Shadow Immigration Minister, Senator Paul Scarr, joins me this afternoon, and we’re going to change the topic a little. Welcome to the program.
Senator Scarr
Hi, PK. Great to be with you.
Patricia Karvelas
Now, before the election, and you know you’re the Shadow Immigration Minister now, before the election, your party said you would slash Australia’s net overseas migration levels by 100,000. Is that the number that you’re still committed to?
Senator Scarr
We’re actually in the process of reviewing all of our policies and engaging a process of going out into the community and listening to all of the stakeholders, and that includes all cohorts in our Australian society. So we need to have that review process. It applies with respect to our immigration policies as much as it applies to every other policy.
Patricia Karvelas
OK, is your instinct that that is too big a cut?
Senator Scarr
PK. I’m not in the position yet to give you an indication along those lines. I really want to come to, I really want to engage with the relevant stakeholders. I want to get the best possible evidence that’s applicable at the time when we need to make this decision and make decisions on the basis of our national interest after very, very extensive consultation.
Patricia Karvelas
Senator, if I can come in here, to say that there was a lot of analysis of what that big cut would lead to. It would have affected skilled workers, particularly crucial to things like construction, aged care, tourism. Isn’t it too big a cut and would be dangerous to our country’s economic sustainability? That was always the critique. Do you see that now? I mean, the election’s over, can you see that that number would have a material impact on the workforce?
Senator Scarr
Well, all of those issues you raised are incredibly important. I mean, we have a shortage of skills in relation to, for example, our construction industry. I’m here in the state of Queensland, where we’re getting ready for the 2032, Olympics and Paralympics, and we’ve also got huge infrastructure requirements, so we need more skills in terms of the construction space. And you touched on some other sectors as well, including aged care. And all of that has to be part of the mix. And the policy we come up with needs to be measured. It needs to be considered, and we’ve got to get the tone right in terms of discussing these issues in our community.
Patricia Karvelas
The government’s own Budget papers predicted the net overseas migration, the nom, as it’s known, would drop again to more usual numbers of about 260,000 in 202/ 26 then it’s meant to settle at about 230,000 a year from then. Is that, you know, I know you’re saying you’re looking at it, but is that sort of an acceptable number? Obviously, the peak most people accept was too high. But is that a settled number now?
Senator Scarr
Well, again, I’m sorry to belabor the point, PK, but we really need to look at all of the evidence at the time, and bear in mind as well that we’re going to be formulating a policy for an election to be held in 2028 so we need to consider what the prevailing circumstances are in the lead up to that election.
Patricia Karvelas
A narrative that really built before the last election in your immigration announcement was that immigrants were really at the heart of the problem with our housing crisis. Is that something you still believe?
Senator Scarr
I am strongly of the view that when we discuss these issues, we must provide understanding, empathy and comfort to everyone who is in this country that they are not part of the problem. These issues, in terms of housing shortages, infrastructure and services not being adequate, are an issue of government at both federal, state and local level, and I think it’s really important we get the tone of the debate right, so that there isn’t any blaming of those members of our Australian Community.
Patricia Karvelas
So in the way that housing was discussed as a problem with immigration, do you think, with the benefit of hindsight, that was wrong?
Senator Scarr
I think we have to be very, very careful, and the result we got at the last federal election tells us we need to be very measured and considered when we’re talking about these issues, or else we have the danger, the risk of alienating people.
Patricia Karvelas
So when you think of the housing crisis, and it is a crisis, you think it should be discussed without immigration being linked to it?
Senator Scarr
Well, I think when we look at immigration numbers and policy, housing is one of the elements that needs to be considered as part of that matrix, as is skill shortages, as is the moral obligation, from my perspective, in order to have a humanitarian visa avenue as well, which has been a long part of Australia’s history. So there are a heap of elements that are a part of this immigration policy mix, but ultimately in terms of housing shortages, etc, this comes back to decisions of federal government, state government, planning laws, regulations, things which are preventing us from building more accommodation for all Australians.
Patricia Karvelas
How damaged is the liberal party’s relationship with immigrant communities?
Senator Scarr
We have a lot of work to do with our wonderful multicultural communities. I’ve got absolutely no doubt about that, and when we look at the devastating results which the Liberal Party suffered, especially in metropolitan areas where most of our multicultural communities live, I think there needs to be cause for great reflection. There needs to be considerable engagement with those communities, and there needs to be an appreciation PK that we’re talking about real people and real families and communities and people who want to know that they belong in our country, which they do belong.
Patricia Karvelas
Is that you saying that the liberal party didn’t make them feel like they belonged in our country?
Senator Scarr
I think a lot of members of our multicultural communities, thought that there was an alignment between many of the liberal party’s values, but at times our clumsy rhetoric…. [host interrupted]
Patricia Karvelas
Give me an example. Give me an example of what you think is clumsy rhetoric.
Senator Scarr
Look, I don’t particularly want to go to …. [host interrupted]
Patricia Karvelas
I want to understand what you regard as having been, you know, having basically breached a red line in terms of the way you talked about immigration and immigrant communities.
Senator Scarr
I think if I can be a little bit more general and say any rhetoric which makes Australians who’ve come to this country in the past as migrants. Any rhetoric which suggests to them in some way that the Liberal Party doesn’t have empathy, doesn’t support them and doesn’t have their interests at heart, any rhetoric which triggers those sorts of responses in our multicultural communities is negative rhetoric from my perspective, and we all have to be careful to make sure we’re very positive about our migrants and the contribution they’ve made to our to our wonderful country. And I’m absolutely passionate about that.
Patricia Karvelas
Okay, so when, when we talked, for instance, about, and we’re going to get to this, the the case of people who were caught up in the visa system who were very, very hardened criminals, sexual crimes and other things. There seemed to be rhetoric that implied, and I really want to explore this with you, that you know there were immigrant sex offenders, when actually, I think all of our viewers, especially the story we’ve seen this week, would think all sex offenses are repulsive, right? But there was a real language in relation to the immigrant nature. Do you think that was problematic?
Senator Scarr
Well, I think when you reflect on these issues, a sex offender is a sex offender. And from a community perspective, it doesn’t really matter if they’re a migrant or someone who’s come to this country, they’ve been here for a week, or they’ve been here all of their life and were born here and many of the regimes we have in place, the preventative detention regimes are in place at a state level to apply to Australian citizens as well. So I think perhaps it’s, it’s it was language which was based on the fact that the federal government, and by corollary, the opposition, had to deal with this specific cohort, the NZYQ cohort, which contains many violent and sexual offenders who were non citizens. And due to the NZYQ case, there was a real issue in terms of deporting those individuals to their country of origin. So it’s a particular subset of sexual offenders and violent offenders.
Patricia Karvelas
It is. And I think, I think that the language, it goes back to that language that I suppose makes communities to feel like they’re being cast in a particular way when many of these communities of you know people trying to get ahead in Australia and have a have a normal life that that’s inherent in the problem about the language, right?
Senator Scarr
Well, PK, I’d say not just many of these communities, all of these communities, all of these communities have have wonderful members, and the vast majority of them are people who are making a really positive contribution to our society, and I take the point when you add those adjectives to the notion of a sexual offender or a violent offender, and it leads to identification of a particular community that can be problematic because members of those communities feel as if they’re being judged on a group basis, and that can be a real issue, and we have to be empathetic in that regard.
Patricia Karvelas
And we also need to not minimize sex crimes that are actually done by Australian citizens. This is the other part of the story for survivors. There is two sides of this, right?
Senator Scarr
Absolutely, absolutely. And we’ve got to be empathetic to that.
Patricia Karvelas
The minister told me, yesterday, I interviewed the Home Affairs Minister, that your request to rewrite the preventative detention laws was not going to change the difficulty, because it was the high court that had created the problem, and that his government was really trying to focus on this deportation plan instead. Do you back the deportation plan?
Senator Scarr
I do, but can I just say, in relation to the Minister’s comments yesterday, I certainly understand the constitutional issues, and when we look at the migration act and these issues, we need to reflect on the fact that any changes to the legislation are done in the context of rule of law, and the high court makes decisions which are relevant to that. But I’d say this PK, bear in mind that when this law was brought in following the NZYQ judgment, there was another case of the High Court at the end of last year dealing with the enforceability of curfew conditions and also electronic monitoring conditions, which led to the act being reviewed, amendments being made, and new regulations being promulgated. And we only had the opportunity to do that because those conditions had been set under the legislation. So the system was tested. In this case, there hasn’t been a single preventative detention order application made by the federal government. So we haven’t had the opportunity for the High Court to test these provisions in the context of the NZYQ cohort in practice. So we haven’t had the benefit of learnings from what the High Court might find in relation to these provisions in that particular context. The other point I want to make, and this is a very important point, if the government does make an application for a preventative detention order, the court also has the option not to issue a preventative detention order, but to issue a community supervision order, and that can have different conditions, not involving detention. So if you’re not making that original application, you’re not really testing the system as it should be tested.
Patricia Karvelas
Senator, thanks for your time.
Senator Scarr
Thanks very much PK.
