Tourist visas
Matthew GUY (Bulleen) (10:24): Last week I raised a concern around what I believe is discriminatory treatment of people seeking to enter Australia on a tourist visa, and I follow that up with issues in relation this time to the Melbourne Hindustani Classical Music Society. The Melbourne Hindustani Classical Music Society – this is a concert which part of our Hindu community, which is large here in Melbourne, wishes to host with people from India – need to obtain a tourist visa for two weeks to come and perform in Melbourne. They have performed in Western Europe, they have performed in North America, but of course they get knocked back on a two-week visitation visa to enter Australia. I again place on record my concern that these issues are not being properly addressed by the federal Labor government and that we have this issue where people who are coming for weddings, sadly for wakes and now for classical music concerts are being denied two-week tourist visas when coming from a country that we should be engaging rather than seeking to push away.