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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

The annual report of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs is particularly of interest to me in my shadow portfolio area. This area has been of particular importance in the last year because we have seen a number of changes in citizenship rules, in the setting up of bodies to deal with harmony and now a government discussion paper that is entitled ‘Measures to improve settlement outcomes for humanitarian entrants’.

This annual report talks about settlement—though there is not a great deal about settlement, I have to admit, on which the government spends nearly $50 million a year—but there is no indication in this publication that there are any problems with the settlement services. The report merely states how many people have been assisted and that surveys of the outcomes of the contract have shown people are happy with the outcomes. Yet, in the discussion paper put out by the government, there is a proposal to have another complex case support network imposed over the top of the settlement support service that already exists—the Integrated Humanitarian Settlement Strategy.

This is a scheme that the government only introduced in October last year. It resulted in a lot of criticism because some of the successful tenderers had had no experience whatsoever in refugee and humanitarian entry assistance. The member for Newcastle, Ms Sharon Grierson, voiced a lot of concerns of refugees in Newcastle that were largely ignored by the department. In fact, it was later revealed that the New South Wales office of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs was taking those complaints and not passing them on to central administration. Subsequently, I raised a number of issues about the failures of care of the IHSS and the government denied that there was any such problem. It would not institute an inquiry despite several calls and a motion in this place for that inquiry. Indeed, the private contractor for IHSS in New South Wales, ACL, instituted its own private inquiry, the result of which—surprise, surprise!—was that it was completely exonerated of any wrongdoing. Yet now we have the government producing this document which proposes that there be another network imposed on top of IHSS to deal with complex cases. It proposes that key functions would include specialised case management assistance, support and assistance to clients in crisis situations and better integration of services for refugees and other humanitarian entrants.

Also, recently the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Mr Andrew Robb, suggested another proposal—that there be a Job Network service for refugees. Again, the tenderers for IHSS were supposed to provide those links to the Job Network. So, rather than admitting that it has made a failure of the tender process and perhaps chosen the wrong tender specifications or the wrong tenderers for the job—rather than fixing up its $50 million program—the government has proposed that it create another service to rescue the settlement support services.

This admission of failure, but with a plan to, presumably, spend another bucket of money on setting up another service in this area, just indicates that the minister has not been on top of this issue. The parliamentary secretary coming in to aid her in this area has not been of much greater assistance. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine what will happen. Will refugees go to one network and, if that fails, go to the IHSS? It just creates further layers of services, all with promises to integrate well with each other.