Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

There's no shortage of loud voices in this parliament on migration. Migration is being targeted as an easy scapegoat for all our challenges, despite the long history of its successful contribution to our economy and our society.

There's no doubt that we need better planning in our migration system to match infrastructure needs with our population, but there are also aspects of our migration rules that are failing because they're deeply unfair to those caught in the system. Australia has a parent visa system that's quietly failing thousands of families. More than 151,000 applicants are currently in the queue. With only 8,500 places allocated in the system each year, the queue grows faster than it's processed. The government's independent review described the situation as 'cruel and unnecessary', noting that offering visas that will probably never be granted serves neither applicants nor system integrity. I could not agree more.

Families choosing the premium pathway pay fees of nearly $100,000, about 10 times the standard option, on the expectation of processing times of around three years, but wait times have blown out to 15 years. If you lodge an application today on the standard pathway, you can expect to wait until 2059. A 70-year-old applicant today would be 103 before receiving a decision.

Kyle from Shenton Park paid the premium so his parents could join him, his partner and his seven-year-old son, Isaac. Six years later, his parents are still waiting. Based on current wait times, Isaac will be in his 20s before his grandparents can settle permanently in Australia. Stefan from Mosman Park contacted me about his mother, Kristina, who is 82 and has been on a bridging visa for six years. She cannot leave Australia to visit a gravely ill friend in Germany without voiding her application. She waits, unable to plan her life in either direction. These families acted in good faith, and the system has not matched that.

I welcome some of the government's migration reforms announced in the budget. Updating the points test, fixing skills recognition and increasing scrutiny of visa applications are sensible steps, but the parent visa backlog sits outside that conversation, and it shouldn't. I urge the government to look seriously at options for improvements to the parent visa system: increasing the number of parent visas each year, with stronger financial obligations on sponsoring families to manage the fiscal impact; introducing a fairer method of allocating places from the existing backlog, such as a lottery instead of a queue that stretches beyond most applicants' lifetimes; or placing greater emphasis on temporary parent visas that are more affordable and accessible, supported by enhanced financial commitments from sponsors. The migration debate in this country too often focuses on problems that are overstated. Here is one that's real, measurable and within the government's power to fix.