Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today, I'd like to congratulate the Morrison government on practising what we preach when it comes to cutting red tape—this time in relation to the Migration Amendment (Regulation of Migration Agents) Bill 2019.

The bemusing situation of migration agents who are also lawyers having to register with their state government and the federal government is about as clear-cut as it gets when trying to address regulation in this country. The government has long supported the key measures in schedule 1 to the bill, which will see some lawyers practising in the migration field removed from unnecessary dual regulation by the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority—OMARA—and, instead, be subject to regulation by their relevant state or territory legal professional body. The amendments made by schedule 2 reflect the government's commitment to improving the entry-level standards to the migration advice profession through improving and streamlining the qualification requirements.

There are four more changes covered in this bill, and they are all designed to streamline a sector that is very important—especially to regional Australia. Without skilled migrants, businesses in my home region of North Queensland would be forced to close. From the tiny town of Coen in Cape York to the famous Nick's Restaurant in Yungaburra on the Atherton Tablelands or the Laura Johnson Home in Mount Isa, and in numerous cattle stations, cafes and pubs, international arrivals are constantly filling staffing shortages. Everywhere I travel in regional Queensland I'm told by business owners that without migrants things would be very grim indeed.

Last year, at the little town of Richmond, 400 kilometres west of Townsville, I met three young women from Estonia. One was pulling beers at a local pub and the other two were living on local cattle stations, working as general hands. It remains extraordinary to me that there are those people in this place and the other who don't understand that despite the extraordinarily high unemployment rates that we have in regional Queensland of over 20 per cent—and in Townsville, youth unemployment stands at 17 per cent, prior to COVID, I should flag—that despite these high unemployment rates, we still struggle to find employees to work in the most basic of roles. It has become a rite of passage for young people from around the world to travel to regional and outback Queensland and Australia to work in tourism and to work on cattle stations—and for what seems a large number of Irish people to work in regional pubs, where they see the summer at temperatures of between 40 and 50 degrees as something interesting and unusual to do. It is very difficult to find Australians to work in those roles.

In Mount Isa, at the Laura Johnson Home, many of the nurses hail from the Philippines and Sri Lanka, and the centre's manager regards them as virtually indispensable to care for those most vulnerable and elderly of our community. In fact, remote nursing homes at places like Doomadgee, Mornington Island and Normanton are all struggling to fill roles to care for many Indigenous and other Australians who desperately need a ratio of care to make these safe and comfortable places for them to live in. And yet each year those care facilities are forced to pay more and more for contract staff to come and spend some time in these very important communities, caring for these people.

Last year, at Coen, 428 kilometres north of Cairns, a couple from Argentina were out manning a local service station and general store. I've already mentioned Yungaburra on the Atherton Tablelands west of Cairns. Nick Crameri told me he couldn't operate without migrant workers in his kitchen and on the floor as waiting staff. It will probably surprise you, Acting Deputy President Walsh, that butcher shops and other meat-processing facilities across the country rely on skilled tradesmen coming from Africa and other parts of the world to fill these roles, because, in many cases, supermarkets, who now sell over 80 per cent of red meat in our sector, are not training. They're not putting through apprentices as butchers and slicers, so we rely on skilled migrants coming to work as smallgoods makers and in other highly skilled roles in the meat area.

It seems that we talk a lot about the jobs that Australians are looking for around the country, but regional Australia relies on those people who come out to experience the unique and interesting world that we have and to fill these roles that businesses would otherwise just not be able to manage. In Mount Isa, the cafes have a constant stream of young people coming through. They are providing the services and baking the cakes that keep Australians going in coffee shops and other service industries.

It is critical and crucial that the federal government continues to improve and streamline regulations in the migration space, but it must do so without compromising on measures to weed out some potentially rogue operators. I remember, in my time running butcher shops, some of the people who would come to me and tell me stories of migration agents who seemed to make the process particularly long and particularly expensive, which is not right, nor is it fair for those people who just seek to call Australia home. The Morrison government takes seriously its commitment to character and background checks for migrants and is now diligent in its scrutiny of these migration agents. This legislation, while still improving efficiency in this sector, compromises none of this, and that is why this is just one more piece of streamlining and red-tape removal that is so critical to our nation. We know that it is in regional Australia where we build our prosperity, and it is in regional Australia where we build industries where families grow and enjoy a lifestyle. That is why I commend these changes to the Senate.