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

I recently travelled to Cairns, Townsville, Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley, and I met with agencies working in settlement services. I want to pay tribute to the fantastic work that many of these agencies like Centacare and ACCESS in Queensland are doing in the regions and cities to find jobs for and settle our refugees, and run humanitarian programs. They are helping people settle into their new country, meeting them at the airport, finding accommodation, helping with English language and all of those life skills and issues that are overwhelming when someone comes to a new country.

I had the great pleasure of being in attendance at the 10-year celebration of ACCESS settlement services the other day at the Kingston Butter Factory and also at Logan and Woodridge, where their services are based. I want to commend the fantastic work that Gail Kerr and her team are doing. They have been in the settlement service area for 10 years and are providing innovative solutions for new migrants and refugees and doing it well. They are probably one of the best agencies in the country. Why they are so successful is that they do not go by the philosophy of one-size-fits-all; they look at each individual person case by case and assess their needs to deliver services, find work and help their families settle into the greater Australian community. One of the good examples that ACCESS is following is teaming up with employers like Teys Meatworks, particularly in designing training programs for refugee and humanitarian workers.

More needs to be done in this area. We need to have a much more flexible approach to the way that English language is taught. We are spending $220 million in this space every year and we are not getting the results that we should be getting, so we need to have more innovative ways of teaching English. We need to have more English classes in regional areas. We need to have more vocationally based English programs that help people in the long term get a job. The flexibility is just not there at the moment, particularly in areas like Gatton, where people have to travel an hour to the TAFE college. We need to improve these programs. (Time expired)