Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is my great pleasure to speak on the Migration Amendment (Temporary Sponsored Visas) Bill 2013. It has been a long and exhaustive debate—I did not think I would get a chance to speak because there were so many speakers before me. Of course one of those was the member for Canning who made some headlines when he accused the government of racism. I found that comment to be intemperate and obviously offensive but it also does not match my party's history.

My party and, in particular, Arthur Calwell, as the first immigration minister, gave this country the postwar migration scheme. Indeed, Calwell was the father of that scheme and he very famously made a ministerial statement to this House saying that we would have 22 million Australians by 2020. He brought millions to this country who settled and brought their skills, their innovation and their energy from a destroyed postwar Europe. They built the Snowy Mountains scheme, many of the railways and most of the postwar infrastructure that was put in place by the Curtin and Chifley governments—continued in large part by the Menzies government, no doubt about that.

Migration was a fundamental part of that postwar reconstruction, as it was called. If you look on Google and type in 'Arthur Calwell', a very old video will come up—it is a video now but it would have been a film back then—of Arthur Calwell saying, 'Give me the ships and I will bring the right type of people to this country.'

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