Immigration minister pledges to collect more data on diverse communities to better understand their needs

The federal government says it will collect more data on Australia's culturally and linguistically diverse communities to better understand them, as well as promising to shift the tone in the country's immigration debate.

The Albanese government will establish a culturally and linguistically diverse data collection working group. Source: AAP / PAUL BRAVEN/AAPIMAGE

Andrew Giles has used his first speech as Australia's new immigration minister to promise to increase the amount the government knows about the country's culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities.

He made the pledge on Thursday at the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia (FECCA) Conference in Melbourne.

"The Albanese Labor government is committed to introducing whole of government standards for measuring Australia's diversity to improve policy design, resource allocation and surface planning," Mr Giles said.

He said a culturally and linguistically diverse data collection working group would be established "to develop a national standard for CALD data collection".

The group will consist of representatives of peak multicultural bodies - including FECCA - as well as data collection and demography experts.

Mr Giles also promised to shift the tone of Australia's immigration debate.

"I'm committed today and going forward to changing this approach, moving from neglect to respect," he said.

"I think it is important, and indeed imperative, that we find ways of having different policy opinions, different ways of expressing our shared commitment to multiculturalism without using individuals as political collateral in an endless, pointless, divisive and destructive culture war."

Andrew Giles is Australia's new immigration minister. Source: AAP / MICK TSIKAS/AAPIMAGE

It is welcome news for people like Afghan refugee, Mehdi Sina.

He left Pakistan, where his family was living, when he was 15, arriving at Christmas Island by boat.

"Australia represented everything. From the day I arrived in Australia, I felt like a real human being; more productive," he told SBS News.

"I studied high school and went to university, and achieved each of my goals."

More than a decade later, Mr Sina has permanent residency.

But he said he's had constant rejections when trying to bring the rest of his family to Australia on humanitarian visas.

Afghan refugee Mehdi Sina arrived in Australia more than a decade ago. Source: SBS News

"I think family is everything, people living during the pandemic a lot of people did miss their family haven't seen their family in the past few years," Mr Sina said.

"Imagine if you put yourself in my shoe how are you going to feel? Being away from your family for the past 10 to 12 years."

Australia’s humanitarian program has been dominated by two ongoing crises in the past 12 months; the fall of Afghanistan, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Under the former government, more than 8,000 Ukrainian nationals were given temporary humanitarian visas, allowing them to work and study.

Australia evacuated around 4,000 people from Afghanistan when Kabul fell, and has since granted almost 1100 family visas.

Australia has allocated 31,500 places for Afghans over the next four years – a number that was increased more than six months after the fall of Kabul.

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre's (ASRC) director of advocacy and campaigns, Jana Favero, said the faster response to Ukraine showed a clear preference to help people from that country.

"The way we responded to Ukraine is exactly how we should have responded. We made announcements swiftly, we evacuated people to safety and we got them out of there, " she told SBS News.

"There’s a vast difference in how we treat different refugees by how they arrive, when they arrive and which country they have fled from."

Former immigration department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said he doesn't believe Australia has preferenced visas based on racial prejudice.

"Australia will also traditionally favour countries that are closer to Australia than are further away. Australia will give priority, for example, to people such as women at risk. And those range of factors are taken into account," he told SBS News.

"It's not a science, it's an art. But it's a judgment that governments must make."

In a statement to SBS News, the Department of Home Affairs said Australia's offshore humanitarian program is flexible and can respond effectively to evolving humanitarian situations.

Before the federal election, Labor said it planned to progressively raise Australia's humanitarian intake to 27,000 places a year, up from around 14,000.

Refugee Council of Australia's deputy chief executive Adama Kamara said the government needs to approach people fleeing persecution with more compassion.

"Overall what we can say is that the policy around seeking protection is not fair and it needs to be more humane, regardless of where people are coming from," she told SBS News.

"We need to look at how we can make a fairer process, how we can give people legal assistance while they are applying for protection, how they can have access to support while their claim for protection is being resolved."