Australians have never been asked what they think is a fair amount of immigration. The Lib-Lab parties both advocate for high immigration and as there are many different issues that go towards deciding the party to vote for on polling day, elections simply don’t provide a way for the public to express their opinion on migration.
The Plebiscite (Future Migration Level) Bill 2018 aims to give Australians a say on immigration levels through a plebiscite. Senator Hanson argues that high immigration is causing a per capita recession and is detrimental to Australians’ standard of living.
Current immigration policies favouring high numbers of immigrants are driving up housing costs, leading to catastrophic homelessness among Australians. The Morrison government and now the Albanese government have failed to address this issue.
Australians deserve to have a voice on immigration levels that are impacting their security, lifestyle and their ability to provide for their future.
Transcript
The Plebiscite (Future Migration Level) Bill 2018 is simply saying, ‘Give Australians a say.’ That’s all we want. We want to listen to the people and let the people decide. Give the people a say—a ‘voice’, if you like. Senator Hanson is driven to do what’s in the national interest. That means protecting Australians and protecting Australians’ lifestyle. This is simply a voice—give Australians a say.
Make no mistake; the figures show that we are in a per capita recession. I’ve said that in the past in the Senate and I continue to say it. Labor lies and policies are hiding that because you, as a government, do not want to be blamed for putting the place in recession. This is something that’s been carried through from the Morrison government to the Albanese government. Australia is in a per capita recession, and you’re hiding it with high immigration numbers. They raise artificially the GDP, making sure that we don’t have two quarters with negative growth.
Without high immigration, this country would be in recession. You are doing the people a disservice and you are hiding the fact that we are in recession. You’re doing the people a disservice because they’re now sleeping in cars, under bridges, in tents and in caravans. They’re being moved to showgrounds—moved along from parks—in Bundaberg, Gladstone, Townsville, Cairns, Logan, Ipswich and Brisbane. I can step out of the CBD in Brisbane and within minutes of walking I can find people living in tents. Through the chair: Senator Watt and Senator Ciccone, are you aware that in our state, which is so fundamentally wealthy, we have thousands of people living on the streets? They are being moved on daily because they can’t be kept in one place any more than three days. Some of these people have got jobs—and that’s where they live! We’re creating and exporting our wealth to the world—5½ million Queenslanders are creating wealth for the world and our own Queenslanders are living in tents and living in cars. Some of them are being picked on by rangers, and as they’re moved on their kids are confiscated. These are working people.
The key issue here is trust. We cannot trust the Albanese Labor government, just like we could not trust the Morrison Liberal-National government. Another key issue is serving the people. Senator Hanson mentioned it. I mentioned it. As servants to the people of Queensland and Australia, we are raising this issue because it is fundamental to Australians’ lifestyle, security and productivity.
Senator Hanson raised immigration many years ago. She’s famous for it. Three of her four grandparents were immigrants. She’s not against immigration; she’s against overimmigration. She’s making sure that the quality of migrants is suitable for our culture, our laws and our values. This, though, has nothing to do with Senator Hanson. It’s simply a plebiscite to give people a say. You wanted it for gay marriage, homosexual marriage, and now you won’t let the people have a say in something even more fundamental. Senator Hanson has a very simple approach to politics. She hasn’t an elaborate political philosophy. She has a simple approach: do what’s right for the national interest—that’s it. That means doing what’s right for the standard of living.
Senator Hanson and I are proud to support this bill because it is about propping up and restoring our standard of living. I raised immigration, particularly in connection with housing, starting a couple of years ago and I’ve been bashing it ever since. Have a look at my Facebook page, my Instagram page and my Twitter page. This has been a sincere and genuine concern of mine for years now. We have, as I said, people living in cars, tents and caravans and getting moved around in showgrounds. We had in January, just two months ago, record immigration. We had 125,000 new arrivals in January alone. I haven’t done the maths, but that’s around about 1½ million a year. After removing the number of people who left Australia that left 55,375 net migration into our country in one month. That was 40 per cent above the previous record for January way back in 2009. We have returned to the days of very high immigration, but we have gone way beyond that. We have 2.3 million people on working visas in this country, meaning 2.3 million beds and 2.3 million roofs over beds are needed. We have 600,000 students. We only have beds for 100,000 university students. So the university students we are bringing in to give us income are taking beds off Australians who need beds.
Politicians in this country, the Liberal-Nationals and the Labor-Greens, follow a ‘big Australia’ policy—a ‘massive Australia’ policy. The people do not. The people want a ‘fair Australia’ policy. Trust, as I raised a minute ago, has been languishing in this place, and trust in the Albanese government has plummeted. Trust is made up of two components basically: integrity or honesty and competence. The Albanese Labor government is showing neither.
As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, let me tell you about a phone call I had just yesterday. I had a New South Wales truckie call me. This man was looking for a job. He admires the way our office runs and he wanted a job. He’s a truckie. I’ve met him in the past. He’s a wonderful man with a wonderful family. He’s on the Central Coast of New South Wales. He helped out during the fires. It cost him a lot of money to help out during the fires of 2019. He stood up to the COVID injection mandates in 2021. He’s a really decent person, who was making sure that he stood up because the COVID injections killed his aunty. This is a man who’s got the same genetics as his aunty, and he knew that the COVID injections would kill him. As a result of the COVID mandates which Scott Morrison’s government put in place and drove, and as a result of the economic policies that Anthony Albanese’s government is driving, he lost his business, a vibrant business employing seven people.
Let’s look at housing. As I’ve talked about many times in the Senate and outside, we have a critical shortage of houses in this country. How do you respond as a government? You jack up the bureaucracy. You call it a $10 billion investment in housing when we know that that is just the fund and it’s only the returns from that fund which will be invested in housing—a few hundred million dollars a year. But you’ve added three new bureaucracies. They build bugger-all. What we need to do in this country is to stop the castration of property rights and to free up land. We need to free up tradies from overregulation and get on with the job of letting our tradies build the houses. People can’t find rental homes at the moment. The vacancy rate is 0.7 per cent—a record low. There are no bloody houses. And there are foreigners who own a lot of our houses and lock them up. But, no, you don’t want to do anything about that either. You turn a blind eye to that.
My mother was born in this country. My grandparents were born overseas. They were immigrants. My father was an immigrant. So I’m half immigrant and I’m proud of that. I’m proud of being Australian, but I’m ashamed that the people in this chamber and the people in this parliamentary building want Australians to suffer. When you’re in Queensland, one of the wealthiest places in the world, and you cannot get a house, so you sleep in a tent or in a car with your family, and you do it because they’re covering up a per capita recession, that is cruel and that is inhuman. It’s not just un-Australian. It is inhuman—the bureaucracy; the regulations; the United Nations World Economic Forum alliance; policies restricting land; big immigration policy; energy; inflation caused by the people in this chamber, the previous Morrison government and now the Anthony Albanese government; and energy prices. Our country is the largest exporter of hydrocarbon fuels in the world. When you add up our coal and our gas, we are the largest exporters of energy, but we can’t use it here. We drive up inflation. We drive up energy prices. We drive up housing costs, and then we see people living in the streets in tents in Queensland.
We see that the Liberals and Nationals are waking up to this issue. Senator David Sharma last night mentioned housing and immigration. We’ve been talking about it for several years now. He also mentioned that we need to do something about bracket creep. Recently, the Liberals and Nationals had a perfect opportunity to vote for my amendment on tax changes that would have ended bracket creep. You said no. Instead, you’re going to help the Labor Party steal $38 billion in the next four years from Australians because of bracket creep. You both want bracket creep. That’s the truth. You say that you don’t want it but, when the time comes to have a vote, you don’t vote for ending bracket creep. You vote for bracket creep because that’s how you steal more money from Australians, just like you’re stealing their livelihoods and their accommodation.
I proudly speak about people’s wants and needs. Australians have very simple wants and needs. They want security, they want a good Aussie lifestyle and they want a fair government that looks after them—not one that steals from them. They want people in this place and in the House of Representatives to put the national interest first —not to bring in 2,000 Gazan immigrants with just one hour of processing.
Only One Nation wants to give Australians a say. Under Senator Hanson as our leader—we’re the only party with a female leader, I might add, and proudly so—we’ve had a policy of a citizen initiated referendum for 10 or so years or perhaps even more, because One Nation is about giving the people a voice. One Nation is about holding Labor-Greens coalitions and Liberal-National coalitions accountable. A plebiscite is very, very simple. There’s only one question in it: should we reduce immigration? What are you afraid of? Should we reduce immigration? Let’s hear from the people: yes or no. That’s all we want. We want to put the people first in this country. That’s what we’ve been doing and that’s what we will continue to do. That’s why we have our energy policies and our immigration policies. We want to stop the mess that is unfolding in this country.
Australia used to have the highest per capita income in the world; that was 120 years ago. We’re now slipping below many other countries. We’re heading for 20th. Yet, according to the United Nations, we have the richest resources in the world. You and you are squandering those resources. You’re stealing from the Australian people and now you’re making sure that they don’t get a house and that they don’t get a rental. They’ll keep sleeping in parks. All Senator Hanson and I want is to put the people first, to serve the people and to give the people a say. Should we reduce immigration? It’s over to the people of Australia.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Allman-Payne): The question is that the bill be read a second time.
The Senate divided. [10:03]
(The Acting Deputy President—Senator Allman-Payne)
Yes. Immigration is out of control.
Why only ask for a referendum on migration. Introduce CIR and Australians get to vote on every contentious issue.
The housing shortage in conjunction with lax immigration controls is reminiscent of what is happening at the southern border of the United States. Although, the latter is far greater in scale.
There seems to be a concerted effort to demoralise and fragment the societies of Western countries.
Rampant immigration is part of the Marxist handbook on how to dilute the national sense of pride and belonging.
With both Labor and Liberal at the reign doesn’t allow anyone else to get a foot in the door this ensures that the course of immigration won’t get challenged and defeated and is applicable to everything else . Elites are desperate to hang onto this to ensure control especially now since people are waking up to their disguised deception .All that is needed now is a plan of action to combat the situation .
Agree, immigration to Australia needs to be cut down massively. No more than 50000 people per year.
Simply no homes no immigrants.
Fund adequately border force and seek and deport all illegals immediately out of Australia. A strong message is needed.
We need to train our children to fill any/all gaps in our workforce deficit. No excuses acceptable. If we spent as much money on our kids futures instead of NGO’s especially those who prioritise their own nations values. We would have billions to spend on our kids not migrant families.
All migrants should be videoed when applying for Australian citizenship.
They should pledge allegiance to Australia law and flag. Denounce any other law other than Australian law (for eg Sharia law). Pledge to live in peace. If they want to live their life fighting for their past countries issues they should go back and fight at the heart of it. Must speak basic English. Immigrants will be deported if not meeting specified Australian law and/or disturbing the peace. Strong borders evict those who seek to do Australia harm.
I’d love to see this, but really don’t expect to, as high immigration seems to be necessary to keep the whole ponzi scheme economy afloat. No one wants to take credit for a recession or a much-needed correction in the housing market.
As a result, “Houses for Hindus” seems to be the policy of both major parties. It will work out more expensive for everyone in the long run, of course, but by then, the loyal party members will have their pensions and fat corporate jobs.
Another thought: A vote like this would surely be decried as ‘too divisive’ (as if The Voice wasn’t divisive).
Given that the government are not in control of this country nor have been for a long time, wouldn’t it be top priority to remove all WEF members & tell the private corporation WEF to bugger off.
The digital ID is another threshold to imprison humanity.
As a pensioner I will not be dragged into this evil plan.
And here is another WEF agenda not stopped by any so called Australian authority.
The agenda plan to own nothing has been in the making for years, as with outragious immigration worldwide to destabalize the world.
8 billion people & we are twiddling our thumbs doing bugger all to stop this bs.
We have the right to forcibly throw our rancid politicians out of the front doors of parliament.
We don’t need any levels of immigration at this time until we can properly house and find jobs for our own citizens. Part of the problem lies with the fact that our own young people don’t want to work hard like their parents and grandparents. They have no work ethic because they are not taught these things in school like we were. The idea used to be that once you finished school, you either went straight to work or you went to college or University to train for the job you wanted to get. Australians have fallen into the trap of constantly bringing in migrants to fill the gaps in the working age people. This really has to stop sooner rather than later. School focus should be on teaching children the skills they need for working life rather than focusing on giving them “an experience” as I was told a few years ago.
It is so, so sad to see the increase of homeless people. Increase of rents and brutality of most money hungry lying Realestate’s. Over immigration brings in disease as well as crime. Is the Government the Antichrist? We are being destroyed through many different pathways. It’s disgusting!
Yes, Senator. I vote YES, and I for one, want immigration reduced extremely and severely. I cannot find suitable accommodation and have most of my goods in storage and am living in a costly granny flat. Before that I was homeless for 6 weeks, and I am a matured aged woman. Our true-blue Aussies ar not being given a fair go and are not being looked after by the politicians we have voted for who have made it their career to do nothing for their constituents, they are not doing their job in working for the people. I am paying rent and storage for somewhere to live as I cannot afford the rents required for a simple 2-bedroom place. I moved from regional to city and it is costing me more to survive in the city. I am not happy about what is and has been taking place and I want it to stop. It is not right that families are living in tents and that their children are being taken away from them. Make these foreigners who own houses and those who have locked them up, open them up for rent or confiscated them from them. We have way too many immigrants who are doing far better than our Australian born citizens in this land. These immigrants come here, and the vast majority of them have no intention in assimilating or will not, into our country and culture. They bring their culture and flag here and they rebel against the requirements that they should adhere to and live like they want to live as they did in their land. They don’t want to change, taking the benefits but not complying to what is required of them. Well, I say, if they won’t learn English and speak it in public instead of their language and dress appropriately without burkas and hijabs for one, and if they won’t assimilate into this culture as they should, then send them back to where they came from. Australia standard is becoming third world, and the foreigners are doing much better than those who were born here and have lived here all their lives. It’s back to front and has got to stop! As Senator Hanson would say, ‘Please explain.’ And explain they must.