Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

BURKE (—) (): I thank the shadow minister for the stream of consciousness. You have to make a decision as to whether you want to take action to contain and start to put downward pressure on the number of people who are arriving in Australia or not. That doesn't involve media conferences; it involves decisions.

There is a decision that this government took that we would put restraint on the number of student visas. That's one of the areas that government can quite directly control. I was reminded by a colleague, after the last answer, that those opposite actually were willing to put restrictions on whether Australian citizens could come into the country, but that's not something that we're about to do.

If you are not willing to vote for measures that will put downward pressure on net overseas migration, then just acknowledge you're going to let it rip—if that's the actual approach. But if you do as the opposition has decided to do today, which is to think they can run their rhetoric in one direction and their actions in the other, that sort of reckless arrogance gets found out. And this Leader of the Opposition was found out today because today, despite all the rhetoric, he had a decision as to whether or not to act on net overseas migration and he has made an active decision.

For anybody out there who might feel that they're missing out on rental accommodation because an overseas student has taken it, just know the Leader of the Opposition wants to make that situation worse. If anybody out there is thinking that because of the rate of immigration they're having trouble getting into a home, just know the Leader of the Opposition has decided to make that worse. And if you decide that you're going to not take the cuts on something like student visas, then the large area of the case load that's left, in terms of where the big numbers are, is skilled visas.

Where does it go, if you make the cuts on the people we need to get here to build the homes? You end up with the Leader of the Opposition going down a pathway that hits in both directions. You made this decision; you've got to own it now—too late to retreat.

See this speech in context