Labor’s second budget lacks humanity and compassion for migrants and abjectly fails to respond to the urgent challenges in Australia’s immigration system, the Greens say.
“This budget locks into place many of the Coalition’s policies and fails to deliver Labor’s election promises to migrant communities,” Greens Immigration spokesperson Senator Nick McKim said.
“It locks in billions of dollars for offshore detention, does not raise the humanitarian intake and does not acknowledge the dire humanitarian crisis Australia helped to create in Afghanistan.”
“The budget doesn’t even mention Australia’s utterly broken family reunion visa system which keeps people apart from their partners, young children and elderly parents for years on end, and in many cases with no end in sight.”
“It fails to deliver Labor’s commitments to restore migrant settlement services that were slashed, it does not raise the community sponsored refugee program and it does not create the Independent Refugee Tribunal.”
“And after years of backlogs and closed borders, jacking up visa fees is a kick in the teeth for people who have chosen to live, work and study in Australia.”
“Many of the immigration policies in Labor’s budget may as well have been handed down by Peter Dutton.”