Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business (House)) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Laundy, I acknowledge you and I acknowledge our former Speakers. We have two former Speakers present here in the chamber today.

I rise today to refer to what ethnic community functions are going to see happen over the next few months. After we have had a government that has run fear campaigns around people of Chinese background, fear campaigns around people of African background and fear campaigns around people whose faith is Islam, we now go through the season in the lead-up to an election where members of the government turn up to function after function and say, 'By the way, we weren't talking about you.' This is where they turn up, function after function, and say: 'Oh, no, no. When we say we're going to do all these things to immigration, we are talking about those other people, not about you.'

I simply want to make clear here in the House today that no-one should think that dog-whistling works anymore. The concept that you can give a coded message and it will be heard only by certain people in the community is not how things work anymore. They're not dog whistles; they're foghorns. Everybody knows what the government is up to when it uses those so-called coded messages. People will not forget a government that tried to introduce, as a condition of citizenship, that you would have to pass a university-level English test—but not everyone is going to have to pass a university-level English test. If you came from an English-speaking country, you might have to pass a university-level English test; you might not.

There are about 50 countries in the world where English is an official or regular language, but only five of those countries were exempt from the university-level test, and they just happened to be the five white English-speaking countries: Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland and New Zealand. You can be speaking English your entire life and come from Singapore and you'll need university-level English under the law that those opposite all voted for, but, if you come from Canada, you won't. That is how they have behaved this term. When people go to vote at the next election, they need to remember not the fact that the government, over the last few months, will have suddenly said all the right things at community events but the fact that this government has behaved this way the entire term and will be trading preferences with Pauline Hanson at the election.

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