Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to ask: where is the Minister for Home Affairs? I find this deeply disappointing. I've been a member of this place for seven years, and for six of those years, I've got to say, the minister fronted and responded to questions. We had a previous assistant minister here. He did not respond to any of the questions from this side of the House, and now we have another assistant minister here. With the greatest of respect, the Minister for Home Affairs should be here to hear this. I hope that we have the minister here when we continue this tomorrow. It was the same earlier today with respect to health; we did not have the Minister for Health and Aged Care or the Minister for Aged Care attending.

I would like to raise a couple of issues that are of concern to my electorate. We are in a housing crisis. I think that is very well known. My community is quite concerned that we have more than 331 households who are already experiencing rental stress, and vacancies in my electorate are less than 0.5 per cent in many areas. Yet we know, from the budget, that there is going to be increased pressure because overseas net migration is predicted to increase by 650,000 people over the next two financial years. I'm well known, and on the record in this place, for supporting the refugee intake and, in fact, looking to having it increased, but what we're going to see, with 650,000 new people coming over a two-year period, is that the challenges we're having with housing are only going to be exacerbated. And the hardship that that's going to place on Australians is going to be enormous. It's quite a foolish thing to do at this time when we have such a shocking vacancy rate in Australia. The budget does provide for funding for return to levels of migration at the lower end of 190,000 people per year, but when we're talking about 650,000 over the next two years the inflationary pressures that that will cause will be enormous. We've already had 12 consecutive rate rises, and I can't see how Australians are expected to cope with this. What commitment can the government give that its immigration intake will not add to inflationary pressures and will not, consequently, affect the availability of housing?

I'd like to talk about the ACCC and the oversight of the airline industry. Under direction from the Australian government, the ACCC has been monitoring and reporting on the domestic airline industry over the last three years. This arrangement expires in June this year. This is despite continued poor performance in arrival times, cancellations and above-average airfares and despite record profits. International airfares remain 50 per cent higher on average than in 2019. Domestic fares remain 17 per cent higher in nominal terms than at the same time in 2019. It's not surprising, when 94 per cent of all domestic travel is undertaken by the Qantas group and Virgin Australia, a duopoly of epic proportions. Will the government continue the ACCC oversight of the airline industry? If not, what measures will the government implement to ensure consumers can be confident of a competitive airline sector?

I'd also like to briefly touch upon skilled migration and the effect on the Pacific nations. I'm a big supporter of the PALM scheme. I've met with many people from Vanuatu and Fiji in my community. The Pacific engagement visa is an important program, but there is a great concern that there is a brain drain with that when we are offering permanent residency to people and they're not returning to their communities, after spending time in Australia, with greater skills and experience. So my question to the government is: is this a concern you have? Many feel that this is potentially an unintended consequence of the program. How will the government provide the necessary assistance to our Pacific neighbours to accommodate for the loss of skills through this and similar programs? Thank you.

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