Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to commend the previous speaker, the member for Sturt, on the wonderful piece of work he has just presented to the House. Today I want to speak about skilled migrants who have been attracted to come to Australia and ply their trade. These are professional migrants who have migrated here under skilled migration regulations. Recently, I held a forum within my electorate and met with a representative of this group of people who have come to Australia through migration on the basis of their professions. They had been told that their professions were lacking here and that they would find work easily. Sadly, this has not turned out to be the case.

What I have discovered time and time again in my electorate is that individuals have been attracted to come and live and work in Australia, giving up very good jobs, very good positions in their home countries, because they have been told of the opportunities here. Most come because they are seeking greater opportunities for their children. But these skilled migrants have sadly discovered that it is not as they have been advised.

I met George, who is originally from Zambia. He is an accountant by trade. He had previously worked with a multinational company in Zambia. He was a highly qualified and recognised accountant in his country. In Zambia the first language is English. So he is fluent in English; he works in English. George is, however, black, and he feels that this has actually stopped him from getting every job he has gone for. George has gone for over 1,000 jobs, at last count, in the accounting area. We are being told we have a lack of accountants. But here we have someone who has migrated here under skilled migration programs being recognised for his professional qualifications and who is being currently looked after by his local church because he cannot get any work. And the money they brought out to survive on has been used up on rent and food. His wife and daughter are wondering why they made the supreme sacrifice to come here, to leave behind loved ones and to find no work.

But George’s case was echoed by all these people who came to my skilled migration forum. Time and time again they were scathing about the promises made in their home countries and the stark reality when they got here. The thing that upsets them more is that there are jobs available in these fields; they are just not being given to this cohort of people. I then received an email from one of the great institutions in my electorate of Chisholm, Dixon House, which generally looks after newly arrived refugees. They say:

Today we have met two people who have recently come to Australia as skilled migrant professionals, who are now in extreme financial hardship as a result of not being successful in their employment search to date. There seems to be a trend occurring.

One is a young Iranian woman in her late 20s with a Masters in Systems Engineering, and the other is a Chinese male with a bachelor of Science degree majoring in Geology. Both have depleted their financial reserves during their time in Australia looking for work, and are now seeking emergency accommodation, which has not been successful to date. They have been declined for positions because, they are told, they lack local knowledge of the work force / work practices. As they do not have access to Centrelink for 2 years the situation for them is pretty grave.

Is there any scheme that you know of that they can tap into? These people seem to have far less settlement support than those people we meet who are on humanitarian visas.

And so it is: they are actually given no support whatsoever. What we are finding time and time again is the skilled migrants are arriving here, they are applying for jobs and they are being knocked back on the basis that they do not have local experience. As one man said to me, “If that was going to be the criteria for getting a job, perhaps they should have told me that before I quit my job in the country of my birth, sold up everything I owned and came here.’ Mind you, all of them have to bring generally in excess of $250,000 into the country as part of their visa requirements. So they come here, they spend all that money—they feel like they are being completely exploited.

We have a serious skills crisis in Australia. We have individuals that we have accepted, and we are doing nothing to get them into the jobs that they are amply qualified and, in some cases, overqualified to perform. Most of them say that when they apply, generally through job agencies, they are automatically rejected. They say that time and time again job agencies have no concept of the skills or abilities that skilled migrants are bringing to Australia, and they believe that those agencies should be given training about the value of the skilled migrants coming into this country.

Lots of these individuals find it difficult because the skills they bring are related to public sector work and they cannot apply for it, because they are not Australian citizens. They go round and round in circles. They become so desperate they take any job they can, and that then excludes them from looking for jobs in their chosen profession or career. There are loads of people out there in that situation. They are given no support with settlement. They are given no support with how to deal with the basics in this country. They feel like they have been sold a pup. There are advertisements on the tellie in their countries, in places like Zambia, placed by DIMIA. George said, ‘I saw the ad. It said my life was going to be better and it hasn’t turned out that way.’ (Time expired)