Interview with Lucy Cooper, ABC Radio Australia

Agnes Tupou: Speaking with Lucy Cooper, Pat Conroy, the Australian Minister for International Development and the Pacific, provided the latest update on the selection process.

Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Pat Conroy: For the seven countries where the ballot selection process was conducted last week: Fiji, PNG, Solomon Islands, Timor Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. All offers have been made. We then pause the selection process for 120 days to allow those people to get their visa applications in. If people don't put the visa application in or if it's refused, then we'll run another selection process then for the remaining spots for those countries. We're doing the ballot selection process for FSM and Palau this week. Emails will then go out shortly for them from then on.

So, if people were successful in an initial ballot, they would have received an email from the Department of Home Affairs. If people are unsure, they can also log on to their ImmiAccount and establish it. Importantly, we don't send emails to people who weren't successful in the initial round because there may be a requirement for further rounds to make sure that we fill out the country allocations for each country.

Lucy Cooper: And so why does this selection period, like, looking at the website, you know, why does it run for almost six months for some countries?

Minister Conroy: Well, as I said, we've left 120 days to allow that, to make sure that each country's allocation is filled. So, I'll give you an example - we've allocated 300 PEV spots to Fiji. An email would have gone out to applicants to cover those 300 permanent residency positions. People's circumstances change. They may decide not to go forward with the formal application for the permanent residency or they may be unsuccessful in finding a job. There's a variety of reasons of why people may change their circumstances. So, by keeping the process open for - till February 2025 will allow us to run more rounds if we need it so that each country's allocation is filled.

Lucy Cooper: Do we know how many people applied for the visas from the respective countries that selection is now taking place for?

Minister Conroy: Yeah, well, across the entire scheme from all ten participating countries, I'm delighted to inform the listeners that more than 56,000 people have applied for the positions. So, that's obviously demonstrating an incredibly strong interest in the scheme.

Lucy Cooper: There's 3000 spots, 56,000 applied. That leaves 53,000 without a visa. Can we expect to see this, then, you know, run in the coming years?

Minister Conroy: Well, I should make the point that the 56,000, there probably might be a bit of double counting because both partners in a family unit may have applied, but we're really committed to this scheme. There is a built-in review period after a few years, but we are firmly convinced that this scheme will be successful. It will increase the people-to-people links in the Pacific. We put really strong support measures and wraparound services for families coming from the Pacific to Australia. So, I'm very committed to this scheme going forward and I'm really keen to see it continue over the next few years.

Lucy Cooper: Brain drain, labour drain. It's really the key issue that a lot of Pacific Island nations are worried about as a result of these kind of migration visas. How is the department actively preventing this?

Minister Conroy: Well, that's why the ballot selection process was so critical and that's why we fought very hard and quite frankly, why I was appalled by the Liberal National Party's opposition to the use of a ballot to select the recipients or select the people who could then go on to apply for the formal visa. That is critical to avoiding brain drain, and this is a strong message I heard from Pacific leaders, both confidentially and in public. For example, the Fijian Deputy Prime Minister made public commentary that the ballot selection process is critical. That meant that people had to meet all the criteria around health and English checks and to have a job offer. But it meant that someone who was a school leaver from Fiji had as much chance of winning a spot as a lawyer or a doctor from Fiji. And that's critical to avoiding brain drain. And once these people move to Australia, that won't be the end of the process. So, like, we've got hundreds of thousands of Australians of Pasifika heritage here. They will return to the country of their birth or their parents' birth or their grandparents' birth. They often will send money back to support other family members. This is about enriching the links between our countries and making it deeper, and I think that's in the interest of all countries. And that's why there's been such strong support at a government level around the Pacific for the Pacific Engagement Visa.

Agnes Tupou: And that is Pat Conroy, Minister for International Development and Pacific, speaking with Lucy Cooper.