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

I thank the member for Aston for the question. This fits in with the fourth of those issues that I referred to before: the government's determination to lift wages, to fight inflation, to strengthen Medicare and to improve access to housing. I think we were all a little bit astonished last week when we discovered that the opposition would be opposing a measure that the Leader of the Opposition, and the opposition generally, had connected to improving access to housing—that is, starting to hold back the net overseas migration numbers, particularly with respect to student visas. We discovered that the opposition would be opposing it notwithstanding that they had called for it and opposing it notwithstanding that they had welcomed it.

The member for Aston asks if there's a pattern here. I think there might be. Yes, they said they wanted to fix the migration system. Yes, they said that international students are overstaying visas. They describe that as a modern version of boat arrivals. Yet they ended up voting against the government having the power to put caps in place.

It's part of the pattern of reckless arrogance that we see from those opposite. There are policies like one I referred to before, where they are up-front and opposed to it. When they give all the speeches opposed to wage rises, we know they are going to vote against wage rises. The other half is, if they give speeches in support of something, they are going to vote against that too. It's been fairly consistent the whole way through. They said they cared about the housing crisis, but they voted against every single measure to build more houses. They said they cared about the cost of living, but when cheaper medicines were put in place, what did they do? They voted no. They said they cared about energy bill relief, but when energy bill relief was put in front of them, what did they do? They voted no. They said they cared about getting the skills there for people in the trades to be able to build more homes, but what did they do when we brought forward free TAFE? They voted no. They gave speeches about young people being in debt, but what did they do when there was legislation brought in by the education minister that's about reducing student debt? They voted no to it. What do they do when it comes to each issue here, particularly—of all the ones—migration? When there is something to contain migration, it doesn't matter how many speeches they have delivered about it; they vote no.

The reckless arrogance of those opposite is consistent. It's consistent because you know that if they say they're against something, they probably are, and if they say they support something, they are against that too.

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