Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak on this motion because the underlying premise of it reminds me of a South Park episode called 'Goobacks' where people from the future travel back in time and take everyone's jobs, and they all run around going, 'They took our jobs! They took our jobs!' That is the underlying premise of this motion, and it shows why those who sit on that side of the chamber are completely unfit for office. They continually argue and they think that our economy is a zero sum game where one person takes another person's job, when they should be trying to concentrate on how to grow the economic pie and to create more jobs in the economy as this coalition has done, creating 335,000 new jobs since we have come to office.

In the last couple of weeks, while we have been away from parliament, I have attended several citizenship ceremonies—one with the good member for Werriwa who is sitting in the chamber at the moment—and there in front of us we saw hundreds of people taking the pledge to become Australian citizens. Amongst them, we saw builders, architects, tradesmen, doctors, medical researchers and specialists, educators, mechanics, business people and entrepreneurs. The underlying premise of this motion is that, when these people come into Australia and start work, they take someone's job. That is the message that the opposition are sending through this motion.

But what actually happens when people come in from overseas is this. Firstly, they create extra demand, because they have a demand for housing—for accommodation—for food and for entertainment, and that demand creates more jobs. Secondly, the value-adding activities that they engage in drive innovation in our economy, and that in itself creates more demand and creates more jobs. So, as to this nonsense, we cannot stand here in this parliament and have these xenophobic speeches saying, 'The foreigners are coming in and they are all taking our jobs.'

The 457 visa program is an important component of our economy that allows companies to employ people from overseas where we have labour shortages. The employment conditions are exactly the same as those we have currently for all Australian workers. But, instead, we see these gold-medal-winning hypocritical statements, led by the trade union movement, who themselves are regular users of the 457 visa scheme. Only the other month it was disclosed that the trade union movement had sponsored 41 subclass 457 visas—

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