Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I recognise that, for 230 years, migrants of many races and religions, amazing people from all over the world, have joined us to build our beautiful country into something greater than when they arrived. Now, though, we may be ending 2020 with 1.2 million Australians out of work and 1.2 million temporary visas. For 20 years Senator Hanson has warned that this day would come. In 2016 the Productivity Commission issued its 700-page warning on the imbalance in our immigration policy. The report questioned our high immigration intake's strain on infrastructure, the environment and quality of life in our capital cities. The government ignored the Productivity Commission. Why? To keep the flood of cut-price workers coming and to hide the data showing a per capita recession. That led to long-term pain in relation to infrastructure, housing, wages and state budgets. The inevitable result of that is high unemployment and more underemployment. Many of these unemployed Australians are migrants who came to contribute their labour, yet now languish on jobseeker benefits they don't want instead of going to the job they want. I congratulate one of my Labor colleagues on finally seeing the light and joining us in speaking up on the issue of excessive migration and foreign workers.

People might not be aware that on 3 May in a Sydney Morning Herald opinion piece, Senator Keneally asked:

… do we want migrants to return to Australia in the same numbers and in the same composition as before the crisis?

Senator Keneally's answer was no. The question now is: will Senator Keneally stand by her words and will the Labor Party stand by their shadow immigration minister?