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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Why are we here? For what reason does this parliament exist? We are here to represent and exercise the will of the Australian people. We are their servants, and they are our employers. We are here by their leave, with their permission to do what they tell us to do. For many years, the Australian people have been telling us to lower immigration, to keep the numbers low, to put the interests of Australians living here before the interests of foreigners who don't. Since the election of the Albanese Labor government, these calls have grown louder and stronger. They're being heard in the newspaper columns of economic commentators and housing experts. They're being heard in the growing lines of people waiting to inspect a single property in the hope of securing a rental. They're being heard around family dinner tables, as Australians struggle to find the money for huge rent hikes amid our cost-of-living crisis. They're being heard in the daily traffic jams, as record numbers of immigrants flood our cities and increase congestion. They're being heard in the growing cities of tents, swags and cars popping up around Australia as more people fall into homelessness and despair. The Albanese government is deaf to all of them.

In January this year, there were just over 125,000 new arrivals. That's more than the entire population of Ballarat and almost as much as Darwin's in a single month. Since the election, the number of new arrivals has reached more than a million. Australia is experiencing the biggest two-year population surge in the country's history. There are now 27 million people in Australia. It's a staggering number. In September 2003, the Bureau of Statistics published a projection for Australia, which said our population would reach a figure between 23 million and 31 million by the year 2051. With our current immigration levels, Australia is on track to have more than 31 million people before 2035—16 years earlier than the ABS projected. This has happened despite the majority of Australians being firmly against it.

The majority of Australians do not want a big Australia. This is confirmed every time Australians are polled on the issue. Let's have a look at those numbers. In a Newspoll in 2018, 56 per cent of Australians wanted lower immigration. An Essential poll in 2018 found 64 per cent of Australians believed immigration was too high. In an Australian National University poll in 2019, 70 per cent of Australians did not support further population growth. In a Resolve Strategic survey in 2021 it was 58 per cent of Australians. In an Australian Population Research Institute survey in October 2021 it was 69 per cent. Then, in February 2023, an Australian Population Research Institute survey found that 70 per cent of Australians wanted lower levels of immigration. This is all about lowering immigration. They don't want a higher population. In an Essential poll in May 2023, it was 60 per cent of Australians. In a Resolve Strategic survey in July 2023, it was 59 per cent. On ABC's Q+A program in August 2023, 65 per cent of Australians wanted immigration cut to relieve pressure on housing. A Resolve Strategic survey in 2023 had 60 per cent of Australians saying immigration was too high, and 74 per cent thought immigration under the Albanese Labor government was unplanned and unmanaged. Then there was a Freshwater poll showing 61 per cent.

Labor isn't listening. It's not interested. The coalition didn't listen either until I kept putting pressure on them when it was around 260,000, and then Prime Minister Morrison dropped it to about 190,000.

One Nation has always championed lower immigration, in solidarity with the Australian people. I've been saying it since I first came here. Here's what I said in my maiden speech as the member for Oxley in 1996:

Immigration must be halted in the short term so that our dole queues are not added to by, in many cases, unskilled migrants not fluent in the English language.

I also warned we were in danger of being swamped by immigration from Asia. I was called racist, of course, by the major parties and big media, who are in lockstep for a big Australia. But today seven out of the top 10 source countries for immigration to Australia are in Asia, including four out of the top five. The numbers are out of control. Was I right? You'd never admit it, but yes I was. Immigration was higher then, and I tried to explain to people back then in 1996.

Then I said in my first speech in the Senate in 2016:

Australians have never been permitted to vote on immigration and multiculturalism. When have we been asked or consulted about our population? We reached a population of 24 million this year, 17 years ahead of prediction. Governments have continually brought in high levels of immigration, so they say, to stimulate the economy. This is rubbish. The economy is stimulated by funding infrastructure projects, creating employment. What major projects have we had in this country for the past 30 years? How many dams have we built in the past 50 years?

The only stimulation that is happening is welfare handouts—many going to migrants unable to get jobs. At present, our immigration intake is 190,000 a year. High immigration is only beneficial to multinationals, banks and big business, seeking a larger market while everyday Australians suffer from this massive intake. They are waiting longer for their lifesaving operation. The unemployment queues grow longer—and even longer when government jobs are given priority to migrants.

Our city roads have become parking lots. Schools are bursting at the seams. Our aged and sick are left behind to fend for themselves. And many cities and towns struggle to provide water for an ever-growing population. Our service providers struggle to cope, due to a lack of government funding, leaving it to charities to pick up the pieces. Governments, both state and federal, have a duty of care to the Australian people. Clean up your own backyard before flooding our country with more people who are going to be a drain on our society. I call for a halt to further immigration and for government to first look after our aged, the sick and the helpless.

Those were my words in 2016 in my maiden speech in this place. What's changed? Absolutely nothing. I'm delivering the same words today in this bill that I'm presenting, but I'm asking for the people to have a say because you have completely ignored the people. You're not listening to them.

Most Australians don't want high immigration, and the major parties completely ignore the polls that universally confirm this fact. However, there's one type of poll they can't ignore: a national plebiscite. This mechanism for asking every voter their opinion has been available to Australian governments since Federation but has only been used three times in 123 years. It was used twice during the First World War by our seventh prime minister, Billy Hughes, to ask Australians their opinion about military conscription. Both plebiscites saw Australians—most notably, the diggers themselves who went to the polling booths set up behind the trenches on the Western Front—reject conscription. The results prompted the first historic split of the Australian Labor Party, when Hughes took some senior members with him to join the old Commonwealth Liberal Party in 1917. Labor didn't win government again until 1929.

The only other plebiscite was held in the 1970s, when Australians chose 'Advance Australia Fair' as our national anthem, and I think it is time we have another one. It is important that we have another one. I think it's past the time to ask every Australian voter what they think is an appropriate level of immigration. This will give the major parties an opportunity to make their case—why they've completely ignored the will of the Australian people.

I find it amazing that in just about every newspaper, on radio stations and on TV channels our high immigration levels are spoken about, along with the housing crisis that we have and the congestion on our roads, yet you are doing absolutely nothing about it. You are increasing the numbers coming to this country, and you can spend $450 million to have a voice to parliament. That was more of a concern to you—to give less than three per cent of our population a voice to parliament. That's where your priorities lie, not with the Australian people. You must go around blindly when you drive down the cities and you see tent cities, people living in their cars, people queueing up in their hundreds to possibly get rental accommodation or those young Australians who will never have the hope and chance of owning their own home. It just amazes me.

The major parties will be able to explain how they keep immigration levels to please their corporate masters. They'll be able to come clean about the fact that they use high immigration to paper over the widening cracks in the Australian economy to burnish their terrible economic credentials. That's the real reason behind this, isn't it? Gross domestic productivity has dropped. You've lost industries and manufacturing, so you bring in migrants, who prop up the economy because they buy more whitegoods. You've got people like the Harvey Normans of this world and Bunnings who all want higher immigration because they're going to sell more products. That's what it's all about. You're not interested in the average person out there.

In 1996 I could see the writing on the wall, because I came straight from my shop. I was running a small business, talking to people and living it. I was living it, and that's why I've never forgotten. I don't know what happens to people when they come to this place. You lose your backbone. You actually lose contact with the Australian people. You don't really care because your seats are safe. You don't put yourself out there to actually raise the issues that are important to the Australian people. I don't think you really understand how much they're struggling. You go on and make your speeches in this place but when you're out in the real world it's a different matter. Your actions speak louder to me than your words, and there's no action on this at all.

As I said, national productivity has fallen more than seven per cent since the election of Labor, and we are now in a per capita recession. Let me repeat that: national productivity has fallen more than seven per cent since the election of Labor, and we are now in a per capita recession. Interest rates have soared, driving thousands of Australian families into mortgage stress. High immigration has been a disaster for Australia. On behalf of the majority of Australians, I demand a halt to immigration.

We must catch up on our housing, infrastructure and services. We must care first for the Australians living here now. Why is that such an issue? Why can't you just listen to the Australian people, pull back on the immigration and let us catch up on the services that we need? You can't even get doctors out to rural and regional areas, so health services are pathetic. You've now announced a $4 billion housing fund for Aboriginals to be built in remote areas at a cost of about $1 million plus per house, possibly $1½ million per house, and yet other Australians are living in tent cities. You're promoting and giving them a reason to go and live in remote areas with no hope of employment or real services, and it is going to cost the taxpayers more money to actually send people out there. It beggars belief, what you are doing.

I don't know who your masters are, but it's certainly not the Australian people. We are their servants, and we should be listening to them, but you've turned a deaf ear to the Australian people with regard to this. I want the people to have a say—a real say. There should be a debate. There's never been a real debate about this. You've never explained to the Australian people why we should have high immigration. You can't even explain that. You don't want to, because you can't. You're incompetent. Explain to them why you're bringing so many people into the country. Maybe they might agree with you if you can explain it, but I'm doubtful you ever can. It doesn't make sense to me. I hope that you see common sense and give the people a voice.

To the people out there, I say: if they don't give you a say on the high immigration that's coming into this country and destroying your way of life then don't vote for them anymore. Change your vote. Send a clear message. They don't deserve your respect, because they're not listening to you. They don't respect you. You are the Australian people. You have the power in your hands at the next ballot box. At the next federal election, make your vote count.