Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator Hanson. I think any reasonable observer would see the work that has been done by a series of Labor ministers to deal with the higher numbers of migration that Australia has seen since we emerged from COVID. We all know that immigration essentially disappeared through the COVID pandemic, and we also know there was a massive rebound in migration numbers post COVID, as we saw students return to Australia and as we saw in some cases Australians return to Australia, who had been unable to return. There were workers as well. And we made very clear some time ago that we recognised we needed to take action on our migration numbers. That's why, as I say, the Albanese government has taken action in this regard. In particular, we've taken a number of measures to reduce the number of international students coming to Australia. I'm aware that not every part of the community supports that action. In particular, some universities have got concerns, some VET colleges have got concerns and some political parties have got concerns about that. But our view was that it was necessary to reach greater balance in terms of our migration numbers, and that was one of the reasons we undertook those steps. We've also taken steps such as ending the pandemic event visa, ending unlimited work hours for international students and ending work exemptions for working holiday visa holders. These were all steps that had been taken under the former coalition government that did see a massive increase in the migration numbers that we were seeing in Australia once we emerged from the pandemic. We launched a crackdown on rorts in international education, cracking down on shonky providers and closing loopholes that were being used to bring non-genuine students into the country. Of course, we've implemented a much broader reform package to restore integrity to the system.