Transcript of Interview with Jacinta Tynan, Sky News: Refugee Quotas
TONY BURKE MP
Member for Watson
Shadow Minister for Immigration,
Integration and Citizenship
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH JACINTA TYNAN, SKY NEWS
3 OCTOBER 2007
Subject: Refugee quotas; integration
E&OE–PROOF ONLY
JACINTA: Joining us on the line now is Shadow Immigration Minister, Tony Burke. Mr Burke, thanks for talking to us this afternoon.
TONY: Pleasure, Jacinta.
JACINTA: Is there any evidence that Sudanese refugees have a harder time adjusting to life in Australia?
TONY: Well, I don’t think Kevin Andrews actually understands his own programme here. When the numbers were realigned, they were realigned because of the situation in Burma and also because of the situation on the grounds in Iraq. There was nothing said at the time about these numbers changing because of issues with Sudanese integration or African integration generally. This is something that Kevin Andrews has now whipped up as an argument but it was never part of the change in numbers.
The reason that we have now got a halt until the end of June isn’t because the government is doing some ruthless attempt to stop Africans from entering the country. It’s simply because the humanitarian program has always worked on a quota. For reasons I don’t understand, they filled the African part of the quota in the first few months of the year rather than stagger it over the full twelve month period.
JACINTA: Mr Burke, Mr Howard has admitted that the program is what he calls ‘rebalancing’, favouring Middle Eastern and Asian refugees. Is there a need to do this kind of rebalancing and taking people from different regions at certain times?
TONY: What Australia does each year is goes to the UNHCR and asks them for a bit of advice. There are six thousand people that come as refugees and a further seven thousand that come under the special humanitarian programme. What the government then does is the Minister takes the advice to Cabinet and says this is where we can do it best.
The problem that has happened for people from a range of communities, including Africans, is the Government’s integration program has become disastrous. I’ll just give you one statistic – the program that is designed to teach adults the English language, nine out of ten people now exit that program without reaching functional English. This is why we need to re-organise the integration program to make sure that we are actually teaching people English and helping them find their first job.
JACINTA: Even if it was the case that Sudanese refugees in particular would have trouble assimilating in Australia – or settling is the word – would that or should that be a criterion for deciding on who gets to come here?
TONY: The best way to deal with people that have problems integrating into Australian society is to provide them with the support. Now, the English language program, as I say the support is clearly not being provided if nine out of ten people are exiting without functional English. What we need is to combine the English programs and link them more closely with Job Network providers, so we are actually finding people jobs and they are actually finding their pathway into work as early as possible and learning English as effectively as possible. If you do those programs, and you do them properly, that’s how you achieve real integration, not by making the sort of statements that Kevin Andrews is making today.
JACINTA: So, just to clarify it looks like the government is saying no to Africans at least in the short term coming as immigrants to Australia. Do you know what quotas we have been allowing for want of a better word into the country in the past few years?
TONY: The humanitarian program for Africa used to be 70%. Last year they reduced the African proportion to 30% and at the same time they increased the number of people coming from Asia, in particular the Burmese.
They increased to 35% the number of people coming from the Middle East. So certainly there are a lot more Iraqis arriving now than there were a few years ago and that’s been part of the change as they’ve reduced African immigration.
JACINTA: It seems to be that it would make sense to allow people into certain countries that are undergoing conflict at that time. And so for example, Burma would be the country at the moment where we might accept more immigrants.
TONY: We have always offered bipartisan support on the actual quotas as they have varied at different times so there’s no doubt when you look at the situation in Burma at the moment. it makes sense that it is a good thing that we have already looked at and increased the number of people from Asia and given Australia a chance to help people who are in a really desperate situation in our own region.
JACINTA: Opposition Spokesman, Tony Burke.
[ENDS]
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