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

Yes, I see the minister at the table. I actually defeated him once in a kayak race, if I remember correctly—but I digress. Port Hacking is in Sydney's southern waterways. The water there was absolutely pristine. You could see the sandy bottom two to three metres down and you could see the fish. This is all within a short distance of Sydney's CBD. This is a tourist attraction that I have in my electorate for people from China. We also have Garie Beach, a most magnificent place within the Royal National Park. Every weekend, so many Chinese tourists come to experience Garie Beach and visit the Figure 8 rock pools further south.

It is also important, in this bill, not only that we have the 10-year visa period but that the minister has the ability to make some of the changes that are needed. If a visa needs to be cancelled or a revalidation required, in this day and age the minister, surely, must have this discretion. For members of the Labor Party to go on about how terrible this is and to falsely link it to what the member for Griffith described as a Muslim ban is a disgrace to this parliament. We need to do everything we can to stop the false division that we see. Unfortunately, the member for Griffith failed in that task today.

The other thing that we hope to see in years to come is for this 10-year visa to be extended to many other countries. I would like to see in years to come this extended to many other countries that we deal with, because tourism is such an important sector of the economy. If we look at where our strengths will be in this economy in years to come, where will we be in 10 or 15 years time if we do not fix our corporate tax rate? Where will we be in 10 or 15 years time if our electricity costs are two and three times those of our major competitors? What industries will we have that will drive the prosperity of this nation in years to come? If you look at our industries, clearly our tourism industry is one of the most important that we have because it creates more opportunities for hotel construction, which creates jobs for all the tradesmen—the builders, carpenters, electricians, plumbers and landscapers—constructing tourism, not to mention our food suppliers. Every time a Chinese tourist or other overseas tourist comes to this country, they need to be fed. We have some of the best produce and some of the best wines that they can sample when they come here. This all increases the demand for the supply of goods from Australia and, therefore, increases employment opportunities and wealth creation opportunities for this country.

I hope that at the conclusion of this debate, or sometime during the day, the member for Griffith reconsiders her words and that she considers the potential division she created by her false labelling of the changes in the US visa system. I hope she comes back in here and says that she may have misspoken and corrects the record, because we cannot allow this to happen in the Australian parliament. It is one thing for some journalistic rags to make these false statements; it is completely another thing for elected members of the Australian House of Representatives to come into this parliament and say such things. I hope the member for Griffith reconsiders her approach to this and takes the opportunity that this parliament provides to come back into this parliament and correct the record. With that, I will conclude my speech by saying that I commend this bill to the House.

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