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

I move:

That items 41 and 72 of Schedule 1 and items 7 and 8 of Schedule 2 of the Migration Amendment Regulations 2007 (No. 7), as contained in Select Legislative Instrument 2007 No. 257 and made under the Migration Act 1958, be disallowed.

The motion simply seeks to disallow four separate items within what is quite a large block of regulations. I emphasise at the start that I realise this is a complex matter and it has been flagged at fairly short notice. I only submitted the disallowance motion yesterday. Once again I make the point that if we had fixed parliamentary terms in this country we would know whether or not we would be sitting in three weeks time. I would have been able to defer the motion until the next sitting period so there would have been a greater opportunity to properly examine the issue before us. That is as frustrating for me as it is for everybody else who has to deal with the issue at short notice. The reality of the situation is that if I do not move this disallowance motion today, that may be it; there will be no further opportunity to debate it—certainly not until after the election, which could mean the parliament not sitting before February next year, by which time the regulations will have been in force for four or five months and it becomes much more problematic to disallow them. So I recognise the less than desirable circumstances. If we had fixed terms we would know when the last sitting was going to be and we could plan and do our business accordingly. We do not have fixed terms so we will have to operate in that air of uncertainty and push forward with things now. I acknowledge that, for the very same reason, we have about 20 pieces of legislation to get through before the end of the week. Therefore, in the circumstances I will truncate my remarks somewhat more than I otherwise would.

The core of the intent of the disallowance—and it is my understanding that it is the effect of the disallowance—relates to changes to the general skilled migration program criteria and, in particular, the impact on family migration and the weight placed on getting sponsorship from a family already in Australia. The Democrats are on record over the years as giving strong support to the family component of migration. The balance of our migration program over the last decade, particularly in recent years, has tilted very heavily towards the skilled program and away from the family program. In very crude terms, when the Howard government came into office, two-thirds of our migration intake was family related and one-third was skilled. It has now pretty much reversed: two-thirds skilled, one-third family. The humanitarian criteria are being put to one side. I think it is out of balance and that we could rebalance it somewhat. But the key issue for me is not to further degrade the importance of the family migration component.

Having said that, it does need to be emphasised that there is quite a bit of overlap. A significant part of our skilled migration program takes into account family linkages and whether or not people are already in Australia. A significant number of people who come here are on skilled visas, both permanent skilled visas that are seen as part of the migration program and long-term temporary ones. These are sometimes seen as separate to the migration program and include spouse visas linked to the skilled visa and that immediate family component. So there is an overlap there which is often not immediately apparent, given how the statistics are put forward.

In short, the changes the government has introduced from 1 September will not provide specific points for applicants whose families are already based here or who are prepared to sponsor them coming to Australia. In the Democrats’ view, this diminishes the importance of recognition of families in the migration program and the migration process. It is quite complex, as is often the case with migration visas, and the basic effect will be to raise the base pass mark by five points because, in effect, it will remove any extra points for having family sponsorship of a visa holder. It is not the most monumental change made to our migration program in the history of Australia, or even in recent years—it is what might be seen as a small change—but it is nonetheless one that I believe is not warranted. Looking through the background to the changes to the general skilled migration stream that came into effect from 1 September, all permanent visa applicants sponsored by an Australian relative were automatically awarded 15 points. Points for sponsorship will no longer be awarded to visa applicants sponsored by an Australian relative, except for those that apply for the skilled regional sponsored visa.

There was an outline in the explanatory statement to the amending regulation that gave some indication as to why the change has been made. There was an evaluation of the general skilled migration categories done by Bob Birrell, Lesleyanne Hawthorne and Sue Richardson, which related to the subclass 138 visa. That visa was closed off by the changes that came into effect on 1 September. The evaluation raised some issues about that but, in the interests of time, I shall not go through all of those.

The report made some recommended changes to thresholds and points. It recommended that the points test and current pass mark required by each visa subclass be maintained at the current levels, which included the points for the Australian sponsored subclass visa 138. Such applicants receive a concession of 15 points for family sponsorship. In effect, by closing off subclass 138 and introducing a different subclass, the government has gone against that recommendation and has removed the concession for family sponsorship. The effect of this disallowance is not to remove the new subclass 176, but simply to restore the old subclass 138 and have it coexist alongside subclass 176, which would restore the concession for family sponsorship.

That is a somewhat messy way of doing it, but that is the nature of doing things by regulation. As senators would know but the general community may not, the Senate is not empowered to add things to regulations. All we can do is delete specific items. We cannot amend, take out bits or add any new parts to an item; all we can do is allow or disallow either the whole thing or specific parts. The intended effect of the disallowance is to restore the pre-existing subclass visa 138. That would also restore the concession for family sponsorship for people under that particular visa, which dealt with one part of the general skilled migration program.

Because of time, I will not go into the wider debate about the broader skilled migration program and all the different components of it, but I would like to take this opportunity to make two key points. I believe there needs to be much wider recognition of the massive increase in the number of long-term temporary visas coming into Australia, particularly in the skilled area but in a whole range of other areas as well. In all of the debates about improving the integration of migrants into our community, I think there has been insufficient recognition of the need to do more for people who arrive here on long-term temporary visas. Settlement assistance focuses on people who are arriving on permanent visas. That is fine. We do that moderately well. We may even do it a bit better than moderately well, but there is a much larger group of people now who first arrived here on long-term temporary visas who do not get access to settlement assistance because, in technical terms, they are not settling. They are basically having to make it on their own. Some of them get support through universities or their employers, but it is very much an ad hoc, potluck type of arrangement. I do not think that is good enough. A lot of people who get a permanent visa have already been here for a number of years on temporary visas, such as student visas or long-term temporary skilled visas. That is something that I believe needs to be focused on much more. That is not a universal view, even within my own party.

We benefit from a very strong and large migration program. I have no problem with the size of it and I would have no problem with it expanding even more. I do have a problem with an excessive focus on skills without the recognition of the importance of family. I think that this change the government is making degrades that little bit more the recognition of the importance and benefit of family sponsorship and family connections. I think that needs some recognition, particularly when we are not doing as well as we need to in regard to settlement assistance and support for people when they first arrive here. When someone is being sponsored by family, they play an absolutely pivotal role. If you have family already here, of course they are going to be, in many cases, the best settlement assistance you can get. They would be better than anything government could provide. So I am not even suggesting, in calling for better settlement assistance, that it is a matter of government doing it all and fixing everything. The longer I hang around this place, the more I feel government is not the solution to lots of things and that government tends to be the problem half the time.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’re sounding like President Reagan now.

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

It must be your influence, Senator Mason. I must be rereading your first speech or something. It is just that while you guys have been in government I have realised that you cause all the problems, so obviously government is not the answer.

Quite seriously—and all my comments have been serious—the role of government is to adopt policies that facilitate an outcome. That does not mean the government should just put more and more money into government programs and try to force them on people; it is about recognising what skills, abilities and benefits exist in the community. Family is a key one of those, particularly in this migration context. Improving settlement support and assistance could well mean just more support and facilitation for families and others within the community, such as businesses and universities, to provide that support rather than having some other separate government funded program.

That is just a very general comment but it goes to an important point. The number of people who come here on temporary long-term visas now far outstrips—I think it is at least double and possibly even triple—the numbers who come on permanent visas. They are a key part of our overall migration program, but they are the part that gets missed out in the migration debate. I have gone off on a bit of a tangent, although it is a related tangent, because I think that point needs to be made as often as possible. It is a key part of the migration debate that is not recognised.

To come back to the core point, the Democrats believe there needs to be more clear recognition of the importance of family and the component of family, both direct and indirect, in regard to points concessions for family sponsorship in our migration program. We do not believe this change is warranted and it is clearly not—at least on my understanding of the recommendations from the review done by Mr Birrell and others, the Evaluation of the General Skilled Migration Categories report—consistent with that recommendation. In the absence of sufficient justification given by the government, I do not believe that we should proceed with that change.

Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens are concerned that these regulations will make it more difficult for migrants to bring their family members here. We think that is a great shame, because we know that migrants settle best when they are around close family members. We note the comments of various different migrant groups in the community, who believe that these regulations will be an effective way of ending the family reunion program by stealth. That is something that we do not want to see occur, and we are concerned that these regulations will make it more difficult for migrants to settle in Australia and to be surrounded and supported by family members in the process of settling in Australia.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In terms of the disallowance of the Migration Amendment Regulations 2007 (No. 7), Senator Bartlett was right when he said that it is a complex issue. It was only put in yesterday and on relatively short notice. As Senator Bartlett recognised, it would have been much better to have been dealt with in the next sitting period to allow all matters to be examined in detail prior to having this debate. I do recognise that this is potentially the last week we will sit before the election unless the government chooses to rule that out and allow us some confidence that we will be able to debate it in the next sitting period. I doubt that the government is in a position to be able to do that, quite frankly. So, notwithstanding that, I understand why Senator Bartlett has brought this matter on, recognising that it is at short notice.

The opposition will not be supporting the disallowance motion. We think it is a complex matter. We think that it is a substantial regulation, and the point that Senator Bartlett was trying to make about this complex regulation is one point within a range of matters. I understand that the way disallowance motions work—and I think Senator Bartlett went to that point—is that you have a matter where you have a blunt instrument and you can only say yes or no to the regulation, even if you disagree with or wish to change only one part of it. It is not like legislation, where you can seek to amend it and change only that part which you might disagree with.

When you look at the change that has been put forward, you see in the explanatory statement to the amending regulations that the new paragraph is 1128B(3)(da). As an aside, someone should go through and try to renumber that to make it more intelligible. Notwithstanding that, it provides that an application by a person seeking to satisfy the primary criteria for the grant of a subclass 138 skilled Australian sponsored visa must be made before 1 September 2007. The effect of this amendment is to prevent further applications being made on or after 1 September 2007 for a skilled Australian sponsored migrant class BQ visa by persons seeking to satisfy the primary criteria for subclass 138. That describes the Australian sponsored matters, following the Evaluation of the General Skilled Migration Categories report.

Senator Bartlett went to that particular report, and it is interesting to note in that report that what seems to be suggested is that where you have subclass 138 sponsored migrants, successful applicants who benefit from this concession are not required to live near their sponsoring relatives. About half settle in Sydney and 15 to 20 per cent settle in Perth, according to DIMA settlement data. The other issue raised in that report was that offshore migrants who are sponsored, especially those sponsored by family or by region, do least well in obtaining employment soon after arrival. Almost 30 per cent of the latter two groups are not employed. Furthermore, at least a quarter of those who are working are only employed part time. The report stated:

While we cannot be completely certain of the reason for this lower rate of employment, it is likely that it is caused in part by the less stringent selection criteria that these two concessional categories require.

The report went on to state:

The visa categories that do worst on annual earnings are the 138, 139 and 882. These are the Australian sponsored visas, where successful applicants faced a lower pass mark, or were not points tested. The large negative effects for annual earnings reflects the fact that these groups have more difficulty in finding fulltime work, as well as face a wage penalty when they do find a job.

The report did make recommendations. When you look at the overall change, though, the government did not follow those recommendations in the strict sense of the word. They lowered the points in some respects for the skilled portion but have brought a rather complex regulation forward.

We note that the government is dealing with a significant problem in this area, where those who have been relying on sponsorship to meet the points requirement have been least likely to obtain employment soon after arrival. To that extent, Labor is not convinced that the points mechanism is the only way or indeed the best way of dealing with this problem. Nevertheless, Labor does recognise that it is an attempt by the government to increase the likelihood that those arriving under the skilled migration program do in fact enter the workforce. We will continue to monitor the success of these changes to see how they work.

The Ethnic Communities Council of New South Wales strongly urge, as Senator Bartlett has done today, that the government reconsider the proposed regulations. It is recognised that they have a strong voice in the community, representing ethnic communities right across New South Wales. To the extent that the government have the opportunity today, they should be able to provide further justification, their reasons, for the changes that are mooted and how they will ensure that the changes do not adversely impact upon programs that have been important to the ethnic communities of New South Wales. Having said all that, I also say that the position we have adopted is that we will continue to monitor these changes to ensure that they have an impact that is positive rather than negative in those communities.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government will be opposing Senator Bartlett’s disallowance motion. As Senator Bartlett indicated, items 41 and 72 of schedule 1 of the Migration Amendment Regulations 2007 (No. 7) have the effect of closing the skilled, Australian-sponsored visa, subclass 138. This visa has been replaced by the skilled, sponsored migrant visa, subclass 176, during a process of visa rationalisation. This visa has a greater emphasis on the skills in demand in Australia and on English requirements to meet Australia’s skills needs.

Schedule 2, items 7 and 8, has the effect of removing the assurance of support for the subclass 138 visa. In consultation with Centrelink, it was decided to remove the assurance of support for the subclass 138 visa. It was a mandatory requirement but, as the visa applicants need to be skilled, it was decided that an assurance of support was not necessary and indeed had the effect of limiting the number of applicants for this visa category.

Senator Bartlett and Senator Ludwig have spoken more generally about immigration policy. The government believes in strong immigration management for a prosperous and a cohesive nation. The government’s migration program is keeping our economy strong by keeping pace with the demand for skilled labour while ensuring we have a cohesive and integrated community. The government has increased the English language level required for all skilled migrants. A minimum of year 10 equivalent English, ranging up to university level English, is now required across all skilled visa categories and priority is given to those with the highest level of English.

In general, in relation to Australia’s annual migration program there is now a focus on entrants who can contribute. Australia has an ageing population and, of course, a growing economy. The Howard government believes that it is essential that new migrants bring skills to contribute to the workforce and a commitment to integrate into Australia’s community. Our migration program is focused on skilled migration to ensure that new arrivals can join the workforce and integrate quickly into our society.

The migration program for 2007-08 provides 102,500 places for skilled migration—that is, 67 per cent of the annual migration program. This compares to only 24,000 places under the Labor government, which was 30 per cent of the total. That is an enormous change. In government, Labor did not focus on skills; Labor used the migration program for political gain. Labor allocated 70 per cent of places to family reunions for people with little or no prospect of joining the workforce.

A very interesting speech by Barry Jones, the former Labor minister and of course the former federal President of the Australian Labor Party, was quoted in Paul Sheehan’s Among the barbarians: the dividing of Australia:

The handling of it [immigration] by the previous [Labor] Government was, I’d have to say, less than distinguished. Partly because, I think, it was seen as very important, a tremendously important element, in building up a long-term political constituency. ... There was that sense that you might get the Greek vote locked up, or, from other party-political points of view, you might get the Chinese vote locked up.

The Howard government has refocused its migration family scheme to provide places for all those who will contribute to the economy and our community. Many young professionals travel internationally and develop relationships with other young skilled professionals. We have increased the number of partner visas by 4,000 places to enable these young professionals to live and work here in Australia. The government will be opposing Senator Bartlett’s disallowance motion.

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

I rise just briefly to close the debate. That was a slightly political contribution from Senator Mason, so I probably need to respond to a couple of his points. Firstly, I accept points that people have made. Indeed, I have called a number of times for the streamlining and rationalisation of visa categories. As may be evidenced by people trying to interpret this debate, it is an incredibly complex area and all of the different subclasses, subparagraphs and criteria that flow around the place and are continually changing are absolutely bamboozling.

I think we have about 150 separate visa subclasses in Australia, which I think is an absurd and excessive number of different categories to have for people that are simply trying to migrate to Australia or to come here for temporary purposes. You need some different criteria, but I think having 150 is getting quite over the top. I support rationalisation; I just do not support one component of this rationalisation, because I think it downplays the family component.

Certainly, it helps people integrate if they have an increased chance of getting a job when they get here—there is no doubt about that—but that does not guarantee effective and comprehensive integration. Having recognition for the family who are here is another key avenue and, I would argue, one more likely to be a solid, long-term, more wide-ranging mechanism for integration.

So it is not a matter of skills being the way to go or of family being the way to go; I think it is a matter of getting a better balance. It may well be that the balance was out of whack under Labor; I think it is now out of whack in the other direction under Liberal. I think we need to balance them out more.

The following point has been made many times, so I shall only make it briefly now. One of the reasons we have to have such a large skilled intake is the lack of investment over more than 10 years by the coalition government in skilling the people who were already here—and that includes many migrants who, after they arrive, need continual reskilling, as do Australian-born people. It is, in part, because we have underinvested in that area that the requirement for the skilled area to be such a big component in the migration program has occurred.

Having said that, we will always need to—and we always should—look to bring skilled migrants here. Australia has been built, in large part, on the contribution of migrant labour, both skilled and unskilled. That in itself generates prosperity, and so creates more demand and more need for those further skills and that further labour. So it is a self-generating process, generating prosperity and the need for more migration. But we also need to do better at skilling the people who are here—migrants who are recent arrivals and long-term members of the Australian community—and we do not do that well enough.

But this is not just about getting people here as economic units and getting them into the workforce. We are undervaluing the family. It is particularly ironic, coming from a government that would normally be seen to be more likely to be spruiking the central role of the family, that we are undervaluing the contribution and the role of family, both in assisting migrants to be grounded in the Australian community and in that wider role of integration—that of maximising the effectiveness of multiculturalism and ensuring that all Australians benefit most effectively and completely from that. So I think we have to do a lot more to get the balance right.

That will not be helped by recycling some of what I think is basically mythology. Even if it is mythology spruiked by Barry Jones himself, it is still mostly mythology. As most people know, the idea of locking up the Greek vote, or the Arab or the Lebanese or the Chinese vote, or any other vote—the gay vote, the English migrant vote, the New Zealander vote—is grossly overstated. It just does not work that way. You might be able to do a little bit here and there, but the notion that there are these big clumps of people that you can shift around as voter blocs is, in my view, grossly overstated. I think Barry Jones, whilst he has lots of skills, is not necessarily most skilled in assessing that aspect of the political process, if I might say so.

So the core concerns of the Democrats remain with regard to this. Certainly, we will continue to push for greater recognition of a family component in the migration program. As an aside, I note that, amongst the many changes the federal government has made over the last decade and a bit, the one that remains seriously problematic is the major cutback in and continual capping of aged parent migration. There are waiting lists of over 20 years for the non-contributory aged parent visa category. Obviously, a wait of 20 years, in relation to aged parents, is less than satisfactory.

I think that is a terrible undervaluing of the role that parents and families play in integration and of their wider contribution to the Australian community. Even if they are not all going to come here and go out and get jobs and become doctors and nurses straightaway, there are other contributions that migrants make and that parents and grandparents make. I think that is an area that the government needs to reconsider and re-examine.

Clearly, on this occasion, this disallowance motion is not going to be successful. But I think it is important to continue to highlight the need to give greater weight to the role of family in the migration system and also in what is quite a complex point system that applies to various visa categories. To downgrade or remove the family linkage is, I think, a mistake.

Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the disallowance of four items of the Migration Amendment Regulations 2007 (No. 7) be agreed to.

Question negatived.