Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight's adjournment debate provides me with an opportunity to highlight some of the Gillard Labor government's failures in the areas of immigration and settlement services for migrants and refugees. I will cover some of the more glaring shortcomings of the following areas: the Adult Migrant Education Program, AMEP, the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters, NAATI, and the $12 million in funding for unaccompanied humanitarian minors.

One of the most important settlement services the Australian government can provide to new migrants is language services, skills that are vital for them in playing a meaningful role in Australian society. During estimates in February we discovered that, of the 5,500 clients who had been accessing AMEP, only 2,482 had achieved a certificate in spoken English. When asked during estimates whether this was deemed a satisfactory success rate, the government had to acknowledge that more than 50 per cent of people exiting AMEP leave without speaking a functional level of English. This is not a satisfactory result.

The total funding for AMEP in this budget increased from $204 million to $212.5 million—that is not small change in anybody's language. So we now have a program to teach new migrants English that costs more than $212 million a year and delivers a result where more than 50 per cent of the graduates finish the course without being able to speak functional English. If that were not bad enough, 14 per cent of participants were given a statement of attainment just for turning up.

This is a tragic outcome. One of the best things the Australian government can do for new migrants is to provide them with real English language skills. But, after spending more than $204 million in 2010-11, all the Gillard government has been able to deliver is a failure rate of more than 50 per cent—the English language course you have when you do not want to achieve functional English.

The Gillard government has failed new migrants coming to this country and has failed, most importantly, Australian taxpayers. NAATI was also questioned and the government was not able to give a satisfactory explanation as to the certainty of NAATI's ongoing financial viability. What is more, the government agreed—with the assertion of my parliamentary colleague Senator Cash—that essentially it was bad financial management that required a cash injection last year to stop it from going broke. That is a more than $600,000 cash injection.

I was somewhat surprised when the government had to take on notice a question as to who was accountable for the previous mismanagement of the agency and what measures had been taken to make sure it does not happen again. Then again, we should not really be surprised about this government's total mismanagement. After all, it is a Labor government. Fiscal restraint and responsibility are not in its DNA. Labor has never had a problem in spending other people's money. It is just paying back the debt that it has a real problem with.

What I find even more staggering is the cavalier attitude the government has in turning up to estimates not able to state either who was responsible for sending NAATI broke or what new accountability measures have been put in place to ensure that it does not happen again. Estimates have a habit of creeping up on us in the dark. We all know the parliamentary calendar is set and we know that those dates are communicated quite clearly to us all. There should be no issue of not having sufficient notice to enable the government to gather information and prepare responses.

Keeping this in mind, the government's inability to say either who was responsible for sending NAATI broke or what new accountability measures have been put in place to ensure it does not happen again is really without acceptable excuse. The only conclusion that be drawn from such a response is that the Gillard government is not serious about providing settlement services to new migrants or value for money to Australian taxpayers.

The settlement issues are about people's lives. It is time the Gillard government got serious about getting this problem right, rather than leaving an ever-worsening trail of human wreckage in the wake of its own incompetence.