this year heard from a number of other organisations, such as the St Vincent de Paul Society. They highlighted the plight of children and the sick who are living in these situations when they said:

The plight of people within the community on Bridging Visa E with no work rights, medical care and welfare support is quite desperate and of grave concern to the Society, especially given that in many cases children are also affected ... It is a particular concern when individuals are released for health reasons without a health management plan, or the resources to provide health care, being put in place prior to their release.

We heard from a number of organisations about the way in which they scrabble to find a general practitioners, dentists or other health professionals who are willing to see patients for free or for a nominal cost because they are not given this access to health care. They are not given access to health care, to Medicare or to work rights so that they can earn the income to allow them to provide for their families whilst living in Australia.

This Australian Greens amendment enables those people to have access to work rights. We have designed an amendment which says that people get that access after 28 days. We did that because we wanted the point of the amendment to be for those people who have been on bridging visas for years. For example, we heard from the Catholic Church about one individual asylum seeker who has been living in the community for eight years with no right to work, no right to earn income and therefore no capacity to provide for himself and his family. These are the people that we want to ensure have access to work rights, which is why the amendment has been designed this way.

I want to go to some of the details of the Uniting Church survey in Victoria that looked at the skills that people in these areas had. They found that 71 per cent of them had skills in the skilled occupation list for the general skilled migration program. And, as I said earlier, 45 per cent of them had skills that were considered in high demand according to the government’s own migration occupations in demand list. Forty-three per cent of the people they surveyed—asylum seekers living in the community with no work rights—held professional qualifications, 33 per cent of them held trade qualifications and, of all those surveyed, only one stated that they were unwilling to update their skills. That one was an award-winning chef with 25 years experience who had been working for an international hotel chain and felt there was no need for an update in skills. These are the individuals we are talking about.

I will give some examples of the people that they surveyed—and remember, this is just a small group of asylum seekers, whom they accessed for this survey, living in Victoria. The situation is likely replicated around the country. They surveyed a welder, someone with a bachelor of economics and a technical diploma in machine and shopwelding. He had eight years experience in high-technology Japanese companies, supervising Japanese workers. He was able to perform five different types of welding, with arc, oxy and mig welding skills, and he was also able to program robot welders. Just one of these skills would be enough for him to qualify as a first-class welder for the skilled migration program—and he had five areas of welding expertise. He was fluent in five languages, including English. He had run his own export and import business. Yet he is living in the community on a bridging visa E with no access to work rights. So he is not able to contribute to fixing the skills shortages that exist across this country. He is not able to contribute to earning income so that he can provide for his family. In fact, people like this gentleman are left in the community for years—some of them for many years, some for eight years, as we heard from the Catholic Church—and are not able to contribute their skills to the Australian community. This is the reason why the Uniting Church did this survey: to indicate the loss to the whole community from these people not being able to contribute to the Australian economy and to the Australian community. Of course there are substantial difficulties for them in their individual circumstances but, as the Uniting Church found, there is a potential loss of $188 million to Australia’s GDP over three years by not allowing these people to have work rights.

Right now the department of immigration is carrying out a review of this issue, as I mentioned yesterday. I notice we had the minister in here earlier during this debate. I would really appreciate it if we could hear any update from the department about what is going on in relation to that review. When the Senate inquiry looked at this issue earlier this year we also heard from one of these individuals, a stateless Palestinian asylum seeker who is living in the community on a bridging visa E. He had this to say to the Senate inquiry:

Although I am no longer in an immigration detention centre, having been released from the Baxter facility in April of 2003, I simply moved from a small detention to a big detention. My life is hopeless. I was psychologically damaged by my two year’s experience in detention and my condition gets worse, not better, because there is no solution in sight for my problem. The Department of Immigration has washed its hands of me and is not taking any action to help me find a solution. I am not allowed to work and I am not entitled to welfare benefits. I am full of despair and often consider committing suicide.

This is just one of the many thousands who are living in the Australian community on bridging visa E and do not have access to work rights.

We have heard many speeches in here today about the need to ensure that we address the skills shortage that exists in this country. As people have acknowledged, there are many ways in which we can do this—and investing in skills and training opportunities for individuals is at the forefront of those. But one of those other options for us—indeed, it is an option that the government have considered, as they indicated, in relation to this particular bill—is allowing those people who are on visas, living in the community, who do not have access to the right to work, to be able to have that access.

The Senate inquiry at the beginning of this year looked at this issue. We heard from a vast number of people about the importance of this issue. As a result of that long inquiry that we were involved in, the Senate inquiry made a recommendation: to ensure that people who were on a bridging visa E and living on the community were able to have access to work rights. It is a request that we have heard throughout the community, whether it be from refugee advocates, from churches—as I have indicated—or from employers who want to be able to employ those asylum seekers who have the skills and training that we so desperately need in our community. It is a cry that has been heard by this government loud and clear for a long time. I will be interested to hear from the minister about the work that is being done by the government in ensuring that these people do have access to work rights, because right now they are reliant on the goodwill and the charity of people in the community—organisations like the Bridge for Asylum Seekers Foundation, which is based in Sydney. They described the situation this way:

These asylum seekers live in absolute poverty. At times there is no food in the house, children may need urgent medical attention and clothing. There is nothing to do and nowhere to go. They live close to despair, relying entirely on the goodwill of friends in the community. Those families, friends and community networks who provide board and offer accommodation, are often themselves struggling to survive financially. But asylum seekers dare not work, because they will be returned to detention. Those who are stateless and cannot return to their country face indefinite detention or freedom without the means of survival.

This amendment is crucial to allowing these people to live, for them to have the dignity to access work, for them to have the opportunity to provide for their families and for them to be able to contribute to the Australian economy. (Time expired)