Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose on behalf of the government the disallowance motion moved by Senator Fierravanti-Wells. The government moved to reform work rights arrangements for asylum seekers as a result of approaches by many community activists and community organisations that have to care for asylum seekers living in the community who do not have access to work and therefore have no income and, often, are destitute. As a result of that destitution, as I say, service organisations have to try and support them.

These are people who are lawfully in the community. In this debate again we have confusion between lawful and unlawful boat or air arrivals. These changes do not apply to unlawful boat arrivals. So all these arguments about weakening border security et cetera are a complete nonsense, a complete furphy, continuing a drum roll of disparaging refugees and creating fear in the community. These changes do not apply to unauthorised boat arrivals. Those people are mandatorily detained and they are only released into the community after they have had health, identification and security checks. The vast majority of people we are talking about here are people who are lawfully in the community, who have arrived on another visa and are living in the community while they pursue their protection claims. Most of them arrive at Sydney airport on a commercial plane with a valid visa. Senator Fierravanti-Wells rightly quoted what Minister Ruddock was talking about when the changes were introduced in 1997. But we have to be clear about this. This is not about unauthorised boat arrivals. What it is about is a group of people who arrived legally in this country, who are living in this country and who are applying, as they have the right to do under international law, to seek our protection.

While they seek our protection, the issue at question is: should they or should they not have the right to work and support themselves? Under the Howard government—and the existing conditions until 1 July this year, when the government changed these regulations—two-thirds of those people were entitled to and allowed to work but a third of them were not allowed to work. They are mainly the people who are caught by what is known as the ‘45-day rule’. So this is not a question of great principle, it is not a question of border security and it is not a question of opening the borders to unauthorised arrivals; it is about evidence based policy.

We have had since 1997 to assess the success or otherwise of the 45-day rule and we have found that circumstances have changed. We are now dealing with a different situation. The previous government introduced the 45-day rule in order to put a time limit on people seeking a protection visa. In other words, the theory was that if they had not applied for a PV within 45 days they would lose the right to work and this would provide an incentive for them to seek a PV. The logic of it was not too bad; it was worth a try. Also, quite frankly, it was driven by the real problem at the time, which Senator Fierravanti-Wells is well aware of—that there were advantages for people in delaying the whole process. They could delay applying for a PV and use a range of appeal rights to delay the processing. But what the previous government did, following that, was speed up the processing by the introduction of the 90-day processing rule and a lot of that problem went away. We have a situation now where 79 per cent of applications are finalised within three months. When this was introduced, only 25 per cent were finalised. The problem has changed. Senator Vanstone did some work on how we might improve the system and when I became the minister I inherited a report commissioned by her.

The question before us then is whether we continue to deny a group of people who are legally in the community the right to support themselves, the right to have self-respect, to work and to feed and clothe their kids—whether we say to them that they have got to be destitute and live off scraps from charities—while we allow them to exercise their legal rights. You have to ask yourself, ‘Why would we punish them and deny them the right to work and force the Hotham Mission and others to support them?’ It does not make any sense. In fact, we know that more people who have been affected by this rule are actually found to be owed protection than those who apply within the 45 days. It just does not make sense any more. If it did make sense it certainly does not now. We know that a lot of people are destitute in the community.

As a result of the changes initiated by the previous government, when they did the community care trial and the case resolution trials, we have also learnt that you have better results at resolving people’s status and better results in getting them to return home if you treat them with respect and manage them in the community. Locking them up did not work. That is why we had long-term detention. For this group of people, who are lawful, if they are treated with respect, allowed to work, allowed to save some money and allowed to treat their kids appropriately and support their families we have had much better success rates—and the previous government had much better success rates; it was a Howard government initiative that I am looking to expand—at getting people to return. They will understand where they are at and that they are not going to be allowed to stay in Australia and will return voluntarily. It is about treating people with respect and allowing them to make proper decisions, while having an understanding of all their circumstances. The Howard government are to be congratulated for those initiatives. What we have done is seek to expand them and ensure that we treat people with respect.

But I reinforce—and I will not cover some of the ground because of the shortage of time and also because Senator Hanson-Young and Senator Troeth addressed the arguments better than I could—that this is not about unauthorised boat arrivals. This is about people who are legally in the community who came in on visas and are allowed to apply for protection under our law and international law. It is a question about whether we let them work and support themselves or let them starve and rely on charities to look after them while that process occurs. I am all for strong integrity in the immigration system. I am all for saying to people that they have had their chance and, if they failed on their PV application, they have no right to stay here and they have got to go. I am working hard to make sure our compliance arrangements are improved so that people who are found not to be owed our protection are removed or encouraged to go. But the success of encouraging them to go has been much higher when they have been managed out in the community and when they have their dignity and self-respect, and that is enhanced by the capacity to work.

We are talking about perhaps 600 people in addition to those already allowed to work. Early indications are that we are seeing a slightly increased number of people seeking work rights. But what we are doing is ensuring that we do not have that arbitrary 45-day rule and that we assess people’s circumstances and say to them: ‘If you are lawful, if you are cooperating with the immigration department and if you are looking to resolve your status you will be allowed to work. If you do not play the game, if you are unlawful, if you are working without permission, if you are engaged in any activity contrary to your visa, there will be no sympathy. Play the game and you are allowed to work. Don’t play the game and you do not get the benefit of that consideration.’ That is the system we put in place.

The 45-day rule was arbitrary. If you applied after 46 days you missed out on work rights, with no discretion. It is crazy. There are all sorts of reasons why people might apply after 46 days rather than before the 45-day cut-off. For instance, for many of them the circumstances in the country they came from may have changed. If there is suddenly a civil war in a country they may apply for protection and may be successful whereas they would not have been earlier in the piece. So there are good reasons for people failing to meet the 45-day rule other than trying to delay their processing.

I will not go further because I know we are short of time and I think it would be good to get this matter resolved tonight. We think these changes are positive. We think they are working well so far. We think they are responding in an evidence based, risk management approach to the reality of PV applicants who are living in the community lawfully now. It treats them more fairly, it gets us better immigration outcomes and it removes the arbitrariness of the 45-day rule, which was introduced to solve a problem that no longer exists. We think this is good public policy. It is not about some of the emotive debates that we have again had about unauthorised arrivals, boat people, sending signals about softness and all that terrible rhetoric. Look at the case here: it is about good public policy, improving the conditions of those who are lawfully here seeking asylum, but, equally, it makes it clear to them that if they fail in their claim for protection they go home. It is a system with integrity. It treats people with respect and with dignity and does not insist on them being destitute. But, also, it is firm in the message that, if you are not found to be owed that protection once your case is resolved, you go home. The system we have introduced is better and I urge the Senate to reject Senator Fierravanti-Wells’s disallowance motion on behalf of the opposition.