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

I rise tonight to speak on the government’s discussion paper released today called ‘Measures to improve settlement outcomes for humanitarian entrants’. This paper is the result of an interdepartmental committee of Australian government agency heads convened to develop a whole-of-government strategy to improve settlement outcomes for humanitarian entrants. This shows that Minister Vanstone and the Howard government have raised the white flag with regard to providing quality refugee settlement services, and this is a major concern to me because good settlement results in even better integration.

The most significant area of interest in the discussion paper is the proposal of a new complex case support network. The newly proposed CCSN is described in the discussion paper as intending to provide specialised case support to humanitarian and refugee entrants over and above the assistance available through IHSS. IHSS is the existing Integrated Humanitarian Settlement Strategy, which was brought in by the current government. According to the discussion paper, the main points of the proposed program are to:

• provide specialised case management assistance
• provide support and assistance to clients in crisis situations
• provide advice and support to settlement service providers and other service delivery agencies (at every level of government) dealing with humanitarian entrants
• strengthen the integration of services provided to humanitarian entrants across agencies through effective networking and information sharing
• monitor the access and appropriateness of services provided to humanitarian entrants

This is nothing new, because these are services that were supposed to have been provided all this time through IHSS. Reform of the program is long overdue. The minister herself stated on Stateline on 12 May this year:

Well, this is a difficult case load. These are people who have come from very, very difficult circumstances; often been through tragic life situations and lived in refugee camps, for example, without running water or power, as some of the kids for most of their lives. There’s a cultural difference and there’s a big educational gap. So they’ve got their work cut out for them.

Labor and many of the service providers I have met have long been concerned about the number of shortfalls in the IHSS contract delivery. I will outline some examples of this. One is the tragic death of two-year-old Burundian child Richard Niyonsaba, who died after only just arriving in the country. It was revealed in estimates last May that the company assigned to DIMA’s IHSS program in Sydney was sent an email from DIMA about Richard’s chronic sickle-cell anaemia before he arrived, but it was never opened. The torture and trauma counselling uptake is 18 per cent for refugee arrivals since October 2005 compared with a 53.7 per cent take-up in the previous contract. There have been major shortfalls in services by IHSS providers in Newcastle which have been rigorously pursued by the local member, Ms Sharon Grierson, and by me. There have been shortfalls in the testing of client satisfaction and indeed in the testing of the performance indicators of the contract.

So what has the government proposed as a result of this seeming failure of the IHSS contract, which it devised and tended out? It has proposed another layer of support for humanitarian entrants. Rather than enforcing its contract, and rather than ensuring that the service deliverers are providing what they are supposed to provide under the IHSS requirements, the government looks as though it is now proposing to provide another layer of assistance—at what cost and in what form I do not know. I imagine we will see what happens as a result of this consultation paper.

This is a tired and out-of-touch Howard government that is barely able to address its own failures, and it appears that it is only able to do so by creating yet another layer of bureaucracy. After 10 long years it has failed to get refugee settlement right, failed to listen to its own service providers and failed to listen to its own clients. The estimates questioning last year showed that it failed to listen to its own state office when there were problems in New South Wales. As a result, it has failed to assist new arrivals with settling and integrating into the Australian way of life.

This is a short-sighted government that has fortunately allowed refugees to come to Australia. It very frequently boasts that it has allowed 13,000 refugees to come to Australia, but it has had inadequate policies to deal with that intake, particularly with some of the more complex needs of some of those refugees. Now, after years of complaint about this, it is belatedly trying to address the problems, but it is not coming up with new ideas and not addressing it in any way that is innovative or that uses the existing networks of people who are helping refugees and migrants—for example, the migrant resource centres and the extensive church volunteer networks. No, the government proposes another layer to go on top of the IHSS program, demonstrating that its own IHSS program has failed.

When I gave a speech earlier today I said that I thought the minister had lost control of her department. This is just another indication that that is in fact true. She is not able to manage the processes and policies of her own department in an effective way. This is a clear indication that the settlement services have not worked and that she does not believe that they can be made to work. That is an extraordinary admission given that the tender documents were drawn up by this government, the whole program was designed by this government and a considerable amount of money—millions and millions of dollars—goes into supporting the settlement program.

The time has come for us to get new policies in immigration and settlement and a new, more active minister in this area—a minister who will make a real difference and be of some real assistance to the refugees that we invite to our country.