Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. It's a message that should resonate throughout this debate more generally. The Leader of the Opposition is an angry and divisive politician, and this debate and the tone that he seeks to infect this debate with, within our communities, are absolutely emblematic of that anger and that divisiveness that he seeks for all Australians to be infected with, as we discuss these important issues. This is not a matter for petty politics, and it should not be the Leader of the Opposition's express intention to inflame concern within our community where it is not warranted.

Australia has a long and proud history of successful migration. Along with First Nations people here in our country, a huge number of our community are either migrants themselves or descended from migrants. Migration has yielded enormous social and economic benefits for our community and our country.

Australians, sadly, are used to seeing this: the Liberal Party speak very little about migration and they do very little to encourage and support sustainable migration while they are in government. But, as soon as they find themselves on the opposition benches, notwithstanding that many of the fundamental policy frameworks of Australia's migration program are effectively managed on a bipartisan basis, such that there aren't fundamental changes to our migration systems between governments—and I'll come to that in a moment because, unfortunately, the last government did a very poor job of maintaining that migration system, but nevertheless—they immediately switch gears. The Liberal Party switches gears—and the Leader of the Opposition himself is the spear-chucker for this approach—to incite anger and incite division within the Australian community, as they seek to drive the wedge of fear into our communities.

I represent one of the fastest-growing communities in our country, and migration is a key contributor to that growth. I can assure this House that my community values that migration very highly. It has brought enormous social and economic benefits to our community directly.

It is an attack on our community and on Australian values when the Leader of the Opposition stands up and seeks to undermine our national harmony and the social cohesion that underpins our success as a nation, in order to score his cheap political points at the expense of our broader migration program.

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