Alice Jordan-Baird (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Translating and Interpreting Services Bill 2025. This bill is about supporting our multicultural community. It's about making sure that members of our multicultural community are looked after. It's about strengthening an important and successful service, and ensuring that, when we look to the future, we see one where every single member of our multicultural community is taken care of. Australia's multicultural diversity is so important to who we are; it's so important to my community, where cultural festivals and local establishments bring people together; and it's so important to our country.

We're living in a time when social cohesion is more important than ever—social cohesion or having respect and care for each other or celebrating both the things that make us different and the things that make us the same. This bill is about continuing our care for multicultural communities. It's about meeting them where they're at, ensuring that they can always access key services and supporting them to participate fully in the economic and social life of our country.

This bill will establish a statutory framework for the translating and interpreting services provided by TIS National within the Department of Home Affairs. If enacted, the proposed legislation will ensure clear and enduring statutory support for TIS National. It won't change the way in which the services of TIS National are provided or funded. Rather, it will simply provide a clear legislative framework for the services, providing certainty and ensuring their continued availability to support our community into the future. With this bill, we're protecting the important services that TIS National provide to people with limited English language proficiency and ensuring that, no matter their level of English proficiency, every member of our community can access key services and support.

TIS National is a translation and interpreting service operated within the Department of Home Affairs for the purpose of promoting equitable access to key services for people in our community with limited or no English language proficiency. It's a key mechanism by which we ensure that these members of our community aren't left behind. Many Australians may not have heard of TIS National, but it's a service we use regularly in our electorate office and in the wider community. It dates back to the late 1940s, when we welcomed a new wave of postwar migrants to settle in Australia. For many of us in this place, as well as many of my constituents, these migrants were our parents or our grandparents. It was actually the first time the Australian government opened its doors to migrants from beyond the British Isles, who spoke a mother tongue other than English. In that way, TIS National is one of the foundational services of modern multicultural Australia. Since the forties, these services have grown and evolved to meet the needs of the Australian community. In 1973, they included the world's first telephone interpreting services—still a core component of the TIS National services today.

Today, TIS National's free interpreting services allow the government and other service providers to engage an interpreter or translator to assist in communicating with clients. Through TIS National, service providers can book a telephone, online or in-person appointment with a translator and can be connected directly to a phone interpreter within a few minutes of calling. Service providers that use TIS National include medical practitioners, allied health professionals, pharmacies, NGOs providing casework and emergency services, legal services, trade unions and real estate agencies. Indeed, TIS National performs a key function in ensuring good health outcomes for our multicultural communities. TIS National also accepts calls from people with limited proficiency themselves, giving them the option of arranging a translator themselves before engaging with the government or another service provider. It's actually the only interpretive service in Australia to offer this option.

In 2026, TIS National has access to more than 2,700 language practitioners in over 150 languages. It operates 24-hours a day, seven days a week, and provides over 1.3 million interpreting services each year. It is the strong foundation on which all of our work to ensure that members of our multicultural communities have equitable access is built.

Of course, when it comes to participating fully in Australian society, nothing can substitute for the ability to understand and speak English. TIS National is not a substitute for becoming proficient in English. Rather, it's an acknowledgement that learning a new language is no easy feat. For some people in our community, like women who are raising children and older first-generation migrants, learning English often means years of intentional effort and study, requiring them to seek out opportunities to learn and practise and find time to work on their English every single day.

To support migrants to improve their English, the Adult Migrant English Program, provided by the Department of Home Affairs, offers free English tuition provided by a volunteer tutor to all migrants and humanitarian entrants. The AMEP has been teaching migrants English for over 75 years, and it assists around 50,000 to 60,000 eligible migrants and humanitarian entrants each year. Over these 75 years, the program has supported countless members of our community to improve their English and to gain the confidence to participate more fully in Australian society. It also facilitates all important bonds between new migrants and established members of the community, providing new migrants with a point of contact—someone to ask when they have questions about how the public transport system works or what the rules of AFL are. It's a service that provides real, personal support to new migrants and makes their integration into the economic and social life of our country that little bit easier.

In recent times, the AMEP has actually been expanded so that more migrants can access free English tuition for longer until they reach a higher level of proficiency. That said, we must continue to provide a bridge—a service that supports and gives grace to new migrants new migrants while they're building their language skills and gaining confidence. Acknowledging that learning a language is a process ensures that, no matter what stage they're at with their English learning journey, they are never left behind.

My electorate of Gorton in Melbourne's western suburbs is incredibly diverse. There are tens of thousands of families across the electorate, and amongst those families we have one of the highest proportions of first- and second-generation migrants in Australia. More than 33 per cent of my electorate was born overseas, and more than 30,000 of my constituents speak a language other than English at home. In my electorate office, we're regularly visited by constituents who speak English as a second language or, for many of my constituents, even a third or a fourth language. We have the number for TIS National blu-tacked next to the reception in our electorate office so we can make a quick call for an interpreter whenever we need.

The importance of protecting and strengthening a service like this in a multicultural country really can't be understated. Most of my constituents with migrant backgrounds are proficient in English or speak enough to get around day to day without too much trouble. But anyone who has lived or travelled in a country that speaks a different language knows that, when it comes to administration, complex issues and situations of high stress or emotion, the holes in your language skills become apparent very quickly. At that point, having the option to speak a language you're comfortable in is so important. If the person supporting you isn't proficient in your language, you need help from someone else.

Recently, my electorate office was visited by two constituents, a young girl and her mother, seeking an update on a humanitarian visa application for a close relative. This young girl and her mother were both refugees from Afghanistan themselves. When they visited my office, our young constituent spoke on behalf of her mother. Her mother was distressed, and this young girl was caught in the middle, translating back and forth as we tried to ensure both sides were on the same page.

The children of migrant families are loved and cherished, and their parents have often been through incredible hardship to give them the opportunities for a better life. However, we know they often face a heavy burden. They're usually more proficient in the language of their new home than their parents, so they have to step up and help out. They become the translator—the one that helps with the paperwork, reads the bills, makes the phone calls and goes to every appointment. They're adultified long before they become actual adults. For their parents, who are faced with adapting to a new country, a new language and a new life, these experiences can be incredibly disempowering. They find themselves unable to advocate for themselves or for their families in the same way they have their entire lives—often the same way that got them and their families to Australia in the first place.

When we received the update on the visa application, we provided it to our young constituent. But we made it clear that, if her mother needed an opportunity to hear this information directly, we'd be happy to see her back in the office for an in-person meeting with a translator. Two months later, there was a message in the inbox asking to set up a meeting. The opportunity to have this meeting with a translator from TIS National on the phone took the pressure off our young constituent to speak on behalf of her mother. It gave her mother an opportunity to be heard, to hear the information she needed from the source and to ask questions she still had directly and hear the answers herself. That's the power of free translation services in our electorate offices.

But it's not just about complex visa matters or issues that might bring you to an electorate office. It's much more basic than that. Language barriers prevent migrants from accessing and receiving a whole lot of important information and services. They can prevent migrants from calling triple zero; understanding information from emergency services, like the SES, when natural disasters occur; reporting crimes; or going to the doctor.

Many studies have highlighted the negative impact of language barriers on migrants' access to health care, and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare even reported that low English proficiency, and more than 10 years in Australia, is actually linked to a higher prevalence of chronic conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, stroke and lung conditions, even though people born overseas generally have fewer long-term health conditions than those born in Australia. That's a finding which speaks to the seriousness of this issue and the crucially important part of making sure that a language barrier does not prevent migrants from looking after their own health. It's so important that we produce materials in language and proactively reach out to migrants, to provide in-language and culturally-appropriate education and support. A service like TIS National is the foundation of all of this because, for migrants and service providers alike, when communicating directly is not possible, it's so important that the option to call an interpreter is there to fall back on.

The Albanese Labor government is bringing in this bill because we know the importance of multicultural and social cohesion in our country. We're one of the most successful multicultural nations in the world. We've been an example for other countries. But we're living in a moment when our social cohesion, the thread that joins us all together, is under threat. And make no mistake: it's under threat from hate and extremism that seek to divide and want to make us believe that we cannot live harmoniously alongside one another. Our government doesn't buy this story, and we will not let it divide us. That's why the government established an office for multicultural affairs and elevated to cabinet, for the very first time, the standalone position of Minister for Multicultural Affairs. That's why we brought in the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Act 2026 and it's why we're strengthening our existing legislation to ensure that every member of our multicultural community has equitable access to services.

The decision to pack up your life and move to a different country is one of the biggest you can make. Our government recognises that and is committed to supporting migrants every step of the way. I commend this bill to the House.

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