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

I move:

That items 41 and 72 of Schedule 1 and items 7 and 8 of Schedule 2 of the Migration Amendment Regulations 2007 (No. 7), as contained in Select Legislative Instrument 2007 No. 257 and made under the Migration Act 1958, be disallowed.

The motion simply seeks to disallow four separate items within what is quite a large block of regulations. I emphasise at the start that I realise this is a complex matter and it has been flagged at fairly short notice. I only submitted the disallowance motion yesterday. Once again I make the point that if we had fixed parliamentary terms in this country we would know whether or not we would be sitting in three weeks time. I would have been able to defer the motion until the next sitting period so there would have been a greater opportunity to properly examine the issue before us. That is as frustrating for me as it is for everybody else who has to deal with the issue at short notice. The reality of the situation is that if I do not move this disallowance motion today, that may be it; there will be no further opportunity to debate it—certainly not until after the election, which could mean the parliament not sitting before February next year, by which time the regulations will have been in force for four or five months and it becomes much more problematic to disallow them. So I recognise the less than desirable circumstances. If we had fixed terms we would know when the last sitting was going to be and we could plan and do our business accordingly. We do not have fixed terms so we will have to operate in that air of uncertainty and push forward with things now. I acknowledge that, for the very same reason, we have about 20 pieces of legislation to get through before the end of the week. Therefore, in the circumstances I will truncate my remarks somewhat more than I otherwise would.

The core of the intent of the disallowance—and it is my understanding that it is the effect of the disallowance—relates to changes to the general skilled migration program criteria and, in particular, the impact on family migration and the weight placed on getting sponsorship from a family already in Australia. The Democrats are on record over the years as giving strong support to the family component of migration. The balance of our migration program over the last decade, particularly in recent years, has tilted very heavily towards the skilled program and away from the family program. In very crude terms, when the Howard government came into office, two-thirds of our migration intake was family related and one-third was skilled. It has now pretty much reversed: two-thirds skilled, one-third family. The humanitarian criteria are being put to one side. I think it is out of balance and that we could rebalance it somewhat. But the key issue for me is not to further degrade the importance of the family migration component.

Having said that, it does need to be emphasised that there is quite a bit of overlap. A significant part of our skilled migration program takes into account family linkages and whether or not people are already in Australia. A significant number of people who come here are on skilled visas, both permanent skilled visas that are seen as part of the migration program and long-term temporary ones. These are sometimes seen as separate to the migration program and include spouse visas linked to the skilled visa and that immediate family component. So there is an overlap there which is often not immediately apparent, given how the statistics are put forward.

In short, the changes the government has introduced from 1 September will not provide specific points for applicants whose families are already based here or who are prepared to sponsor them coming to Australia. In the Democrats’ view, this diminishes the importance of recognition of families in the migration program and the migration process. It is quite complex, as is often the case with migration visas, and the basic effect will be to raise the base pass mark by five points because, in effect, it will remove any extra points for having family sponsorship of a visa holder. It is not the most monumental change made to our migration program in the history of Australia, or even in recent years—it is what might be seen as a small change—but it is nonetheless one that I believe is not warranted. Looking through the background to the changes to the general skilled migration stream that came into effect from 1 September, all permanent visa applicants sponsored by an Australian relative were automatically awarded 15 points. Points for sponsorship will no longer be awarded to visa applicants sponsored by an Australian relative, except for those that apply for the skilled regional sponsored visa.

There was an outline in the explanatory statement to the amending regulation that gave some indication as to why the change has been made. There was an evaluation of the general skilled migration categories done by Bob Birrell, Lesleyanne Hawthorne and Sue Richardson, which related to the subclass 138 visa. That visa was closed off by the changes that came into effect on 1 September. The evaluation raised some issues about that but, in the interests of time, I shall not go through all of those.

The report made some recommended changes to thresholds and points. It recommended that the points test and current pass mark required by each visa subclass be maintained at the current levels, which included the points for the Australian sponsored subclass visa 138. Such applicants receive a concession of 15 points for family sponsorship. In effect, by closing off subclass 138 and introducing a different subclass, the government has gone against that recommendation and has removed the concession for family sponsorship. The effect of this disallowance is not to remove the new subclass 176, but simply to restore the old subclass 138 and have it coexist alongside subclass 176, which would restore the concession for family sponsorship.

That is a somewhat messy way of doing it, but that is the nature of doing things by regulation. As senators would know but the general community may not, the Senate is not empowered to add things to regulations. All we can do is delete specific items. We cannot amend, take out bits or add any new parts to an item; all we can do is allow or disallow either the whole thing or specific parts. The intended effect of the disallowance is to restore the pre-existing subclass visa 138. That would also restore the concession for family sponsorship for people under that particular visa, which dealt with one part of the general skilled migration program.

Because of time, I will not go into the wider debate about the broader skilled migration program and all the different components of it, but I would like to take this opportunity to make two key points. I believe there needs to be much wider recognition of the massive increase in the number of long-term temporary visas coming into Australia, particularly in the skilled area but in a whole range of other areas as well. In all of the debates about improving the integration of migrants into our community, I think there has been insufficient recognition of the need to do more for people who arrive here on long-term temporary visas. Settlement assistance focuses on people who are arriving on permanent visas. That is fine. We do that moderately well. We may even do it a bit better than moderately well, but there is a much larger group of people now who first arrived here on long-term temporary visas who do not get access to settlement assistance because, in technical terms, they are not settling. They are basically having to make it on their own. Some of them get support through universities or their employers, but it is very much an ad hoc, potluck type of arrangement. I do not think that is good enough. A lot of people who get a permanent visa have already been here for a number of years on temporary visas, such as student visas or long-term temporary skilled visas. That is something that I believe needs to be focused on much more. That is not a universal view, even within my own party.

We benefit from a very strong and large migration program. I have no problem with the size of it and I would have no problem with it expanding even more. I do have a problem with an excessive focus on skills without the recognition of the importance of family. I think that this change the government is making degrades that little bit more the recognition of the importance and benefit of family sponsorship and family connections. I think that needs some recognition, particularly when we are not doing as well as we need to in regard to settlement assistance and support for people when they first arrive here. When someone is being sponsored by family, they play an absolutely pivotal role. If you have family already here, of course they are going to be, in many cases, the best settlement assistance you can get. They would be better than anything government could provide. So I am not even suggesting, in calling for better settlement assistance, that it is a matter of government doing it all and fixing everything. The longer I hang around this place, the more I feel government is not the solution to lots of things and that government tends to be the problem half the time.