Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too was shocked to hear the news this morning that 650,000 new people would be coming to Australia this financial year. That's more than double what we would typically consider a big number of migrants into our country. We typically used to say that 300,000 was a huge amount of migration. I want to be very clear: I support migration. We have a long history of welcoming people from other countries. I myself am the product of that. But we have got to put Australians first. And we don't have enough housing for people who live here today. So why is this Labor government running migration levels at double the amount of what would be a high number, when we do not have enough housing for Australians? This Labor government came to power saying they wanted to increase wages. They wanted to help workers get a better deal. How is that going to happen when we're importing all of this cheap labour from overseas, competing against those that are the poorest in our society and keeping wages under pressure and not keeping up with inflation?

Inflation will only get worse if we take in more and more people without having adequate services to provide for them, because we will have more competition for the scarce amount of goods, and that will push up prices and push down real wages. How has this Labor government allowed this to happen? This is totally against what they promised the Australian people. We didn't hear any of this. Did anyone hear Anthony Albanese say that he would double our migration levels in his first year in office? He said he would lower power bills by $275. I heard him say that 97 times. I didn't hear him say once that he would double migration levels in the country. The housing crisis we are all seeing in front of our eyes is a direct result of the mismanagement of our borders by the Labor government. The Labor government has to get in control of our borders and make sure they put Australians first and make sure we decide how many people come to this country and when they come, because it is our nation and we should look after Australians first.