Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

I indicate that the Labor Party will oppose the government's amendments. It appears that the amendments to assign financial responsibility for health costs go far beyond the government's stated objective in applying to temporary sponsored parent visas. If we just look at the explanatory memorandum itself, it says:

These debt recovery functions are currently only intended to apply to sponsors of parent visa holders and are unlikely to be extended to sponsors of partner or child visa holders.

Given the hour, I won't go into the full detail of our objections, but the fact remains that while this was an election commitment—or the government claims it was an election commitment—it is two years since that election and, when you look at the detail of what the government is proposing, it is not consistent logically or practically in terms of how these measures will actually work. For those reasons, these measures would be unfair and unreasonable to migrant communities. Given the lack of consultation with migrant communities about these matters, the Labor Party won't be able to support them.

The CHAIR: The question is that amendments (1) and (2) on sheet MY124 be agreed to.