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

This morning I and other members of the crossbench met with an amazing group of young people who arrived in Australia more than a decade ago. They are Australian in every sense except on the piece of paper that matters. These young people are at critical times in their lives. Having gone through school here, they should be studying, building careers and pursuing their dreams. But they're not able to do that because they're living on rolling bridging visas of six-to-12 months, many without work and study rights.

When the fast-track system was introduced by the coalition government in 2014, the Labor Party voted against it because they knew it wasn't fair. Now, in government, they're abolishing it altogether. But for the 9,000 people who were processed under that system and weren't successful, Labor seem to plan just to let those decisions stand. They say this group must wait years longer, appealing those unfair decisions in the Federal Court or waiting for the minister to personally intervene one by one by one.

This is something the government should act on. We have people in our communities wanting to contribute. They love this country, they feel like it is home, they want to make a life here and they want to contribute, and yet we have a government that's giving them no pathway to do so. They said what the coalition did was bad, but they're not willing to actually make good on it. At a time where we hear so much about the need for workforce, look to the people who want to contribute who are here. I thank them for coming today and sharing their stories with us all.