Mr MURPHY (8:38 PM) —I rise to speak on the Migration Legislation Amendment (Parents and Other Measures) Bill 2000. I would like to respond to the invitation from the member for Herbert, and I will start by returning the compliment—he is a fine person, and we enjoy a good working relationship on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communication, Transport and the Arts. He has invited me to respond and to put a figure on the cost of parent visas, but I make the point to the member for Herbert that only those who can afford to pay $65,000 can have those parent visas. He knows as well as I do that most of those who are seeking those visas come from Third World countries. The bulk of my work in the electorate of Lowe is immigration work, and it is a monumental triumph for double standards for the member for Herbert to expect me to stand up and put a figure on it. This is something for affluent people who can afford to bring out their parents. As the member for Herbert said, we are here to support parents being reunited with their families here in Australia, but if he honestly thinks people from Third World countries can afford $65,000—I am sorry, that is not possible.

I will start by supporting the amendment moved by the shadow minister for immigration and shadow minister assisting the Leader of the Opposition on multicultural affairs, the Hon. Con Sciacca. There is a strong sense of deja vu in this bill before the House this evening—here we are again facing a bill that is substantially the same as the bill last year. The bill is one that is close to my heart, because it affects a number of constituents in my electorate of Lowe. Members will know that the federal electorate of Lowe is located in the inner west of Sydney. Lowe is one of the most ethnically diverse electorates of Australia and, according to the 1996 census figures, held by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are more than 20 statistically significant ethnic groups in my electorate. Every one of them has approached my electorate office on migration matters since I was elected to this House.

There are more than 500 active constituent files at any one time in my electorate office, and the bulk of these inquiries—some 80 per cent of all constituent inquiries—are about immigration matters. On this basis, I can say that I have a gained a degree of expertise in the matters. I will be most interested to hear other members of this House who have a significant migration practice give their testimonies as to the impact this will present in their electorate. I and my parliamentary colleagues on this side of the House oppose schedules 2 and 3 of the bill. We do so on ethical grounds, and I will address these grounds in a moment. Firstly, though, I wish to highlight the relevant provisions of this bill as it relates to family stream migration and specifically parent migration. Family stream migration includes the following visa subclasses: the spouse visa, the prospective marriage visa and the parent visa. In my experience, each of these visas has caused significant distress among Australian and non-Australian family members. Each of these visas involves significant delays in processing. Some of these delays are unavoidable, such as medical and character checks; other delays I say are the direct result of mismanagement on the part of the government.

I wish to recount the history of this bill and the disastrous consequence of the government's handling of a similar bill last year. Members will recall that, between March and November last year, the government introduced the new 113 subclass parent visa. The 113 visa was designed to replace the current 103 parent visa. The critical mismanagement by this government occurred when it introduced the 113 visa before the passing of last year's bill—essentially the same bill before us today. The critical mistake of this government was that it introduced the 113 visa administratively before the bill was passed by the Senate. This government receives applications from Australian embassies and high commissions throughout the world. Fees were taken that were upwards of $16,000 per retired couple seeking to enter Australia. This acceptance of 113 applications was taken by the government only to see the bill similar to this bill defeated in the Senate.

The administrative repercussions were catastrophic. Applications were received on a visa which no longer existed. The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs lumped all 113 subclass visas into the 103 subclass visa queue. This resulted in a massive visa waiting list blow-out. Members of this House will know that the current situation with the 103 parent visa waiting lists is both a farce and a disgrace. There are some 20,000 applications worldwide, with capping and queuing provisions of the department permitting an allocation of only 500 parent 103 visas per year. Hence the waiting period for a parent visa applicant is approximately 40 years—40 years for a parent visa applicant to wait for migration to Australia.

By definition, these parent visa applicants are already retirees. Most of us in this House will be dead in 40 years. A parent visa applicant lodging his or her application today may have their application processed in the year 2040. You can imagine the impact the decision had on existing applicants to lump 113 applications with 103 applicants once the 113 visa subclass had evaporated. I received many complaints from relatives arguing, with complete justification, that this administrative decision was a fundamental denial of natural justice. And so it was. The fact is, in administrative legal terms a legitimate expectation had been created by this government in its active acceptance of applications and the considerable sum of money for the purpose of applying under the new 113 subclass visa, thus drastically reducing the waiting period for entry to Australia.

Last year the opposition attempted to introduce more flexibility into the harsh conditions imposed by this legislation by including assets in the assessment of suitability of those offering assurances of support. The government rejected this proposal, instead promising to replace the taxable income level to $23,500 per annum with a cash saving component. Real assets remained ineligible. Further, the opposition attempted to deny the worst case scenario in seeing the existing pipeline of some 17,500 applicants abandoned in favour of the new elite 113 visa class getting red carpet entry to Australia. A token response was made by the government, offering to place some 25 per cent of the new applicants in the old pipeline. There is an annual intake of 2,800 parent visas. Twenty-five per cent of these equals approximately 700 applicants. The 25 per cent intake means that it would take an estimated 25 years to clear the backlog. It is totally academic whether the waiting period is 25 years or 40 years—both these periods are prohibitively long.

This bill, the proposals contained therein and the government's response are totally inadequate to the magnitude of the task. The government has failed to accept reality on this matter. The government has completely failed to adequately address the problem. This is a disgrace against the rights of the family, the rights of citizens and the natural law. This is why the Senate opposed the 113 visa last year and looks set to do the same again, in that those who could afford to pay the substantial fee for this visa were entitled to immediate entry into Australia while those who could not afford the $16,000 fee were essentially left to die. The only way a 103 visa applicant was going to enter Australia was in a coffin. The result was a messy situation, resulting in those applicants who lodged between March and November last year being entitled to be processed under the 113 queue but only after considerable outrage and distress was caused. I also understand that legal action under judicial review proceedings was afoot. The government, to its eternal shame, punished both the applicants and the Australian people with a public interest in this matter by resorting to the original system of 500 capped applications under the old 103 subclass visa. It did this as punishment for the Senate's refusal to participate in its inequitable and unjust law—a law we are again being called upon to enact.

This bill seeks to close applications for the 103 parent visa. This visa has become a notorious visa worldwide, in that it demonstrates perhaps one of the most mismanaged visas this government has administered in its term of office. The bill before us repeats the regime of error that was defeated by this parliament last year. During World War II, Field Marshall Rommel said of the British Army in North Africa: `They came in the same old way and they died in the same old way.' If ever there was a case of old dogs performing old tricks it is the government today. This government has demonstrated today in this bill that it is too tired to think of innovative policies based on sound ethical reasoning. It is serving up the same old tripe. This government is simply serving up an old mouldy dish, a reheated dinner, that was bitterly unpleasant in the first place. Parliament did not like the bill last year and I anticipate that it will not like the bill any better now. The only thing that has changed is the number of people discriminated by the current regime.

This bill is about amendments to our migration laws, as it affects the sanctity of the family. I am reminded of the papal encyclical familiaris consortio as I say this. I am particularly reminded of the immediate rights of every family member to be united with their family. This is a natural law right in the hands of each of us. To deny reunification breaches the natural law. I do not concern myself with using terms such as human rights or reliance on the United Nations instruments. These instruments are secondary policy only to the more fundamental laws of the natural law and right reason. Let us be clear of the fundamental policy rationale that underpins family stream migration—the very ethic of family stream migration itself. The ethic is found in the right of families to be united. It is a fundamental and inalienable right of persons to exist as families. Family stream migration means that there is a judicial and policy recognition by our government in Australia that spouses may be united, that parents and their children may be united and that orphans and last remaining relatives may be united. This is a fundamental reason why the Australian government has separate visa subclasses for these and other personal circumstances. It is for this basic ethical reason that parents, spouses, last remaining relatives, orphans and others should be entitled to circumvent other criteria, such as working skills and language fluency, and be entitled to become permanent residents in this country without satisfying such qualifying criteria.

The sanctity of the family is paramount. Any policy which trammels this sanctity is anathema to good governance. It is both manifestly unreasonable and unjust to impose restrictions on parent migration. The approach by the government today is as reproachable now as it was last year—I say again that it is substantially the same bill, and I say that particularly for the benefit of the member for Herbert—because only those who are well off can afford to be reunited with their parents. The ethical error of this government is at once immediate and obvious. The bill seeks to use money to financially discriminate between those who can afford to pay a sum of money—now up to $65,000 for a retired couple, as I have been saying—for the new subclass visa and thus gain immediate entry to Australia, whilst those who cannot afford the money are totally denied entry to Australia forever. The new subclass will require an application fee of $1,075 for offshore applications or $1,695 onshore plus a social security bond of $10,000 for the main applicant and $4,000 for secondary applicants and a health levy, which has increased from $960 per applicant under the present 103 visa to a whopping $25,000 fee per applicant. Remember that these fees are for each applicant.

Under the present regime the 103 subclass continues to exist. The proposed legislation will eliminate the AX103 visa entirely. This will mean that only persons who can afford to pay the $65,000 can enter Australia on parent visas. To put it bluntly, everyone else will be economically locked out of the visa. This is the hidden agenda of the government—the way it will manage the 20,000 queue of parent visa applications. New parent visa applicants will simply be denied absolutely the right of entry because they will be economically prohibited from entering Australia. There is a policy rationale that asserts that these parent visa applicants have not contributed to the Commonwealth of Australia through the taxation system. This is true. As permanent residents, they are entitled to the benefits of the social welfare system, including Medicare and our health system. However, this is anticipated through the other family stream migration that lends itself to the rights to sponsor parent visa applications. The benefits to the government in this bill are blatantly financially driven. The government expects to reap a profit of between $127 million and $155 million on fees recovered from the new parent visa over the first four years. The financial gains from this expedition are offset against the moral injustice afforded to family members.

What this government has failed to understand is that migration in the other migration streams has compounding consequences on other visa subclasses, including the parent visa. For example, inducing a person to enter Australia as a skilled migrant carries with it the reasonable expectation that this skilled migrant also has living parents, perhaps a spouse and even a last remaining relative living abroad. Hence, the skilled migrant's rights as an Australian citizen include the right to sponsor his or her spouse, parent or last remaining relative to Australia. In certain circumstances this can result in a significant number of people. These are rights in the hands of permanent residents and Australian citizens which skilled migrants inevitably and predictably become. It is inconceivable that this government does not have these facts in contemplation when it wishes to increase the migration intake of, say, skilled migrants. When the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, the Hon. Phillip Ruddock, proudly boasted of increasing skilled migration this year, he must also have reasonably contemplated that every one of these applicants may have spouses, parents and last remaining relatives in another country. It is therefore manifestly unreasonable to deny the skilled migrants their rights as citizens and permanent residents of Australia in sponsoring such people.

This bill is an attempt to deny this basic fact and is a serious defect in reasoning in Australian migration policy. Australia is decreasing alarmingly in population. Our fertility rate is now so low that we are not populating sufficiently to enable sustainable economic and social growth. Without an increase in our migration program, Australia will simply go backwards as a country. The government wants to have its cake and eat it too. Through constraints created in the business visa program, it wants young, English literate, educated, productive, skilled immigrants to enter Australia and thus be immediately productive in the Australian economy. On the other hand, it is placing economic barriers to these people's extended families and denying them basic rights by economically separating them from their parents and those for whom their family duties make them natural carers.

This government has failed to acknowledge that, if a skilled man or woman makes the decision to bring their skills and expertise to Australia and to settle here permanently, they will obviously leave behind their ageing parents, who will not usually have anyone else to look after them. In time, the obvious happens: the parents are in need of constant care with the onset of age. These people apply to migrate to Australia, only to be told that they must pay $65,000 per couple for entry. This is unjust. This government cannot have its cake and eat it too. It must acknowledge that it cannot avoid the reality that Australia must `populate or perish'. If it chooses to encourage skilled migration, then it must accept the social costs of that migration. The social costs include the possibility of parent stream migration, that these parents may be a direct financial burden on the Australian taxpayer for the rest of their natural lives and that there will be no return on investment to the Australian government.

We cannot enjoy the benefits of the skilled immigrant on the one hand and deny our moral obligations to that new Australian on the other. If the government was honest with itself, it would seek to deny undue reliance on immigration as a solution to our disastrous and economically unsustainable population decline in Australia; it would provide economic incentives and create a suitable social environment for increasing local population in Australia. Instead, it has chosen this backdoor approach to population increase, whilst avoiding the difficult choices involved in addressing the collapse of local population fertility, which is slightly less than two children per female.

The injustice presented by the government in this bill is manifest. The bill discriminates against the poor. The bill violates the legitimate expectations of the Australian citizen or permanent resident flowing from their legal rights. The bill abandons those who cannot pay so that they are never permanently reunited with their immediate families. The bill creates a new, elite visa class of those who can afford to enter Australia on economic grounds. I hope this patchy, ill-conceived legislation serves as a salient reminder to the government that it can no longer simply rely on short-sighted legal drafting to overcome economic and social fundamentals. We have seen the government enact over 40 separate acts in respect of the new taxation system. These laws covered every aspect of our financial lives. It seems it was not beyond the government to perform a thorough overhaul of our taxation system. Yet, in respect of the social policy of population trends, we see a government that is too weak and too scared to address the fundamentals of social policy and, in particular, population decline in Australia and economically sustainable domestic population growth.

Instead, this government lives this fool's paradise, thinking it can increase skilled labour whilst pretending that it can abrogate its broader social responsibilities, denying family stream migration by financially taxing and discriminating against it. In doing so, Australia has become the social policy pariah of the developed world. We have become discriminatory in our policies. The origin of this issue is our lack of population growth. The conclusion is that the government seeks to penalise family reunion, thus compounding a sin upon a sin. It is timely to remind ourselves of the sin of Saul, and what will happen if this government fails to address the real issues that lie at the heart of this bill. I urge every member of this parliament to support the amendments proposed by the Hon. Con Sciacca.