Ms HOARE (9:11 PM) —I know I have not got the usual amount of time to speak in the debate this evening on the Migration Legislation Amendment (Parents and Other Measures) Bill 2000, but I cannot start my speech until I answer some of the comments that the member for Dawson raised in her speech. I was astounded to hear the initial comments of the member for Dawson, who is walking out the door now. In those comments, she was discriminating between white Australian born families and those Australian families who are born in countries other than this one which we fortunately live in now. The member for Dawson said that white Australian families should not have to bear the brunt of supporting those Australian families who were not born in this country, and I think that comment is an absolute disgrace.

The comments of the member for Lowe, which were scathingly attacked by the member for Dawson, were very moral comments. The member for Lowe spoke about families as a whole. He spoke about all Australian families and the need for all Australian families to obtain the support that they deserve from their government and to be united in this country. The member for Lowe did not discriminate between Australian families, and I would encourage all members following that scathing attack from the member for Dawson to go back and read the comments from the member for Lowe so that he is not misrepresented as she tried to do. The member for Dawson also made some comments about the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, saying what a good minister he is. I do not have any quarrels with that statement. In my time here and in my relationship with Minister Ruddock, I have found him to be a basically good and decent person, a man who has been given the hard jobs in a conservative government of furthering the cause of reconciliation and of immigration and multicultural affairs. However, in this case I believe that the minister is wrong. This piece of legislation is ill-planned and misconceived.

While there are currently 20,000 aged parents on waiting lists around the world waiting to come in and be reunited with their families in this country, this bill allows for an intake of only 4,000 over the next two years. And that is only if those people can pay: only if they can pay their fees and levies, substantial social security bonds and health care levies, and pay up to $64,000 per parent couple waiting to come into this country. I will quote from an editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald which was published on 7 April this year. The editorial referred to these measures as `hard nosed'. These were the measures requiring people to put up a $10,000 social security bond and also requiring them to take out private health insurance for 10 years or pay a health services charge of $25,000. The editorial goes on to say:

This government has already collected over $21 million from these 20,000 people who are still on waiting lists. Last year Minister Ruddock tried unsuccessfully by regulation to introduce user-pays measures, these visas for the rich. He was defeated in the Senate. I will call on the Democrats in the Senate to continue to exercise some semblance of morality and defeat this particular bill in the Senate. Make no mistake: aged parent couples can jump this queue of 20,000 if they or their family can afford to pay $64,000 plus airfares. As Labor's immigration spokesman, Con Sciacca, said:

That is why we are opposing this piece of legislation, because it is unjust, unfair and discriminatory. However, we do support schedule 1 proposed in this bill, which, in the main, corrects an anomaly which existed following the introduction of the three-year temporary protection visas—which Labor supported, I might point out to the member for Dawson. Under that visa category at that time, the minister decided that the refugees were not entitled to access Medicare assistance for the majority of that three-year period. The minister was forced into this current position, which provides that holders of temporary protection visas are entitled to Medicare without needing to apply for a further visa, once it was pointed out to the government that, being a signatory to the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees, we as a nation have a responsibility and an obligation to provide appropriate services to those assessed as being in need of protection. Labor supports this schedule because it is fair and just. However, as I have stated before, we do not support schedule 2 and schedule 3 because they are unfair and unjust. There is currently a cost associated, as Minister Ruddock emphasised in his second reading speech. He said:

I must say this statement was reiterated—and basically screeched across this chamber—by the member for Dawson. These statements from government members and these equations do not include the human factor; they do not include the humanity factor. When debating how much it is going to cost for Australian families to be reunited with their parents, the minister and government members speak in terms of `contribution to revenue' and `substantial costs'. I was listening to the member for Dawson's contribution to this debate. It was not until her last two or three sentences that the member for Dawson actually mentioned the word `families'. Not once in her tirade of attack against the member for Lowe and the Labor Party in general did she speak of families.

As I said, we understand that there is a cost associated with this. Labor introduced a cost structure of around $8,000 for families to be reunited with their parents who were living overseas. We support mutual obligation. That is why we introduced the original cost structure. But we also understand the commitment of families to support their older members. The cost comparison that has been made by the minister and government members denies part of the actual circumstances which would occur. We know currently that if an aged pension couple are living together they receive less pension than two single pensioners living apart. That situation goes for a range of government services. Even in our private lives, we find that, living together as a couple or with two or three people sharing a house, the costs are much cheaper. With these families who have given a commitment to support and to sponsor their aged parents—so they can come out here and live their final days with their children and their grandchildren to provide some kind of semblance of a family structure—the costs would not go anywhere near those cited by the minister and government members, because these families have a commitment to their family structure and they have a commitment to support their parents when they come out here. In his second reading speech the minister referred to costs and equations without considering the humanity factor. He said:

As I just stated, the costs of family care versus the cost of state care are two completely different areas. If anybody would study a lot more closely the particular bottom line equations that the government has used, they would find that the costs of the care of these parents who are migrating here to spend the rest of their time with their families would be much lower.

The other issue that has been raised is the issue of skilled migrants in relation to the migration to Australia of aged parents. We in the Labor Party support a ratio of roughly 50 per cent skilled migration and 50 per cent family reunion. We think that is about right. We have said that we would establish an Office of Population and we would actually engage demographers to determine Australia's optimal population level. It cannot be done on an ad hoc basis, as the minister is trying to do with this piece of legislation. When we compare the skilled migrant intake to the aged parent intake, we are expecting migrants to come here with their skills to contribute to the Australian economy, which many of them do and have done over the past century. We take their taxes, we take their productivity and we take their hard work. We take their hours away from their family as well. They contribute. Yet, when it comes the time that they want to bring their parents here to spend the rest of their days with them, we say, `You have given us everything you possibly can. You have given us your work commitments, you have given us your time, you have paid your taxes, yet we are going to charge you $65,000 to bring your parents out here so that they can form your final family structure in the last years of their lives.' That is unfair and that is discriminatory.

We are a multicultural society. Migrants from all over the world have made Australia their home. We are constantly emphasising that Australia was built on the backs of migrants. We had the first European settlers and the importation of the convicts. You can drive around the back roads of New South Wales and probably most other states across the country—you would know these roads from your area, Madam Deputy Speaker Gash—and see roads built by the convicts when they were first brought out here. In the early 20th century we had a wave of migrants from Europe and the United Kingdom to help build infrastructure. We have just recently had the 50th anniversary of the completion of the Snowy Mountains scheme. There were large numbers of Greek and Italian migrants who came to call Australia home and contributed to the rich fabric of our society today. I have a Macedonian friend whose mum and dad came to Australia. His dad stepped off the boat one day and landed a job at BHP as a steelworker the next day, and he worked there until the day he retired. Then we saw a wave of migration from Asian nations bringing further expansion in the tourism industry as well as specific skills related to information technology. These Australians have a right to ask the government, `If we were relied on so heavily, why can't we expect to bring our family members here so that we can see ourselves as a total family structure and our aged parents can live out their lives with their children and grandchildren?'

There has been a lot of talk about the budget implications of this. Government members talk about the financial implications and the cost to revenue, without considering the family or the humanity factor. It has been said that there is a positive budget implication of these measures of between $127 million and $155 million over four years. A piece of legislation like this will cause so much angst and heartache for a large part of our community, I do not think it is very fair for this government to be raising these amounts of money. We are talking about $155 million over four years compared with $430 million this government has spent advertising its propaganda on the GST. These families have a right to feel hard done by. In conclusion, I support Labor's amendments. I call on the Democrats to exercise some morality in the Senate and to reject this piece of legislation, which is ill-conceived, ill-planned, discriminatory and just plain unfair.