Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

This afternoon's debate, where Senator Keneally has moved a motion to take note of the non-answers to questions on notice and the failure to answer questions in this place, is important. It is our job as senators to do our best to insist on those answers according to the rules of this place, but those answers are not being given in good spirit or in accordance with the expected conduct and responsibilities of this place. Why might this be so? We know that the government has a lot they don't want to reveal in this space.

Minister Dutton and Minister Coleman have absconded their portfolio responsibilities. All you find in the answers to questions on notice that you do receive is a revelation of the mismanagement of Australia's citizenship and visa systems, so it's little wonder they don't want to answer questions in this place. It is bad enough that the waiting time for the majority of visa applications has blown out. I wonder what the government might be holding onto in refusing to answer these questions in a timely way. I hope they come prepared to estimates, as I know that Senator Keneally will be expecting them to be. It is the right of this place to ask questions outside of estimates and for those questions to be answered within the expected time frames.

We have a government that has allowed the number of asylum claims to blow out. As Senator Keneally said: yes, people have an absolute right to claim asylum, but they need to be legitimate. The people smugglers have changed their business model. The government has not put the people smugglers out of business. There are more people coming in by air and claiming asylum than ever before but who are ultimately not found to be asylum seekers or to have a well-founded fear of persecution. The Assistant Minister for Customs, Community Safety and Multicultural Affairs, Jason Wood, has been forced to admit, through the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Migration in the last parliament:

Organised crime and illegitimate labour hire companies are using this loophole to bring out illegal workers who are often vulnerable and open to exploitation. This represents an orchestrated scam that enables these criminal elements to exploit foreign workers in Australia until their claims are finalised.

This is an appalling state of affairs that we have been fighting to shine the light on for many years. It has been the case in my time in estimates committees and on the Senate Standing Committees on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which looks at migration issues, that you have to fight tooth and nail for information on what's really going on for these vulnerable people. This particular report was tabled in the last parliament. There have been months and years of dog whistling by Minister Dutton and those opposite. The statistics are actually revealed in this report—but also over many, many years of work done by the Labor opposition, asking for the very data and statistics that Senator Keneally has rightfully asked for.

We know that in 2014-15, 8,652 people lodged applications for protection visas. In 2015-16, there were about 12½ thousand. In 2016-17, there were more than 18,000. In 2017-18, there were 27,000. In 2018-19, there were 24,000. So far this financial year there have been some 4,000 applications. We wouldn't know the answer to how many people are actually making applications for protection, be they valid or invalid, or the means by which they arrive, if it weren't for the power of this parliament to ask questions to find out what the government is doing. It is our responsibility to ask those questions, but you refuse to answer them. Why? Why do you refuse to answer them? Because the answers reveal your absolute mismanagement of these issues. There were nearly 96,000 protection visa applications under this term of government—under the tenure of Mr Morrison, when he was immigration minister, then under Mr Dutton and then under Mr Coleman. You don't want this kind of data revealed. Why? Because you prefer your small vox pop grabs where you can dog whistle and point the finger in an entirely different direction. But the data and the facts speak for themselves. All of these people arrived lawfully by air, but with an average of some 51 per day since 2014. All of this is evidenced in previous questions Labor has asked in this parliament.

It is little wonder that you are dragging your feet in being transparent and open with this place. Most of these applications are not made by people with genuine refugee claims. Eighty-four per cent, or 62 per cent of those applications, were refused by the department over the same period. What we've now found is evidence that, while their claims are being processed, they're here illegally accessing Australia's labour market. It's not like the government has done any work to piece these pictures together or to proactively ask, 'What's wrong with our immigration system and how are we going to reform it?' They have to be dragged kicking and screaming, day after day, through accountability in this place.

It's little wonder we have a department that has suffered through cuts and privatisation. They are about to continue to get busier as they deal with this increased case load. Some 4,000 people made a claim for protection between 1 July 2019 and 31 August—that is, 4,000 people in just 62 days. There's something very, very wrong going on here. Very few of these people are statistically shown to have valid asylum claims. We therefore have a system where our visa system is letting in people; it's not preventing them from buying a ticket and getting on an airplane to start with, which is how the visa system is supposed to work. They are arriving in Australia and making that claim when they get here, because that gives them a valid reason to stay. In the meantime, we know that many of these people are being exploited in Australia's labour market. They're essentially, in many cases, trafficked persons who are being trafficked because they are wanting to access Australia's labour market. They want to access Australia's labour market, so they consent to being trafficked in this way, but do they want to be exploited in the way they are being? No. There's no tourism pamphlet handed out that says, 'Come strawberry picking in Australia for $4 an hour.'

The government is on track to see more than 23,000 claims for asylum in the 2019-20 financial year, with time being taken to process these claims. In the meantime, people have access to Australia's labour market or do not have access but are working illegally. We are failing Australians by allowing huge blowouts in our migration system in this way.

We have many people who are awaiting their legitimate claims for asylum in our country to be processed. There are many legitimate claims for people who have fled dire circumstances and are trapped in Australia in uncertain conditions because this department is swamped by the mismanagement of this government in letting in by plane these many thousands of people who are essentially being trafficked here to access our labour market.

We have more than 200,000 people on bridging visas, and we reached a record-high level of 230,000 in March this year. That's a pretty epic number of people, given that we're a nation of some 25 million people. But these statistics have blown out, quarter on quarter, year on year, ever since Peter Dutton became the responsible minister back in 2014. From June 2018 to the next year, the number of people on bridging visas increased by 29,000. Since the coalition formed government in September 2013, that's increased by 93,000 people. That's why we now have this record-high figure of 230,000 people. I've sat in estimates looking at these statistics. The government pretends they are trying to clear this case load, but the way they're going about it is statistically and mathematically impossible. We've had a bit of talk about stats and maths today. There is simply nothing you are doing that is seriously addressing this problem. I've seen some of the arguments about what you're doing to accelerate processing, but actually it is doing nothing to drill down into this bridging visa issue specifically.

The government has attempted to falsely claim that a majority of people on bridging visas are part of the legacy case load—that is, the legacy case load of boat arrivals under Labor. As you like to say, you've stopped the boats. But in a report of July this year into that legacy case load it is very clear. It says that there are only 8,000 people with applications on hand or at review—8,000 out of 230,000. I'm sorry, it's all very well for you to keep pointing out, 'We've stopped the boats!' while thinking, 'But, for goodness sake, don't look over here at these 230,000 people on bridging visas,' or at the 50 people a day who are arriving in Australia to seek asylum, supposedly, many of whom are actually being trafficked in to access our labour market.

We have continued to have a government that is completely missing in action on these issues. As at July 2019, in the appeals process in the migration and refugee division, there were some 63,000 cases on hand; 40,000 of those were in migration and 23,000 in the 'other refugee' division. Malaysian-Chinese nationals made up a majority of these lodgements. Some of these people may not be genuine refugees and will have their claims rejected, as we've discussed. But when you look at the true purpose, at why they've sought to come here and claim that asylum, they are coming here to access our labour market, to work, and they are absolutely susceptible to exploitation as workers.

This exploitation is happening right around the nation. At the moment in Western Australia it is, quite happily, peak strawberry season. And as Senator Keneally said, when you pack fruit into your children's lunchboxes you like to take pride in ethical agricultural production in Australia. I know that our strawberries in Western Australia are grown locally, and I love them. However, it is very clear that the exploitation of workers is taking place in the metropolitan area, in the strawberry-growing areas of Western Australia, using exploited labour. Wanneroo is one of those locations. It's not an eligible regional postcode for the purposes of the working holiday-maker visa extension. This region is suffering because they're not an eligible area. They have this constantly rotating backpacker workforce. Just as you've trained someone up to pick strawberries, they have to leave and go and get another job somewhere else, because as a holiday-maker they're not entitled to stay longer than three months. It's clear that's what is going on in Wanneroo is that firms have been supplied undocumented workers or labour hire firms were not legally compliant in how they were paying workers. If you had a more sustainable workforce you would be able to do something about that.

I am very proud of my Labor colleagues in taking up the fight on this issue. It is not just these exploited workers that are suffering; it's everyone that is stuck in our overblown, overburdened immigration system who cannot get their paperwork done. Whether it's someone waiting for a parental visa, whether it's someone trying to have family reunion, there are so many people that we deal with in our offices every day whose lives are intimately affected by the decisions of the department of immigration. That burden would be a lot lighter if decisions could be made in a fair but, very importantly, timely manner. There is little prospect of things being timely with the kind of flooding of the immigration system that is taking place at the moment and the absolute mismanagement of it under this government.

So, as we head towards estimates next week, you can be sure that we will be very fired up about these issues. You can be sure that we will be seeking accountability from the government. These issues not only affect people inside immigration but also affect all of us in the sense that we have very real labour and working conditions that are undermined by this loophole in our immigration system that is allowing essentially what looks to be perhaps hundreds of thousands of workers potentially working without a valid asylum claim but who are essentially here accessing the labour market.

People 100 per cent have a right to seek asylum in our nation and for it to be properly assessed. But we have procedures in our nation to make sure that people get a visa before they arrive here if they need one. Where are those procedures? What on earth is happening? No wonder Senator Keneally is seeking your accountability on these questions. So have no doubt there will be a lot more work to do in this place, and within the parliamentary committee system as a whole, on these questions. Australians deserve answers and this Senate deserves them too.