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

I rise to oppose the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Australia’s Engagement in the Pacific) Bill 2023 in the strongest possible terms. I want Australian farmers to know I understand the importance of Pacific island workers to their businesses. Their labour is crucial. Their labour is critical for Australian horticulture and agriculture, on the farms and in thee packing sheds, because many Australians unfortunately will not do this work. I think farmers once preferred to hire Australians but their experience these days is that Pacific islanders are more reliable and productive. I am sorry to say that is an indictment on the attitudes of many Australians living on long-term welfare. They sit on the couch at taxpayers' expense while the Australian economy screams for more workers because the government accommodates them.

The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme is a good deal for the workers too. They earn high Australian wages and, when they are finished, they take their money home to support their families and local economies. This system is working reasonably well as it is, and I see no compelling reason to change it. However, this Labor government is addicted to record immigration despite all the problems it is causing, and this bill paves the way for yet more people to flood across our shores. We may need their labour but we don't need Pacific islanders to bring their families with them for what is supposed to be a temporary stay to do seasonal work in Australia. We certainly don't need to allow these families to access a range of benefits including family tax benefits A and B, HELP, student loans, Youth Allowance, Austudy and childcare subsidies.

Minister Conroy's office has said the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Australia's Engagement in the Pacific) Bill 2023 will provide benefits to migrants under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility, PALM, scheme's family accompaniment pilot and to permanent migrants under the Pacific engagement visa. The PALM scheme allows Pacific and Timorese workers to come to Australia for up to four years in sectors facing labour shortages like agriculture. This means workers are away from their families for extended periods. To address this, the government is introducing a new PALM policy. This will allow PALM scheme workers on placements of one to four years to bring their spouse and children to Australia. It will commence with a pilot for 200 families.

The bill will amend the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 to enable eligible PALM workers taking part in the family accompaniment pilot to access family tax benefits part A and B, and the childcare subsidy. This will help these workers with the cost of raising their families and enable their spouses to participate in the workforce. The Pacific engagement visa, PEV, will allow up to 3,000 Pacific and Timorese nationals to come to Australia as permanent residents each year. Visas will be granted in a two-stage process. In the first stage, applicants register in a ballot. In the second stage, applicants selected on the ballot apply for the visa. To be granted a visa applicants will need to meet eligibility criteria, including having a formal job offer with an employer in Australia; be aged between 18 and 45; meet basic English language requirements—who knows what that will be, if they know the ABC; and meet immigration, health and character requirements. As we've seen in the past with the people that come into this country, I don't have a lot of faith in that one either.

The office goes on to say: 'The bill will support the Pacific engagement visa by amending A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 to provide an exemption to the newly arrived resident's waiting period for family tax benefit part A for PEV holders and by amending the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to extend the Higher Education Loan Program, HELP, to PEV holders—the fact is that between HELP and HECS debt, we are owed around $60 billion, but let's just increase it even more; amending the Social Security Act 1991 to provide an exemption to the newly arrived resident's waiting period for PEV holders for youth allowance, student, youth allowance apprentice and Austudy; amending the VET Student Loans Act of 2016 to extend eligibility for VET student loans to PEV holders.'

It goes on: 'These benefits are being provided because PEV holders are expected to be a lower-skilled cohort than most other permanent migrants. Providing social and education benefits will support successful settlement experiences. Supporting PEV holders to engage in education and training will build capability and increase productivity, benefiting Australian employers and the broader economy over the working life of each PEV holder. This will also deliver economic and skills dividends for the region through increased remittances, investments and education and skills exchange.' A lot of Australians out there can't get assistance for HELP, but we're going to open it up to people who have not given anything to this country and give them all these helping hands and provide for them, and these are lower-skilled people. This is insane. Benefits are being provided because these visa holders are expected to be lower skilled. Why is Labor supporting lower-skilled overseas workers that are almost certainly going to need considerable taxpayer support for themselves and their families?

Listen to this from the bill's explanatory memorandum:

A key measure of success will be growth of a flourishing Pacific diaspora in Australia …

They want a separate colony of these people, who are not to be part of the Australian community. Where is this diaspora going to live, when we don't have enough homes for the people who're already here? Labor's housing policy will not make an appreciable dent in the estimated shortfall of 650,000 homes we have in this country. Labor's housing policy is a joke, providing 30,000 homes over the next five years, especially when it is Labor's very own immigration policies that are the primary cause of the housing and rental crisis that's driving more Australian families into homelessness and mortgage stress. We have plenty of enclaves in the Australian community already, and we have seen the effects of this in demonstrations of support for Islamic terrorism atrocities in Israel. As increasing numbers of political leaders are now saying, this proves multiculturalism has been a failure. John Howard is saying it, John Anderson is saying it, the United Kingdom's Home Secretary is staying it, Angela Merkel has said it, Nicolas Sarkozy has said it. The late Bill Hayden said it to me in 1996, and I have been saying it for more than 25 years. We don't have a multicultural society; we have a multiracial society, and, as demonstrations supporting terrorism have shown, some of these people just don't belong in Australia.

What Labor is saying in the explanatory memorandum is that this bill is aimed at increasing our population through yet more immigration. They simply don't care about Australian families going through homeless, they don't care that their record immigration suppresses wage growth and drives inflation and that the Reserve Bank has just raised interest rates again, for the 13th time in 19 months. They don't care that it puts more pressure on our infrastructure and public health systems, and they don't care that the majority of Australians don't support high immigration. With this bill, which will enable thousands of foreign families to access a wide range of benefits, Labor show they don't care about increasing the social welfare cost to taxpayers, which already exceeds $250 billion per year. There are almost 900,000 Australians receiving unemployment benefits today, many of whom are perfectly capable of working while our economy screams for workers across almost every sector. Labor's priority should be getting these Australians into work, and they're not going to do that by lifting unemployment benefits. We need much stronger incentives to force the long-term unemployed capable of working into the many jobs that are waiting for them.

One Nation's policy would make it happen. We advocate making unemployment benefits available to Australians for only two years out of every five. Remember: it's meant as a helping hand, not a way of life or a vote-winner for the major parties, which keep paying the long-term unemployed able to work. Our policy would rapidly reduce the numbers of people living off the taxpayer, substantially reduce our quarter-trillion-dollar annual welfare bill and put an end to unemployment as a lifestyle choice for people capable of working.

There are other aspects of this legislation which are a problem. We will be draining our Pacific neighbours of their population and their workers. These are workers who return season after season to spend their Australian wages in the local economy and support their families. The Cook Islands have already signalled their concerns, and I expect others will follow. Labor says this legislation is part of its engagement strategy with our Pacific neighbours, supposedly in response to the growing influence of communist China in the region. The irony is that Pacific nations routinely smack Australia over its one per cent contribution to human carbon dioxide emissions but say nothing about China's 30 per cent of global emissions because they've gone to China for dodgy loans to prop up their fragile economies and built infrastructure. When this debt is called, they will no doubt come to us, screaming for help. I'll be saying: 'No, you made your bed. You lie in it.'

Yes, we are desperate for workers in Australia. Whether it's in the horticulture or farming sector, whether it's as boners in the abattoirs, I hear it through many places that I've travelled. It doesn't matter what businesses they are; they're screaming out for workers. As I said, we've got 900,000 unemployed on unemployment benefits. Some of them have been on it for 20, 30 or 40 years. You can't get the real figures for it, but there are large numbers. Neither side, whether it be the coalition or Labor governments, is prepared to do anything about it to rein that in. Our welfare bill is $250 billion a year. Six years ago, it was $180 billion; now we're up to $250 billion. But no; bring more people into the country, with high immigration of over half a million people a year. You've got over 687,000 students in the country as well. That's why there's a housing shortage. But no; let's bring in the Pacific islanders because we can't get workers. Let's open up the floodgates and give them tax benefits, child care, student loans—all these things that you're talking about are a cost to the taxpayer.

Where's the money coming from? Who's going to pay for this? It will be future generations. You want to bring people in to prop up your vote as well, I've got no doubt, and to prop up the economy. Until you realise what you are doing here—and I know there's no care from either side, because you're of the opinion that it's alright to bring more and more people into the country. Future generations will be paying for this. What is happening to our country is a real shame. I've got nothing against these people. They talk about their islands sinking and all the other rubbish and say that we're to blame for it. We're not to blame for it. There's more to this climate change than just human emissions, and to blame it on human emissions is absolutely ridiculous. Only three per cent of human emissions come from carbon dioxide, so what do you say about the other 97 per cent that's through human resources?

You put out that we need to bring these people into the country. You're going to deplete these islands of their own people: the youth, the people that they require for their own economies, for their own wellbeing. You're just going to bring them here. We have a system where these people come over here for work, they work and they keep the money. It's their families that actually say, 'I want to go back home to the Cook Islands'—or wherever they're from—'because my family is there.' But it's not only that; it's extended families as well. You're going to deny them the ability to go back to their own countries by opening up the floodgates.

And to have a ballot system—how ridiculous is that? They will go into a ballot system. What's the ballot system? What about their skills? Are you going to see if they actually have the skills before you put them into the ballot system so that they actually come here before they get the visa? What are their English skills? What are their other skills? Then you talk about all the problems, such as character, even for the whole family. Are you going to put the whole family through a character test? Are you going to put them through a health test to see if the family is able, or is it going to be a drain on the taxpayers?

You've got a lot of questions. Australians are struggling to have that care that they need in our hospital system, housing and all the rest of it, but you're going to flood it with more people of lower economic circumstances. You're going to open up more floodgates, and the Australian people will suffer in the long run.