Senate debates

Tuesday, 5 September 2006

Matters of Urgency

Multiculturalism

4:20 pm

Photo of Annette HurleyAnnette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

People all around Australia at the moment are suffering from the government’s triple whammy of rising interest rates, rising petrol prices and changes to industrial relations laws. One by one members of the government seek to deflect attention from that by raising other issues. This time it was the Prime Minister’s turn to raise the spectre of people coming into this country and resisting integration, as he put it. There has been an attempt to say that there are migrants to this country who are resisting the values of multiculturalism, about which Senator Brandis spoke so eloquently. Those values of multiculturalism are that people can practise their own culture and tradition provided they comply with Australian law and government and with Australian values.

The Prime Minister—backed up by the Treasurer, Mr Costello, who is always inclined to go further—has put the spotlight on the Muslim community in talking about this. He referred specifically to the Muslim community as resisting integration. He then spoke of the need for migrants to Australia to learn to speak English. This is a classic case of government members, and the Prime Minister in particular, seeking to make these sorts of statements and then doing nothing about them. The government makes statements that get broad approval in the public but then it does nothing to implement them. The Prime Minister is head of a government. If he feels that there is a problem in our community, and with our immigrant community in particular, perhaps he should do something about it. However, the Prime Minister is doing nothing about it.

One of the problems that has developed in our immigrant community is that the adult English language program which is available to migrants and which has for many years been available to migrants is no longer keeping up with the strains of the population coming into Australia. The problem with the Adult Migrant English Program—AMEP, as it is called—is the inadequate number of contact hours to learn a language as complex as English. It is a very hard language to learn, and immigrants have 510 hours to reach a functional level of English. But the program is quite a rigid one, and the starting times are often quite rigid. Migrants have one year to complete the program, and class sizes are often too large.

One of the reasons the problems have started to develop is that AMEP is based on an English-as-a-second-language model, and English as a second language is not appropriate for a number of the refugees and humanitarian entrants that this government has brought into the country. I have no problem with the government fulfilling its rights and responsibilities by bringing in refugees and humanitarian entrants, but many of the entrants who have come in in the last few years are not literate in their own language, and the government knows this very well. The government has acknowledged this but has not kept up the level of resources to allow migrants to learn the English language effectively. One of the chief problems is that there is often not suitable child care for people who want to learn English, and if child care is not available people are unable to access the course. This is not a universal problem. Some providers, like ACL in Auburn, which I visited just recently, have child care in the building, virtually next door to where people are learning English. It is a good model but is by no means universal, and this is particularly so in rural and regional areas.

The presumed failings of migrants to learn English, mentioned by the Prime Minister, John Howard, is actually a failing of this government to provide more effective English language programs for migrants. This is probably the difference between Australia’s approach to multiculturalism and that of a lot of other countries. Australia has always taken the view that, in order to help migrants integrate, programs and resources should be available to help the migrants do that. That has always been supported in a bipartisan way, but it is starting to fall down. The February estimates hearings heard that AMEP had 2,200 additional migrant students at the same time as the government’s funding program decreased by $10.8 million. Andrew Robb, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, took offence at this statement and said that the government had increased its Adult Migrant English Program funding by $36.8 million. What Mr Robb did not say was that this funding was over a four-year period and was announced in the same year as the Howard government increased its refugee intake from 4,000 in 2003 to 13,000 this year. So AMEP has had to cope with more refugees with fewer funds. The government is simply not keeping up with its own refugee program. Cutting programs while increasing the number of refugees by 9,000 people makes no sense at all and, after 10 long years of the Howard government, we are beginning to get a bit used to his, because common sense has not been a highlight in a number of their programs.

The failure of the Howard government to effectively manage its English program is also economically damaging to Australia. By not running an efficient English program, the Howard government is failing to capitalise on the economic benefits which all migrants happily offer. This is poor financial management. I have not met a migrant yet who does not want to learn English and learn it well. All migrants should be given the opportunity to learn English so that they can contribute to our economy. Australians expect this. They also expect the government’s English language program, which costs taxpayers $153 million annually, to be producing results. But in 2005 only 11 per cent of the 36,405 people enrolled with AMEP exited with functional English—that is, only 11 per cent of the people met the aims of the program.

The government has an obligation to provide migrants with the opportunity to learn fully functional English through a flexible and well-managed program. It is true that many of our earlier migrants were not given the opportunity to learn English through such a program and have contributed greatly to this country—and Senator Brandis mentioned some of those people—but we live in different times now and people should have the opportunity to learn English effectively through a good program and to fully contribute to Australia’s society and economy. A country with a small population growth rate, such as ours, depends on immigration and the economic benefits it brings. If the government’s English language program is not working efficiently—and 11 per cent is not a very flattering result—these benefits are not captured and that has a financial knock-on effect for all Australians. It is interesting that, while the Prime Minister complains about some migrants not learning English, his own government is bringing in section 457 migrants who speak very little English at all and putting them into jobs that place their lives in danger, and that is a different set of circumstances.

In conclusion, I would like to say that, before he goes around singling out one particular community for their presumed failure to learn English, the Prime Minister should look at his own government’s failure to run an effective and economically sound English language program. He has had 10 long years to sort it out, and he appears not to be succeeding very well.

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