Our next L4R meeting will be held on Wednesday 29 July at 6.30pm on Zoom

NOTE THAT OUR JULY MEETING WILL TAKE PLACE ONE WEEK LATER THAN USUAL.

Anyone who supports our L4R goals is welcome to attend.

Minutes of our last meeting on the 24 June 2026 follow L4RNSW-ACTMinMtg24Jun26 

NSW Labor Conference – what happened? Brief Background After conducting a campaign for the NSW Labor Conference, to gain support for our refugee motion on homelessness, we sent our motion to the NSW Minister for Housing and Homelessness Rose Jackson early this year.  L4R then met with the Minister on the 31 March 2026.  Shortly afterwards, a wording was agreed to by both the Minister and L4R. However, a few months later, we become aware that the Minister had changed her mind and we discovered that our motion, together with its Background, which appeared in the Policy Committee’s Report under the Chapter “Social Justice and Legal Affairs”, was only being supported in principle, instead of being supported outright.  We next attempted a compromise on words that would be acceptable to both parties.   The Minister’s Deputy Chief of Staff then came back with a significant one word change to our motion which was a proposal to delete the word “shelter” and replace it with “support”.  Not happy with this change, our Office Bearers decided to leave the final decision to our members.  After a discussion at our June meeting, members unanimously decided to reject this change.  It was felt that “support” could mean anything or nothing, so we may as well leave our motion in its original form. To recap, the motion (without the Background) follows: Homelessness Support Should be Based on Need and not Visa Status – That this NSW Labor Conference recognises the right to housing is a human right. Humans include people in our community without visas and we recognise that the Commonwealth controls who gets visas and when, as well as the conditions on those visas, including withholding the right to work.  In these circumstances, to ensure homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring in NSW, we call on the NSW Labor Government to include accessible, safe, affordable shelter for non-residents and asylum seekers in the NSW Homelessness Strategy 2025-2035.  The State Conference 4/5 July, 2026 On the first morning of the Conference, a group of L4R members met at 7.15am and handed out our L4R Leaflet, which contained our Conference motion, to Delegates as they queued up at the entrance to the Sydney Town Hall, waiting for the doors to open. The Conference agenda listed the “Social Justice and Legal Affairs” Chapter as the 2nd last item on day two.  We were aware that Conference usually finishes early and consequently, Delegates would never get around to debating this Chapter. There was an attempt by the Left early on the first day of Conference, to force this important Chapter to be debated on Saturday morning instead, but the motion was lost, even though Delegates’ voices sounded quite even on the vote from the floor.  A call by L4R Secretary Nizza Siano, for a count, was ignored by the Chair. So as predicted, that Chapter was not debated at all and our refugee motion on homelessness slipped through Conference as only being “supported in principle” which means the NSW Government’s housing policy remains unchanged and our motion was not adopted.  Thank YouI would like to thank those dedicated L4R members who showed up on an early cold winter’s morning, to hand out our leaflet and kept handing them out to Observers inside the Town Hall. Thanks also goes to those members who took our motion to their branch meetings and had their members support it.  There were a substantial number of branches who supported our L4R motion. We did the best we could under a very toxic anti-immigration, anti-refugee environment but would have had no chance at all were it not for the support we received from our members.    L4R Fringe Event”Housing is a Human Right” Fringe Event took place on Saturday 4 July at 2pm. It was scheduled at the same time as the Chapter on “Prosperity and Fairness at Work” was being debated by delegates upstairs in the main hall. That Chapter was attended by delegates from the trade union movement and may have been the reason that our Fringe Event was not well attended.  About 50 people turned up.  Our three guest speakers were very eloquent.  They were Elijah Buol OAM, the CEO from the Asylum Seekers Centre, Shaheen Whyte, Snr Policy Officer of the Refugee Council of Australia and Nadia, a person seeking asylum with lived experience of housing insecurity.  L4R’s Co-Convenor, Lauren Honcope, did an excellent job of moderating the event and asked each guest a series of questions.  It ended with a Q&A from the audience.

L4R Fringe Event L-R Sabrin Farooqui, Lauren Honcope, Elijah Buol, Nadia, Shaheen Whyte, Nizza Siano. ALP National Conference 23/24/25 July 2026 Our L4R national group, the National Co-ordinating Committee (NCC), worked hard throughout the year, examining each clause of Chapter 7 of the Draft Platform 2026.  This Chapter entitled “Australia’s Place in a Changing World”, will be debated and voted on by Delegates at the forthcoming National Conference on Saturday morning of the 25 July, the last day of Conference. We took every opportunity available, to make submissions beforehand, to the National Policy Forum (NPF), on those clauses in the Draft Platform that impacted on refugees and people seeking asylum.  Each time the Committee met, our supporters on the Committee, advocated for our refugee amendments but each time, these amendments were rejected by members of the NPF. We have now reached the stage where we will advocate at the forthcoming National Conference, for reforms to refugee policy, with a final smaller list of amendments as well as advocating for a Special Resolution that our NCC developed over some months.  Our Special Resolution focuses on Australia’s humanitarian refugee intake and follows:  Recommended Special Resolution by the 2026 ALP National Conference on Australia’s Humanitarian Refugee Intake (from Labor for Refugees)   The 2026 ALP National Conference celebrates Australia as a successful multicultural nation built on migration programs. National Conference specifically celebrates the contribution to the nation of the now one million people who have come to Australia since World War 2 as refugees.  Conference notes the ever-increasing global numbers of displaced persons due to conflict and persecution but also acknowledges the economic challenges for Labor governments in maintaining a responsible refugee intake. Conference again reaffirms the aspiration of Federal Labor to achieve a humanitarian refugee intake of 27,000 places per year from overseas locations in combination with a complementary resettlement intake pathway including community sponsorship of 10,000 places per year.     Conference congratulates the Albanese Labor Government since its election in 2022 for lifting the humanitarian refugee intake from 13,500 places per year under the previous Coalition Government to 20,000 places per year under Labor. The 2026 National Conference calls on the Albanese Labor government to maintain the humanitarian refugee intake numbers at 20,000 places per year whilst continuing to progress towards achieving 27,000 places per year.  We hope that we’ll have the support of Conference Delegates for our amendments to the Draft Platform and our Special Resolution.  Labor for Refugees will be promoting our Special Resolution at the Conference by handing out our leaflet, which includes our Resolution.  The Leaflet can be viewed at L4RNatConfLeaflet2026 Family Reunions On the 25 June last, we wrote to both the Minister for Finance and Women Senator Katy Gallagher and the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Tony Burke, asking that they remove the cost burden for families in the form of fee waivers for visa applications for partners and their dependents.  In 2023, we had written to Senator Gallagher about this very issue, but received no response.   In our letter, we argued that introducing visa application charge concessions, will make it more affordable for people to reunite with their partners and/or children.  We submitted a number of other suggestions that would address the visa processing challenges facing them.  Our letter can be viewed at L4RFamReunions25Jun26  I hope to see you at our next meeting on 29 July when we will report to you on the National Conference.  RegardsNizza Siano Secretary L4R NSW email:  contact@labor4refugees.com