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

I would like to address issues of the immigration component of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and related bills and of the new Labor government’s budget and policies more broadly. As senators may know, I have been the spokesperson for the Australian Democrats in this area for over 10 years. It has been a source of some frustration to me that we have had enormous political controversy around the immigration area and that the vast amount of that has focused on asylum seekers; in fact, on a subset of asylum seekers colloquially known as ‘boat people’. At its peak, 4,000 people arrived in one year; in most cases, there were far fewer than that. Of all the people arriving in Australia on any sort of residence visa, the proportion would be lucky to be one per cent, yet we have had 99 per cent of the political debate, public focus and media attention on this tiny proportion of people who engage the Migration Act in regard to potential residence. Of course, there are very important issues that arise with regard to asylum seekers. I do not dispute that. But it does mean that the enormous, incredibly important role that migration as a whole plays in the future of Australia is almost ignored.

It is to me both a shame and a real problem, because it is an important area of policy and it is a very complex area of policy. Minister Evans, who is in the chamber at the moment, is no doubt all too aware of this these days, having taken on the portfolio in the last six or seven months since the election. But it is absolutely vital to the future of Australia and it is vital to the present moment of Australia and the functioning of our economy. It is crucial in a social way. It presents environmental challenges, but certainly not challenges that cannot be overcome with good planning, yet it gets very little substantial policy attention and public debate compared to the significance that it plays in its impact on our nation.

It has been pleasing to see some of the changes that have come into play in the refugee area since the government came into office, and I hope to see more changes of a positive nature in the coming months and years. Again, I think it is important that we focus more on the wider issue of the migration program proper, because asylum seekers and refugees in general, particularly people who arrive here seeking asylum, are not part of our migration program. And, whilst also important and fairly sizeable, the humanitarian refugee offshore program is again seen as separate and distinct from the migration program. It is still quite a small proportion—less than 10 per cent. I have been interested to see a number of statements, both by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Evans, and also, to a slightly lesser extent, by the Prime Minister, in regard to the expansion of the migration program as a whole. It is in that area that I think it is important to examine both the measures contained in the budget and also some of the broader policy issues that underpin them.

It is worth looking at just the figures very briefly. If we look at the figures from the Howard government era, from 1996-97 through to 2006-07, we had quite a substantial increase in the rate of net overseas migration—that is, the number of permanent and long-term arrivals minus the number of permanent and long-term departures. In the 2006-07 financial year, it rose to a level of almost 178,000. This was one of the rare occasions when the net migration intake contributed more than half of our population growth in that particular year, so in that year it was a significant part of the population growth of Australia—a majority part.

The other key factor in this in many ways happened without a lot of attention over the life of the Howard government. There was a dramatic increase in the number of long-term temporary migrants. There are a lot of different uses of terminology in this area and it can often cause different understandings about what is happening, but in general terms long-term arrivals are counted as migrants even though they are not necessarily automatically going to be permanent residents, although many of them end up that way. The number of people coming as long-term arrivals was as high as 373,000 in the financial year 2006-07. That is far above the number of people who arrived as permanent residents, which is what people generally think of when they think of migrants—people who come to settle as permanent arrivals.

But the number of long-term temporary arrivals was far greater. That change has happened only in the last 10 years. And the size of the difference between the long-term temporary and the permanent arrivals has increased more and more, particularly in the last few years. This is, in part, to do with the massive increase in the number of people arriving here on student visas—I think it was well over 200,000 arriving on student visas in that financial year. There were also very large numbers—increasing numbers—in what is known as the 457 visa category. Broadly speaking, this is the category of people who come here for work related purposes on skilled visas. But very large numbers also come here on working holiday type visas. Some of those are for up to two years and many others for one year.

I think it is a very positive development to have such a large migration intake, if we have adequate planning in place for the numbers of people who come and for what they do when they get here. It is understandable that there is concern about the impact of a large migration intake on things like infrastructure, housing and the environment. That presents a planning challenge, but it does not present a reason in my view to simply dramatically reduce the numbers of people who come here. There are differing views, but the evidence is very strong that there is a clear economic benefit to Australia from the significant migrant intake that we have at the moment. There is no doubt that the large numbers of overseas students, for example—200,000 plus—are a significant benefit to the Australian economy. It is an enormous export industry, in effect, for Australia, as is the working holiday visa program.

There are obvious economic benefits to Australia from the very large numbers of people—well over 100,000—who come here on both temporary long-term and permanent visas, filling the skill shortages. It would be absolute economic catastrophe for Australia if we did not have those people come here to fill those skills shortages. One of the things that is being recognised, and which I have seen signalled to some extent in recent times, is that it is not simply a matter of skill shortages in particular areas; it is actually in part—certainly in some areas of Australia—a straight out labour shortage. This is moving beyond the skills category to semi-skilled and even unskilled labour in particular parts of the country. It is really welcome to see calls for a genuine wide-ranging debate on these issues.

There were measures in the budget, to some extent, providing both funds for expansion and migration intake in some areas—a welcome but still small increase in the humanitarian intake—and also some extra resources towards settlement support and other sorts of issues like that. Just last Friday, on World Refugee Day, I heard the minister, Senator Evans, note that he had received some mild criticisms about overemphasising the economic contributions that refugees make and talking too much about migrants as though they are nothing but economic units, to paraphrase what he said at the time—as though they were just cogs in a machine. I think it is valid to make sure that we do not overplay that. It was one of the things I thought the previous government overplayed when they dramatically reduced family intake and increased the skilled and business migration intakes. One of the justifications they gave for dropping the family intake was that it cost too much money. I think that played too much into what is a misleading and an inaccurate stereotype, that migrants are a drain on the economy. Overall, migrants are a boost to the economy. That does not mean that every single one of them individually is a boost, but as a whole they are a boost to the economy.