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

Australia is in serious trouble. We have an unprecedented housing and rental crisis. We don't have enough homes for everyone in Australia. Rental vacancy rates are lower than one per cent in our major cities. In my home state of Queensland homelessness has increased 22 per cent in five years. Increasing numbers of Australian families are living in tents and sheds and caravans and on the street, and we have a Labor government which refuses to do something to fix this crisis and which is actually making it so much worse.

Today's edition of The Australian newspaper reports that we are experiencing the biggest two-year population surge in our history. The Albanese Labor government is allowing 650,000 new immigrants into Australia this financial year and the next. That is more than the entire populations of Canberra and Darwin combined. Australia cannot accommodate all of these new people. Australia cannot contain these record numbers. Australia is bursting at the seams. Australia is full, and so are our hospitals and schools. We already have a shortfall of almost 700,000 homes for the people who are already here. Labor's pathetic housing future fund, if it even gets up, will make absolutely no difference. 30,000 homes in five years—what a sad joke. Labor is deliberately making the housing crisis even worse. Labor's record high immigration is literally forcing Australian families to live on the streets, and winter is coming. The net zero we must be prioritising in Australia is a net zero immigration, not net zero carbon dioxide. We must stop this flood, or we will all drown.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to 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.