Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

In an interjection a senator calls for greater control on the migration program. I suggest he might have thought about that when they were in government, when the student program went through the roof, when the 457 program went through the roof and when migration control in this country largely disappeared. There is no population target that this government has endorsed. Annual migration programs will be set by governments as they always have been, but we have tried to put it in a total planning framework. We have started work on what the impacts of that are on our cities, on our water on our built environment and on infrastructure. We take these issues seriously. None of that was considered under the former government. I know businesses are very concerned about the attitude of those on that side on these issues. They are very concerned about the scaremongering and the attempt to create fear rather than to deal with proper public policy issues— (Time expired)