Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

It must be your influence, Senator Mason. I must be rereading your first speech or something. It is just that while you guys have been in government I have realised that you cause all the problems, so obviously government is not the answer.

Quite seriously—and all my comments have been serious—the role of government is to adopt policies that facilitate an outcome. That does not mean the government should just put more and more money into government programs and try to force them on people; it is about recognising what skills, abilities and benefits exist in the community. Family is a key one of those, particularly in this migration context. Improving settlement support and assistance could well mean just more support and facilitation for families and others within the community, such as businesses and universities, to provide that support rather than having some other separate government funded program.

That is just a very general comment but it goes to an important point. The number of people who come here on temporary long-term visas now far outstrips—I think it is at least double and possibly even triple—the numbers who come on permanent visas. They are a key part of our overall migration program, but they are the part that gets missed out in the migration debate. I have gone off on a bit of a tangent, although it is a related tangent, because I think that point needs to be made as often as possible. It is a key part of the migration debate that is not recognised.

To come back to the core point, the Democrats believe there needs to be more clear recognition of the importance of family and the component of family, both direct and indirect, in regard to points concessions for family sponsorship in our migration program. We do not believe this change is warranted and it is clearly not—at least on my understanding of the recommendations from the review done by Mr Birrell and others, the Evaluation of the General Skilled Migration Categories report—consistent with that recommendation. In the absence of sufficient justification given by the government, I do not believe that we should proceed with that change.