Page 1804 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2016
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The Labor Party’s website says:
This creates a range of debilitating social and economic barriers for these people, including isolation and a lack of economic and social independence.
Not my words; the Labor Party’s words. These are the words taken from the Australian Labor Party’s federal website; so do your homework before coming in here, members.
I would like to remind Mr Hinder of some of the facts around refugees. Australia is one of the more generous nations when it comes to accepting and settling those who come here on humanitarian refugee programs. We support those we invite here. We do not let people languish in ghettos and we should never move to a position where we accept so many that that becomes an impossibility.
We provide language programs, social support, medical services and education. It is a shame that the facts are not featuring in this debate from the other side. There are very real challenges that affect refugees that come to Australia. Studies have found that humanitarian entrants generally do have poorer employment outcomes than other migrant groups as they settle into the Australian way of life. Some of these people have never had a work experience and they now need to start trying to get work experience on the back of language concerns.
Everybody who has known my work in this place since arriving here knows that at every opportunity I have asked how we can improve language delivery, particularly for women and women with children who have primary caring responsibility at home. This has been a major focus of the Liberals here over the last term.
Census migrant integrated data tells us that for humanitarian entrants, 32 per cent are recorded as being in the labour force and 45 per cent not. When Mr Dutton was quoted, he was being asked about the Greens policy. So now the Labor-Greens movement here in the ACT has become so close that they are coming into this place to create divisive arguments to prop up Greens policy. It is Greens policy.
Australia has a long and proud tradition of settling refugees and vulnerable people in humanitarian need. Australia has consistently ranked in the top three resettlement countries, along with the US and Canada. These are the three countries that take 80 per cent of the global resettlement places each year with the UNHCR.
In Australia we have a very established framework for resettlement. We have about 16 resettlement services in 23 different regions around Australia. Since World War II we have settled more than 825,000 refugees and humanitarian entrants. Initially, mostly refugees came from Europe and parts of Asia. Governments of all sorts have previously provided education and health services. In recent years refugees have come from conflicts in countries such as Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
There is great diversity in the skills, education and professional experience of those resettled here. Forty-four per cent of female arrivals and 33 per cent of males do not understand spoken English upon arrival. That is why at every step we have asked this
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