JOINT STANDING COMMITTEE ON MIGRATION SUBMISSION ON THE INQUIRY INTO MIGRANT SETTLEMENT OUTCOMES Executive Summary The Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) and its members are committed to ensuring that refugees settle well in Australia. We therefore welcome this inquiry as an opportunity for improving their experiences of settlement. We begin by emphasising that refugee settlement is different in many ways from migrant settlement. When we resettle refugees, our focus is rightly on their need for safety, and not whether they can speak English well or have useful skills. That is, and should remain, the fundamental principle for deciding whether people are resettled here. We therefore strongly reject any attempt to select refugees based on their religion, English language skill, or like factors. We also strongly reject any suggestion that, when former refugees run into difficulties, our response should be to detain them or expel them on the basis of ‘character’. Instead, they should be dealt with by the law of the land in the same way as any other Australian. In our view, such suggestions send a message to all those not born here that they will never be equal in this country. Such proposals undermine the principle of equality before the law and of non-discrimination, and the decades of work that has gone into building this successful multicultural Australia. Our world-class settlement sector has been a crucial ingredient in this success. Every day, people in settlement organisations work tirelessly to ease the transition of new arrivals to life in Australia. Settlement organisations everywhere are helping people learn English, supporting them to navigate Australian services and systems, assisting them to make connections in local communities, helping them get work, and giving them a place they can feel safe and welcome. That work has been supplemented by a flourishing civil society that exists beyond the settlement sector. Every day, RCOA hears of innovative practices and new grassroots groups, and meet passionate volunteers who befriend, teach and learn from our new arrivals. Many of these do the hard work of integrating people seeking asylum, while government policies do everything to stop these people from succeeding. RCOA believes that there are many ways of improving the outcomes of people settling in Australia. We have made many such recommendations over the past decades, and we repeat some of them here. In particular, we believe that strengthening the collaboration and coordination between all the actors involved in settlement could significantly improve settlement outcomes. We make specific recommendations also on some of the designs of settlement services. Our most important recommendation, however, is that at this critical point in Australia’s political history, the factor that is most likely to undermine the integration of both refugees and migrants is the political rhetoric that is aimed squarely at them. This inquiry and other inquiries into racial discrimination, following years of the most punitive policies imposed on the most vulnerable, tells people they do not belong here. The most important thing this Inquiry can do is reject that premise, and reaffirm our commitment to supporting, rather than punishing, those who need protection. Sydney office: Melbourne office: Suite 4A6, 410 Elizabeth Street Level 6, 20 Otter Street Surry Hills NSW 2010 Australia Collingwood VIC 3066 Australia Phone: (02) 9211 9333 ● Fax: (02) 9211 9288 Phone: (03) 9600 3302 [email protected] [email protected] Web: www.refugeecouncil.org.au ●Twitter: @OzRefugeeCounc Incorporated in ACT ● ABN 87 956 673 083
SUBMISSION ON THE INQUIRY INTO MIGRANT SETTLEMENT OUTCOMES
Jul 11, 2023
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