Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to record a few words to explain to the House how truly life changing it is for thousands of people living in my electorate the government's announcement yesterday implementing our election commitment to grant a pathway to permanent protection in this country for people who have been living here for over 10 years on TPV and SHEV visas. This only applies to people who arrived before Operation Sovereign Borders. They are already here. They have been here for a decade, overwhelmingly working, paying taxes and being a part of the community. It's not—as the opposition has been mischievously trying to say, spreading fear and rumours—starting the boats. These people are genuine refugees. They have been living here as part of our community. They have spent a decade with their lives in limbo.

I know a lot of words. I use a lot of words but I couldn't find the words to convey to this House the hopelessness and the fear that these people have had for a decade, the anxiety. For anyone born in this country, I don't think any of us could truly understand the abject terror that is caused from a temporary visa status—the threat of deportation hanging over your head, never being able to put roots down, never being able to build a life. It does our society no good and no credit. It's been to our shame as a country and society for 10 years under the former government to have this permanently temporary underclass of people. It's not the Australian way. Our country has been built for 70 years on permanent migration. People come, they pass the thresholds and they can formalise their commitment to our country. We are a permanent-settler society.

The Liberals had no plan, none. Deport them to Afghanistan, to the Taliban, deport them to Iran, deport them to Myanmar, to be spot and killed? No, those opposite didn't do that. They just left them living here with their lives in limbo. I've lost count. I could never count and convey the number of conversations I've had, year after year after year, with grown men crying in my foyer because they've missed their children growing up and have been unable to see their wives for years on end, with the unimaginable pain of family separation.

Some days I struggle. My staff do, too. They have time off sometimes because they can't cope. They come back because they feel the pain of the community and they want to make a difference. This announcement gives hope. It is not a resolution immediately; it gives hope because people will now be able to apply for a permanent visa. These 19,000 people are Australians in all but name. We now need to process them as quickly as humanly possible, and I hope the bulk of them will be done this year. We've also got to examine as a government how quickly we can progress these people to citizenship, not just because it's the right thing to do, to enfranchise them and formalise their commitment to our country, but for the thousands of people from Afghanistan, their families. If they're not dodging the Taliban's bullets and trying to avoid being turned into sex slaves, they're living in fear in Pakistan. A year or two ago Pakistan changed their rules, so these people in my electorate have no longer been allowed to travel there on a travel document. So until they get their citizenship and get a passport, they cannot see their children. So every time that mob over there talk to us about family values, I encourage members to remember just how cruel and heartless and un-Australian they actually are. It should scar them, and I invite any of them to come and sit down and talk with these people. They work. They're the painters, the tilers, the future anythings in our country.

We also need to find the resources for what I've termed will be the boa constrictor swallowing the elephant of partner visa applications that rightly will come. Fast tracking them is the right thing to after 10 years of not seeing their children growing up. But it will also reduce the caseload because many of them have applications sitting in the humanitarian visa caseload. But the job is not done. We have 12,000 people on bridging visas that we need to turn our minds to. They will have to be dealt with through ministerial intervention or by lifting the section 48 bar. We obviously won't deport them to Afghanistan, Iran and Myanmar, but the mess goes on. We've employed 500 new staff in the Department of Home Affairs and it will take years to clean up the mess. (Time expired)