David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Pacific engagement visa program will grow our Pacific diaspora. The pilot program will allow workers in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility program, the PALM, to bring their families to Australia with them. I welcome the expansion of the support these new arrivals will be entitled to, from education loans entitlements to family tax benefits. If we're going to talk about the Pacific family, we need to treat them like family.

I'm concerned, though, that the supports in this bill don't quite go far enough. As an Australian who comes from a family who migrated to Australia when I was a teenager, I'm keenly aware that the experience of migration can be hard. It's different for every person and family, but the process of learning about and integrating in a new culture can cause stress on individuals and the family unit. As at every high-stress time in life, things can happen: families can struggle or argue, jobs can turn out to be not what was expected and setting up for the future can be more expensive than was thought. In these situations, having a strong safety net to fall back onto is critical.

We haven't always done the right thing by our Pacific family, and we still aren't when it comes to our impact on the climate. Today we saw this place pass the sea dumping bill. People from the Pacific have lived and worked in Australia for centuries. At times the history of this relationship has been exploitative, and we are continuing to harm their homes today. Our government continues to expand the fossil fuel industry and is failing to show ambition on climate action. The reefs that the Pacific relies on are being bleached. The land they farm is being ruined by salt. Rising sea levels and extremes of weather are destroying their homes, and we are letting this happen. In fact, we are facilitating the expansion of the fossil fuel industry through the sea dumping bill. We've done so much damage to the Pacific over the years, and the very least we can do is provide every support we can to make sure that those who choose to migrate here can flourish as new Australians. We want them to become part of our communities. We want them to build their future here and support their families at home. We must give them the very best chance at their new lives.

Part of the purpose of this bill is to support people from the Pacific to set themselves up in Australia, to be economically successful and have the ability to send remittances home. There is hard evidence to show that this works. Over the last 30 years, remittances to those countries where out migration has been strong have boomed—for example, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. We know that migrants from the Pacific retain strong links with their home, and they send money home. These transfers support Pacific communities and they support the resilience of Pacific nations to withstand disasters and economic shocks. Remittances are like a form of insurance for small economies. A great example of this was seen during the coronavirus pandemic, when COVID was ripping through the Pacific and all tourism dollars dried up. We saw that remittances increased. People were worried about their families and their communities, so they sent money, and it helped their communities at home to manage.

To make this program work as best it can, new migrants need as much support to settle successfully as we can muster, and they need the support as soon as they arrive. This is especially important for women. The Pacific Engagement Visa requires that the primary visa holder has a job on arrival. This is a great head start, but we must remember that in many of these families there will be mums at home with young children. With the cost of living going crazy, trying to live on one wage is hard enough. Trying to do it knowing you've got no safety net to fall back on is something else altogether. In the early settlement period, new migrants are at a higher risk of family and domestic violence. One of the most common types of violence in this situation is coercive control, with financial control the biggest for women who are trying to gain some independence, or in some cases for women who are trying to leave. Providing assets to independent financial support for women is a huge protective factor for domestic and family violence.

For these key reasons, I've asked the government to consider expanding access to social security nets for newly arrived Pacific Engagement Visa holders. I've asked the government to do two things, and they have agreed. I'll move a second reading amendment to reflect the commitments they've given. I've asked them to put a monitoring and evaluation plan in place to evaluate the Pacific Engagement Visa program, to maximise successful settlement opportunities for newly arrived visa holders and their families, and to consider whether there is a need for further access to social services payments, including the parenting payment. I've also asked that they implement a consultation mechanism that includes DFAT, community leaders from the Pacific diaspora, settlement agencies, domestic and family violence services, and social welfare support services, and that this conversation group feeds into the overall evaluation. I have asked that this evaluation commence not more than 12 months after the arrival of the first Pacific Engagement Visa holders and for the findings to be considered in the subsequent budget process.

Migration to a new country is exciting but it is hard, and it is different for every individual and every family. People from Pacific islands will have much to contribute in this country. They will bring different perspectives, different skill sets, and I am sure will contribute in whatever community they find themselves moving to. We need to ensure that we set them up for success, that we support them and that they are able to contribute and be part of these communities while also supporting family back in their Pacific island countries.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Australia’s Engagement in the Pacific) Bill 2023 in the strongest possible terms. I want Australian farmers to know I understand the importance of Pacific island workers to their businesses. Their labour is crucial. Their labour is critical for Australian horticulture and agriculture, on the farms and in thee packing sheds, because many Australians unfortunately will not do this work. I think farmers once preferred to hire Australians but their experience these days is that Pacific islanders are more reliable and productive. I am sorry to say that is an indictment on the attitudes of many Australians living on long-term welfare. They sit on the couch at taxpayers' expense while the Australian economy screams for more workers because the government accommodates them.

The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme is a good deal for the workers too. They earn high Australian wages and, when they are finished, they take their money home to support their families and local economies. This system is working reasonably well as it is, and I see no compelling reason to change it. However, this Labor government is addicted to record immigration despite all the problems it is causing, and this bill paves the way for yet more people to flood across our shores. We may need their labour but we don't need Pacific islanders to bring their families with them for what is supposed to be a temporary stay to do seasonal work in Australia. We certainly don't need to allow these families to access a range of benefits including family tax benefits A and B, HELP, student loans, Youth Allowance, Austudy and childcare subsidies.

Minister Conroy's office has said the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Australia's Engagement in the Pacific) Bill 2023 will provide benefits to migrants under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility, PALM, scheme's family accompaniment pilot and to permanent migrants under the Pacific engagement visa. The PALM scheme allows Pacific and Timorese workers to come to Australia for up to four years in sectors facing labour shortages like agriculture. This means workers are away from their families for extended periods. To address this, the government is introducing a new PALM policy. This will allow PALM scheme workers on placements of one to four years to bring their spouse and children to Australia. It will commence with a pilot for 200 families.

The bill will amend the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 to enable eligible PALM workers taking part in the family accompaniment pilot to access family tax benefits part A and B, and the childcare subsidy. This will help these workers with the cost of raising their families and enable their spouses to participate in the workforce. The Pacific engagement visa, PEV, will allow up to 3,000 Pacific and Timorese nationals to come to Australia as permanent residents each year. Visas will be granted in a two-stage process. In the first stage, applicants register in a ballot. In the second stage, applicants selected on the ballot apply for the visa. To be granted a visa applicants will need to meet eligibility criteria, including having a formal job offer with an employer in Australia; be aged between 18 and 45; meet basic English language requirements—who knows what that will be, if they know the ABC; and meet immigration, health and character requirements. As we've seen in the past with the people that come into this country, I don't have a lot of faith in that one either.

The office goes on to say: 'The bill will support the Pacific engagement visa by amending A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 to provide an exemption to the newly arrived resident's waiting period for family tax benefit part A for PEV holders and by amending the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to extend the Higher Education Loan Program, HELP, to PEV holders—the fact is that between HELP and HECS debt, we are owed around $60 billion, but let's just increase it even more; amending the Social Security Act 1991 to provide an exemption to the newly arrived resident's waiting period for PEV holders for youth allowance, student, youth allowance apprentice and Austudy; amending the VET Student Loans Act of 2016 to extend eligibility for VET student loans to PEV holders.'

It goes on: 'These benefits are being provided because PEV holders are expected to be a lower-skilled cohort than most other permanent migrants. Providing social and education benefits will support successful settlement experiences. Supporting PEV holders to engage in education and training will build capability and increase productivity, benefiting Australian employers and the broader economy over the working life of each PEV holder. This will also deliver economic and skills dividends for the region through increased remittances, investments and education and skills exchange.' A lot of Australians out there can't get assistance for HELP, but we're going to open it up to people who have not given anything to this country and give them all these helping hands and provide for them, and these are lower-skilled people. This is insane. Benefits are being provided because these visa holders are expected to be lower skilled. Why is Labor supporting lower-skilled overseas workers that are almost certainly going to need considerable taxpayer support for themselves and their families?

Listen to this from the bill's explanatory memorandum:

A key measure of success will be growth of a flourishing Pacific diaspora in Australia …

They want a separate colony of these people, who are not to be part of the Australian community. Where is this diaspora going to live, when we don't have enough homes for the people who're already here? Labor's housing policy will not make an appreciable dent in the estimated shortfall of 650,000 homes we have in this country. Labor's housing policy is a joke, providing 30,000 homes over the next five years, especially when it is Labor's very own immigration policies that are the primary cause of the housing and rental crisis that's driving more Australian families into homelessness and mortgage stress. We have plenty of enclaves in the Australian community already, and we have seen the effects of this in demonstrations of support for Islamic terrorism atrocities in Israel. As increasing numbers of political leaders are now saying, this proves multiculturalism has been a failure. John Howard is saying it, John Anderson is saying it, the United Kingdom's Home Secretary is staying it, Angela Merkel has said it, Nicolas Sarkozy has said it. The late Bill Hayden said it to me in 1996, and I have been saying it for more than 25 years. We don't have a multicultural society; we have a multiracial society, and, as demonstrations supporting terrorism have shown, some of these people just don't belong in Australia.

What Labor is saying in the explanatory memorandum is that this bill is aimed at increasing our population through yet more immigration. They simply don't care about Australian families going through homeless, they don't care that their record immigration suppresses wage growth and drives inflation and that the Reserve Bank has just raised interest rates again, for the 13th time in 19 months. They don't care that it puts more pressure on our infrastructure and public health systems, and they don't care that the majority of Australians don't support high immigration. With this bill, which will enable thousands of foreign families to access a wide range of benefits, Labor show they don't care about increasing the social welfare cost to taxpayers, which already exceeds $250 billion per year. There are almost 900,000 Australians receiving unemployment benefits today, many of whom are perfectly capable of working while our economy screams for workers across almost every sector. Labor's priority should be getting these Australians into work, and they're not going to do that by lifting unemployment benefits. We need much stronger incentives to force the long-term unemployed capable of working into the many jobs that are waiting for them.

One Nation's policy would make it happen. We advocate making unemployment benefits available to Australians for only two years out of every five. Remember: it's meant as a helping hand, not a way of life or a vote-winner for the major parties, which keep paying the long-term unemployed able to work. Our policy would rapidly reduce the numbers of people living off the taxpayer, substantially reduce our quarter-trillion-dollar annual welfare bill and put an end to unemployment as a lifestyle choice for people capable of working.

There are other aspects of this legislation which are a problem. We will be draining our Pacific neighbours of their population and their workers. These are workers who return season after season to spend their Australian wages in the local economy and support their families. The Cook Islands have already signalled their concerns, and I expect others will follow. Labor says this legislation is part of its engagement strategy with our Pacific neighbours, supposedly in response to the growing influence of communist China in the region. The irony is that Pacific nations routinely smack Australia over its one per cent contribution to human carbon dioxide emissions but say nothing about China's 30 per cent of global emissions because they've gone to China for dodgy loans to prop up their fragile economies and built infrastructure. When this debt is called, they will no doubt come to us, screaming for help. I'll be saying: 'No, you made your bed. You lie in it.'

Yes, we are desperate for workers in Australia. Whether it's in the horticulture or farming sector, whether it's as boners in the abattoirs, I hear it through many places that I've travelled. It doesn't matter what businesses they are; they're screaming out for workers. As I said, we've got 900,000 unemployed on unemployment benefits. Some of them have been on it for 20, 30 or 40 years. You can't get the real figures for it, but there are large numbers. Neither side, whether it be the coalition or Labor governments, is prepared to do anything about it to rein that in. Our welfare bill is $250 billion a year. Six years ago, it was $180 billion; now we're up to $250 billion. But no; bring more people into the country, with high immigration of over half a million people a year. You've got over 687,000 students in the country as well. That's why there's a housing shortage. But no; let's bring in the Pacific islanders because we can't get workers. Let's open up the floodgates and give them tax benefits, child care, student loans—all these things that you're talking about are a cost to the taxpayer.

Where's the money coming from? Who's going to pay for this? It will be future generations. You want to bring people in to prop up your vote as well, I've got no doubt, and to prop up the economy. Until you realise what you are doing here—and I know there's no care from either side, because you're of the opinion that it's alright to bring more and more people into the country. Future generations will be paying for this. What is happening to our country is a real shame. I've got nothing against these people. They talk about their islands sinking and all the other rubbish and say that we're to blame for it. We're not to blame for it. There's more to this climate change than just human emissions, and to blame it on human emissions is absolutely ridiculous. Only three per cent of human emissions come from carbon dioxide, so what do you say about the other 97 per cent that's through human resources?

You put out that we need to bring these people into the country. You're going to deplete these islands of their own people: the youth, the people that they require for their own economies, for their own wellbeing. You're just going to bring them here. We have a system where these people come over here for work, they work and they keep the money. It's their families that actually say, 'I want to go back home to the Cook Islands'—or wherever they're from—'because my family is there.' But it's not only that; it's extended families as well. You're going to deny them the ability to go back to their own countries by opening up the floodgates.

And to have a ballot system—how ridiculous is that? They will go into a ballot system. What's the ballot system? What about their skills? Are you going to see if they actually have the skills before you put them into the ballot system so that they actually come here before they get the visa? What are their English skills? What are their other skills? Then you talk about all the problems, such as character, even for the whole family. Are you going to put the whole family through a character test? Are you going to put them through a health test to see if the family is able, or is it going to be a drain on the taxpayers?

You've got a lot of questions. Australians are struggling to have that care that they need in our hospital system, housing and all the rest of it, but you're going to flood it with more people of lower economic circumstances. You're going to open up more floodgates, and the Australian people will suffer in the long run.

Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Australia's Engagement in the Pacific) Bill 2023. I'll start by saying that we on the government benches are proud of our strong, diverse, multicultural society. In this country, we're proud to always stand up for our multicultural communities, we're proud that we are stepping up our relationship with the Pacific and that that was a key commitment from this government, and we're proud that we're delivering on that commitment in spades—because our Pacific neighbours are family. We share a long history. We share common values and close cultural ties. We know that there is a strong Pacific diaspora here in Australia, and Pacific workers provide vital support to regional industry and the Australian economy.

The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility, or PALM, scheme grows the relationship between Australia and Pacific nations. It allows thousands of Pacific workers to come to Australia to earn decent incomes and acquire new skills. The program is supported by unions and employers alike for having strong labour protections which significantly reduce the chances of exploitation that we know can unfortunately be so prevalent in temporary migration schemes. These workers provide vital support to our regional industries, both in farming and in our care economy, and in other settings as well. PALM allows Pacific and Timor-Leste workers to come to Australia for up to four years as temporary migrants. These workers provide crucial support to our economy, and the money that they send home supports their economies and their families.

But the nature of the program means that many workers end up separated from their families for long periods of time. That's why we're starting a new family accompaniment program that allows workers on one-to-four-year placements to bring their immediate families to Australia. It will start with a trial of 200 families, ensuring that, while workers are contributing to Australia and upskilling, they're not also feeling the strain of being apart from those they love.

Nai Misipeka's husband, John, is one of the around 40,000 Pacific nationals working in Australia under the PALM scheme. Nai lives in Fiji with their five children. John is working to send money home to the family, which mostly goes to putting food on the table. Nai says that the money is good, but the most important thing to them is their children. She wants the family to be able to go to Australia and be with John while he's working, to support him while he works for the next three years and then to return to Fiji afterwards. This pilot is about families like Nai and John's being together while participating in PALM.

Last year, I had the opportunity to travel to Fiji with a cross-party delegation with an aim to better understand our place in the Pacific family. As part of that, I met with some of the amazing Fijian women who were training to work in aged care in Australia through the PALM scheme. They were training to work in regional Queensland, supporting the community and looking after our elders. This pilot is the first step towards workers like these being able to bring their families here—a step that can mean that, while they're here, caring for our loved ones, they can be supported by their loved ones too.

We know allowing workers to bring their immediate families over means that we need to extend certain social benefits. This bill allows PALM workers in the pilot to access family tax benefits parts A and B and the childcare subsidy. This will help PALM workers with the costs of raising a family. Importantly, it will make it easier for their spouses to participate in the workforce, if they choose to, by accessing early learning. It's about ensuring that workers in this mutually beneficial scheme are supported by strong labour standards and have the opportunity to live and work here with their families by their sides. Doing this provides a reliable, skilled workforce for the agricultural and care sectors, which desperately need support. This bill also supports the government's new Pacific engagement visa, which allows up to 3,000 nationals of Pacific countries and Timor-Leste to come to Australia as permanent migrants each year. We know the success of this initiative will depend on a positive experience for these visa holders. That's why this bill will provide access to family benefits and support for education and training. These measures will provide Pacific engagement visa holders with the economic security they need to be able to thrive in Australia.

We know that Pacific and Timor-Leste workers provide an absolutely invaluable contribution to our nation. While they are earning and learning key skills to take home, they are providing much-needed labour to fill shortages in our agricultural and care economies. That's why we are ensuring that they don't have to suffer painful separation from their families and that they have the appropriate social supports needed while they're here. We will proudly continue to support these workers, we'll proudly continue to step up our relationship, and we'll proudly stand side by side with the Pacific region.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson has already outlined our party's response to this, so I won't go into that. I want to make it very clear that Pacific islanders, in my experience, are wonderful people. They're very friendly. Fiji is the friendliest country on Earth, so I'm told. We have many Pacific islanders in the south of Brisbane. I've come across them in the regions, like when I worked in Kalgoorlie. They're stars in the NRL. They're wonderful people. I've got no issue with the people of the Pacific islands.

What I have got an issue with are the people in this chamber, not just those who are here now. The people in the Senate are largely responsible for destroying this country. I'm going to talk briefly on how. For five days last week and for a half a day today, we discussed a bill about sea dumping, all based on the stuff that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull. It's complete rubbish. In COVID, tens of thousands of people died needlessly to something that was supposedly based on the science. It's now coming out that the injections were not safe and not effective. We were told the science was there. What a lie. We are spending trillions of dollars in forgone income—heaven knows how much our children and grandchildren will spend and how many opportunities they will lose—on climate. I'll come to that in a minute. There's not one shred of evidence that has ever been given in this parliament.

We talk about the environment. All kinds of things are done in the name of the environment, without any evidence: the Murray-Darling Basin, no evidence; the Coorong lakes in South Australia at the Murray mouth, no evidence. In fact, these are contradicting the evidence, and everyone here is asleep. This parliament stopped making decisions on data long ago, and now it actually contradicts the data, and no-one is awake enough to even care. Trillions of dollars being spent and contradictions of the actual real-world data characterise decisions made in this parliament, characterise policies made by the major parties in this parliament and characterise legislation. In my previous work as an engineer and as an executive, if we ignored the data, people died—they died—just like they did because of COVID injections. Science is often touted in this chamber as justification for various policies, yet it's never presented. Science is wonderful. It gave us objectivity. It gave us freedom from the days when, prior to science, the biggest muscle, the strongest financial warrior, the strongest religion prevailed. Then suddenly science emerged and gave us objectivity, and suddenly freedom emerged. Let me tell you briefly what science is. The first thing is that it relies on empirical, scientific data. It's based on objective data, objective observations. And no-one in this chamber does that on climate, COVID or the environment.

But the data is not enough. When I first came into the chamber, back in 2016, I used that term, 'empirical data' and all the journalists and some of the politicians scurried off to find out what 'empirical' means. It means objective, measured data. But that by itself is not enough. It needs to be presented with a logical scientific framework that proves cause and effect. No-one has presented the logical scientific points that show that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be changed. We now have Pacific Islanders supported to come here on that basis. Yet it's never been done. A third part of science is that it's backed up with hard references, scientific references—and not just peer reviewed, because peer reviewed can be done by anyone, but actually based upon assessing the papers objectively. They're the three criteria: empirical scientific data, logical scientific points that prove cause and effect.

With the whole climate scam, the climate fraud, no-one anywhere in the world has pointed out the specific quantified effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on any aspect of climate: not temperatures, not snowfall, not droughts, not storm frequency or severity or duration—nothing. There's not one shred of basis for policy, because that is the basis for policy. There's not one shred of evidence. I've even heard a list of scientists who are afraid of the climate—but no science. We even have a minister, who's sitting in the chair now, who I asked for evidence. She gave me 25-plus papers, and not one shred of evidence. Some of them even said there is no warming going on. It's amazing, yet she listed them as evidence.

And we hear things like 'the science says', and not one person has distinguished themselves by characterising any of that above natural variability, as Senator Hanson said earlier today. Natural variability is cyclical, inherent, natural variation. That's all we see in the climate signal. And the Greens won't debate me. I first asked Senator Larissa Waters on Thursday 7 October 2010, at a public forum at New Farm, where we both shared the dais, along with three other people. I challenged her to a debate. She jumped to her feet faster than I have ever seen her move and said, 'I will not debate you!' She came up to me after the forum and said, 'I will not debate you.' I challenged her again, along with Mark Butler, Labor's climate spokesman at the time, on Tuesday 14 June 2016 at the Solar Council Forum, where I was not a participant, and I challenged him to a debate. Both ran from the challenge. Monday 9 September 2019 was the first day I challenged the Greens officially in the Senate—Senator Di Natale and Senator Larissa Waters. Never have they debated with me. They will not present the science. They won't treat the Senate with the respect of presenting empirical scientific data and logical scientific point—never; I'm still waiting.

And why won't they debate? Because they know they haven't got the science. Yet we're now sending, thanks to the government, millions of dollars to the people of Tuvalu because their sea levels are rising, when the data shows that that is not happening anywhere near that extent, and it's all natural.

One of the two biggest problems we have in this country is shoddy governance, driven by a lack of data and a lack of objectivity, reinforced by denial. The second thing is ceding our sovereignty. That doesn't apply in this debate, but we are ceding the future of our children and the future of our country by not using objective empirical scientific data within logical scientific points.

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank senators for participating in this debate on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Australia's Engagement in the Pacific) Bill 2023 and I would like to offer some concluding remarks. This bill will establish legislative power to extend a range of government supports and benefits to Pacific engagement visa holders and eligible Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme families. The bill will provide immediate access for Pacific engagement visa holders to higher education and VET student loans, financial supports while studying and training, and family tax benefit part A. It will also extend access to family tax benefits and childcare subsidy for families participating in family accompaniment under the PALM scheme.

This bill reflects Australia's special relationship with the Pacific and Timor-Leste. The Albanese government has said before that Australia's central message to the Pacific is that we are here to listen. We are here to work together and we are here make a difference, and this bill puts those words into action. The measures contained in the bill extend support and benefits to Pacific engagement visa holders so participants will have the opportunity not just to settle in Australia but to pursue education opportunities and to thrive in their new communities. The new Pacific engagement visa is designed to grow the Pacific and Timor-Leste diaspora in Australia with ongoing connections to their home country, deepening our ties in the region.

The bill also delivers on the government's commitment to expand and improve the PALM scheme by introducing family accompaniment beginning with a pilot of 200 families. Workers under the PALM scheme provide essential support to Australia's economy and it is often in critical sectors including in aged care and agriculture. But to do so, many leave their families behind for months or for years. The PALM scheme family accompaniment will permit workers on one- to four-year placements to bring their immediate family to Australia with the support of their employer. This bill means that PALM scheme workers participating in family accompaniment will be able to access benefits to support them with the costs of raising a family. It will enable full participation of spouses in the workforce if they choose to do so. It recognises the invaluable contribution that people from the Pacific and Timor-Leste make to Australia, and it addresses the underrepresentation of some of Australia's closest neighbours and partners in our migration program. It brings to the fore the importance that Australia places on our relationships with the countries of this region and upholds our commitment to strengthening ties with the Pacific family.

I would like to address some of the contributions senators have made to the debate. The opposition's position on this bill is disappointing. It is disappointing because it shows they are not serious when they say they value Australia's relationship with the Pacific. It shows they are prepared to play politics with Australian migration policy and Australian foreign policy, and it shows that the party which so mismanaged Australia's important Pacific relationships when it was last in office has learnt nothing from those mistakes. Senator Duniam gave a short speech, most of which had nothing to do with his bill or indeed with Pacific migration or Australia's Pacific relationships.

The opposition more generally has misrepresented the Pacific engagement visa and misrepresented the role of the ballot in selecting people to apply for Pacific engagement visas. We dealt with the role of the Pacific engagement ballot in the Senate last month when we debated the Migration Amendment (Australia's Engagement in the Pacific and Other Measures) Bill 2023. Given the inaccurate portrayal presented by Senator Duniam in his remarks, let me explain again how the Pacific engagement visa will work.

Each year up to 3,000 Pacific engagement visas will be available. There will be a two-stage process in applying for the new visas. In the first stage, interested persons will register in a ballot. In the second stage applicants who were randomly selected in the ballot will be invited to apply for a Pacific engagement visa. Those invited to apply will then need to meet a range of requirements in order to be granted a visa. These requirements include having a formal job offer with an employer in Australia, being aged between 18 and 45, meeting English-language requirements, and meeting standard migration health and character requirements. So it is wrong for the opposition to claim that, under the Pacific engagement visa, Australian citizenship will be awarded by ballot. This is not true, and senators opposite know that it is not true. The ballot will not grant a visa or citizenship. Being selected by the ballot allows people to apply for the visa, and whether applicants are then awarded a visa is determined by whether they meet the eligibility criteria, not by ballot. Grants of Australian citizenship will not be determined by the Pacific engagement visa ballot but by existing citizenship processes.

Debate interrupted.

Senate adjourned at 20:00