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During this session with Housing Australia, I call out the lack of transparency and the questionable math behind the home deposit guarantee schemes.

I asked Mr Langford why it took nine weeks to get an answer to a simple question: how many borrowers have exited the scheme? They finally admitted that of the 185,000 guarantees issued since the scheme was launched, over 45,000 have already been discharged.

I’m highly sceptical of their reported “success” rates. They previously claimed that there were only 11 defaults out of 250,000. The actual arrears rate on bank loans is around 1% – 227 times higher than the claimed arrears rate of 0.0044%. Therefore, it’s statistically impossible!

My point is simple: they don’t actually track people once they exit the scheme, so they’re essentially flying blind when it comes to the data.

Despite Minister Ayres’ attempts to paint every exit as a “success story,” the data proves it’s not that simple.

As at the end of December 2025: ❌ 0.3% or 336 of borrowers are 90+ days in arrears, ❌ 0 .8% or 1000 are currently under hardship arrangements and ❌ 347 are in early-stage arrears (30–90 days).

While they boast that many are ahead on payments, I’m concerned about the “cliff” ahead.

When I asked for modelling on what happens to these 95% mortgages if interest rates rise three more times this year, they admitted they have no modelling for that scenario.

Ms Jarman has committed to providing me with a copy of the information guide for first-home buyers. I want to see for myself if it properly warns Australians about the massive risks of a 95% mortgage in a rising-rate environment.

— Senate Estimates | February 2026

Transcript

CHAIR: I’m going to rotate the call. Senator Roberts.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair. Thank you for appearing again today, Mr Langford. You undertook at the last hearings to answer on notice how many borrowers under your two and five per cent deposit guarantee scheme have exited since the program started. That was question on notice 458. That should be a number you have to hand very easily. You haven’t answered it in the nine weeks since the hearing. Why not?  

Mr Langford: I’ll ask my colleague Ms Jarman, who has just come to the table, if we have that information to hand. As to the delays, we apologise. There may have been some delay if we didn’t have that information to hand.  

Ms Jarman: Sorry, Senator—can you repeat exactly what information you’re after?  

Senator ROBERTS: You undertook at the last hearings to answer on notice how many borrowers under your two per cent and five per cent deposit guarantee scheme have exited since the program started. That was question on notice 458. I’d like the number, please.  

Ms Jarman: Yes, we do have the number that have exited. Of the 185,000 guarantees that have been issued since the launch of the scheme, 45,837 of those have discharged.  

Senator ROBERTS: You told me at the last hearing that there were only 11 defaults out of 250,000 guarantees issued. The actual arrears rate on banks’ loan books is around one per cent. That’s 227 times higher than your claimed arrears rate of 0.0044 per cent. Do you accept that your number is almost statistically impossible and only appears good because you don’t actually track the people who exit the scheme? Once they’re gone, they’re gone.  

Senator Ayres: Exiting is good.  

Senator ROBERTS: You don’t track them once they’re gone.  

Senator Ayres: These are people who have bought a home—  

Senator ROBERTS: Don’t try and change the topic. I’m asking the question. I want to know—  

Senator Ayres: under the scheme, then sold their home and moved on to their next home. That is the foot on the ladder that the scheme is designed to provide.  

Senator ROBERTS: Minister Ayres, at the last hearing, you said—  

Senator Ayres: That’s what it’s for.  

Senator ROBERTS: that people who are facing hardship can’t refinance. Do you know that that’s false?  

Senator Ayres: What do you mean?  

Senator ROBERTS: ‘People who are facing hardship can’t refinance,’ you said. That’s false.  

Senator Ayres: I said that people who are facing hardship can’t refinance?  

Senator ROBERTS: That’s what you said. 

Senator Ayres: I don’t know what context I said that in. You’re moving—  

Senator ROBERTS: Can you update me on—  

Senator Ayres: from one proposition, demonstrably not the case—  

Senator ROBERTS: And you’re changing my proposition. I’m trying to get on with it.  

Senator Ayres: which is that it’s a bad outcome.  

Senator ROBERTS: Why are you running from this, Minister Ayres?  

Senator Ayres: No. I’m running to this. I’m running to this. This is a good outcome.  

Senator ROBERTS: You changed my first proposition.  

Senator Ayres: This is a good outcome. I’m sorry if you’re confused about it. This is a good outcome for young Australians. 

Senator ROBERTS: I think you’re misleading.  

Senator Ayres: Buying a home, selling a home, buying a new one—this is a good outcome.  

Senator ROBERTS: Can you update me on your latest percentages for in advance, on schedule, in arrears and hardship?  

Ms Jarman: I can do that. As at the end of December, 0.3 per cent of the portfolio were 90 days plus in arrears, 0.8 per cent were under hardship arrangements, 26 per cent of the portfolio were on schedule with payments and 73 per cent were in advance of their repayment schedule.  

Senator ROBERTS: Do you also have the actual numbers each of these percentages represent?  

Ms Jarman: I do.  

Senator ROBERTS: Could we have them please?  

Ms Jarman: Sure. We had 33,134 on schedule, 93,104 in advance, 336 ninety days in arrears and 1,000 in hardship. There is another category, for completeness. If you’re adding up to the total number of guarantees, in arrears of 30 to 90 days—so early arrears—there are another 347 customers there.  

Senator ROBERTS: How many total guarantees are those percentages of—is it less than the 250,000?  

Ms Jarman: The 250,000 is the number of Australians supported under the scheme. We’ve only ever issued 185,000 guarantees, but only 127,000 of those are active in the book at the moment. The rest of those have already discharged out of the scheme.  

Mr Rimmer: I gave evidence earlier in the day that the 0.3 per cent 90-day arrears rate is better than the other relevant arrears.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I heard that.  

Senator Ayres: I also should have said, Senator, again for the sake of completeness, that people exit the scheme if they sell their home. They also exit the scheme when they hit the 80 per cent loan-to-value ratio. That is, they come in at five per cent and make repayments that pay the 15 per cent gap over time, and then they’re considered to have exited the scheme. That’s also a good thing.  

Senator ROBERTS: How many five per cent mortgages that you got first home buyers into do you expect a default if interest rates are raised three times this year?  

Senator Ayres: Your One Nation colleague asked the same questions about an hour and three-quarters ago.  

Senator ROBERTS: He actually said ‘if we are entering a cycle’. I want to know what would happen with three interest rate rises.  

Mr Langford: I don’t believe we have modelling for that proposition that you’re putting forward.  

Senator ROBERTS: Do you, as the administrator of the five per cent deposit guarantee, provide first home buyers with any warnings about the risk of a 95 per cent mortgage?  

Ms Jarman: Yes, we do. As part of the application process, we’ve got an information guide. That guide clearly outlines what the guarantee is and how the guarantee is there to protect the lender and not the borrower. It also outlines the obligations of the borrower in terms of repayment of the mortgage and the circumstances in which the borrower is still liable.  

Senator ROBERTS: Could I have a copy of that on notice, please? 

Premier Malinauskas is campaigning in the South Australia state election with the lie that building submarines in SA will provide our young with “breadwinner” jobs — jobs that will allow them to own their own homes, start a family and generally live the life successive Liberal and Labor governments have actually taken from them.

The numbers don’t add up. The subs’ program will employ 4,500 people during fit-up and 4,500 during construction, out of a workforce in South Australia of 975,000. Shipbuilding already employs 14,000 and many of these will move over to the subs.

Most likely, the subs will employ a few hundred of our young, a drop in the employment bucket in SA. Not only is the Premier lying about how many young people will be employed in subs’ construction, he’s wrapping the whole thing up in an elitist sales pitch. Your children, he says, will be so busy building subs and living the high life that they will not have time to look after their elderly parents; therefore, we need immigrants to, quote: “wipe their bums.”

This is offensive to South Australians who are looking after their parents and to aged care workers who do so much more than personal care.

The Premier’s elitist view of the world is not shared by One Nation.

Transcript

One Nation has long maintained that the immigration invasion is about politics, not economics. South Australian Premier Malinauskas waded into that debate last month, when he said:  

My message to One Nation voters is: ‘Who’s going to feed you and bathe you and wipe your bum when you’re 90?’ … Because it ain’t going to be your kids, because if I get my way, they’re going to be working on submarines, with high-paying jobs, so they can afford to own their home … 

And he said that, if we’re taking real people out of the housing construction industry to work on the submarines, we’re going to need people to do that work too—to work in aged care. What a socialist nirvana South Australia will be, with migrants, according to the Labor premier, acting as a servant class to their white masters and their children, who will have economic abundance and not have to wipe their own bums! 

Elitism and socialism go hand in hand. The Russians, during communism, called this elitist cabal the ‘nomenklatura’. In communist China, they’re called ‘princelings’ for their wealth and imperial manner. In Australia, we just call them the Labor Party. What an insult to the many migrants with real qualifications who have come to Australia to lift themselves up through their own hard work and endeavour and who, in so doing, have lifted up all who are here. 

A quick look at employment numbers gives the lie to the Premier’s grand vision of recreating the Raj in Adelaide. Total employment on the submarine program will be 4,500 during construction of the shipyard and then 4,500 to build the submarines. The 10,000 jobs are sequential, not all at the same time. The size of the South Australian labour market is 975,000 people. Shipbuilding already employs 14,000 people, some of whom will move over to the subs. All we need to fill the remaining places is for state and federal Labor to start planning now for the subs workforce through targeted vocational and university placements for Australian workers. The Premier’s big pitch to the electorate is elitist and dishonest. 

Australia was once the richest country per capita in the world. Today, we have the worst poverty I’ve seen in my lifetime—yet we still have abundant resources, farmland, and energy. Successive Liberal and Labor governments have shut down industries that provided breadwinner jobs, strangled farmers with green tape and UN blue tape, and sold out our wealth.

Our GDP is growing, yet Australians are getting poorer. Wealth is being transferred to foreign billionaires and their investment funds—BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street—who now control our banks, retailers, telcos, and energy companies. Prices go up, markets are rigged, and everyday Australians are pushed into poverty while executives take multimillion-dollar salaries for compliance. Housing is worse than ever. Rents in Sydney have surged 40% since 2021, and Melbourne and Brisbane aren’t far behind. Over half of low-income renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Meanwhile, the government floods the country with mass migration, driving up demand and destroying quality of life. They paper over the cracks with debt, money printing, and more public servants, which only makes things worse. One Nation warned this would happen.

Net zero, mass migration, and bureaucratic strangulation are killing our standard of living—and now one in seven Australians lives below the poverty line, including one in six children.

One Nation has solutions:

👉 abolish net zero policies and subsidies

👉 end mass migration

👉 ban foreign ownership

👉 cut red, green, and blue tape

👉 restore breadwinner jobs

👉 protect our farmers

👉 make housing affordable again

These problems are man-made, and they can be solved. One Nation is right—and we’re fighting for Australians, not foreign billionaires or globalist agendas.

Transcript

Welcome to the latest episode of your favourite TV show: One Nation Were Right All Along. First up, we have the Nationals finally seeing the light of the net zero scam—well, kind of. Their support has gone from unqualified support to ‘how much net zero can we do before we start losing seats?’ In their announcement, Nationals leader David Littleproud said: ‘The Nationals accept the science of climate change and remain committed to emissions reduction. The current aggressive pursuit of net zero is unfairly damaging to regional Australia and economically unsustainable for the country’—he’s waking up—’We need a slower pace aligned with the OECD average’.  

That’s a clever sleight of hand. The OECD reduction has stalled for five years. Their accumulative reduction is currently 14 per cent, and Australia’s is 24 per cent. The latest data will show ours at 28 per cent, double the OECD’s. Tying Australia to the OECD will buy the Nationals an election or two before having to restart reductions. Remember, though, that they still believe in net zero and in the need to cut carbon dioxide production. I welcome the Nationals realisation of the damage net zero is doing and wish they had more courage to walk away from the scam entirely. 

In contrast, One Nation strongly oppose net zero, and we would abolish all federal government net zero mandates, programs and boondoggles. We would shut down all the schemes and departments promoting this scam, saving taxpayers $30 billion every year. This is not the only cost of course. Parasitic billionaires and corporations sucking on taxpayer subsidies and electricity consumer subsidies, and others in private industry, are taking advantage of this scam to build industrial solar and wind, transmission lines, big batteries and other paraphernalia of net zero. This cost will be as high as $1.9 trillion through to 2050. Remember that industrial solar and wind lasts only 15 years, which means everything that has been built so far will not be in use in 2050 and will have to be built again and again. The government’s Bollywood version of the cost of net zero does not take into account this massive expense—nor do they consider the environmental cost of the destruction of native forests for wind turbines, access roads and transmission lines; the cost of dumping these monstrosities into landfill every 15 years; or the run-off from toxic metals from damaged solar panels. This would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. 

Electricity is an input cost right across the economy. The price of everything you buy, from physical goods in stores to services and financial products, goes up as the electricity bills of the companies providing those services go up. Everyday Australians are poorer because of net zero, and so is Australia’s beautiful natural environment. The government used to say, ‘Renewables are cheaper, so prices will come down eventually.’ However, after 20 years of the transition—the last three at breakneck pace—electricity bills are not coming down; they’re rising rapidly.  

Some of those who are wealthy enough and have an actual house in which to install solar panels and an expensive wall battery are reporting slightly reduced electricity bills. The very few Australians with the money to spend $25,000 on a solar array and wall battery for a home they own are thumbing their noses at the millions that do not have a house and $25,000 to add solar and a battery. Net zero is becoming a case of the haves and have-nots. Those who can’t afford their own electricity generation are left to buy electricity at prices that have increased at twice the rate of inflation since the net zero benchmark year of 2005. It’s a trend that continues, with a nine per cent increase in electricity prices in 2025. 

One Nation are right in our opposition to mass migration. Today we learnt that the majority of Australians agree with us—right again. A poll in the Australian yesterday showed that almost two-thirds of Australians want a reduction in the migration rate; 94 per cent of One Nation supporters support reduced migration, which has now been a feature of One Nation policy for 30 years, ever since the Liberal-National coalition under John Howard doubled migration and started mass migration. Significantly, 78 per cent of coalition voters want a reduction in immigration, and so do 71 per cent of supporters of smaller parties and independents, which does include the teals—so that’s very interesting. 

What caught my eye with the poll is that two parties who have been pushing infinite immigration are doing so against the wishes of their supporters. Only 10 per cent of Labor’s supporters want more migrants, while 49 per cent want fewer. While 27 per cent of Greens voters want more immigration, 32 per cent want less. Immigration is now one of the biggest election issues in New South Wales, which is not surprising, given the rental crisis in the greater Sydney area, thanks to the Albanese immigration invasion. It is interesting to see there is no gender divide on immigration. Opposition to high immigration is spread evenly between men and women. 

It’s a betrayal of the very concept of democracy for this government to continue its globalist agenda to flood Australia with these very high levels of mass immigration against the wishes of the Australian people. Liberal and Labor governments are importing too many new arrivals from cultures that do not readily assimilate and bring with them a religion, Islam, that seeks to carve out a slice of this country to introduce their own system of law—divisive. 

At the same time, the government is inhumanely ignoring the tragedy of the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, in Sudan and in South Africa. I asked the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs yesterday in question time how many Christian refugees we brought in from these trouble spots. The answer was telling: zero! I asked who’s benefiting from Australia’s humanitarian intake. His answer was that the top five countries for refugee visas, 15,000 in all, are all Islamic countries. This is nothing more than selective discrimination against Christians. In the past, Australians would have considered this sedition. One Nation still does. 

Third, One Nation is correct about the standard of living. For years, I’ve been warning the Australian people that the net zero agenda, combined with mass immigration, is destroying business investment in our productive capacity, reducing living standards. Sky News is reporting today just how bad things have become. One in seven Australians now live below the poverty line, and one in six children are below the poverty line. That’s 3.7 million people struggling to pay for food, power and rent in a nation bursting with resources, all a result of Liberal-Labor uniparty policies—mass migration, net zero, housing, overregulation. 

In what was once the richest country, per capita, in the world, we now have the worst poverty in my lifetime, yet we still have the natural resources; the abundant hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil and natural gas; amazing farmland; and a strong tourism industry. For years, successive Liberal and Labor governments have shut down industries that provided breadwinner jobs in steelworks and heavy manufacturing, and value-adding jobs like textiles. They weighed our farmers down with so much green tape and blue United Nations tape that they are struggling to stay afloat. Australian wealth is being sabotaged in a process called ‘managed decline’. It’s deliberate. Yet our GDP is still growing. What’s going on? Australia’s wealth is being transferred from Australians to foreign beneficiaries. The world’s predatory billionaires have used their investment funds, like BlackRock, First State, Vanguard and State Street, to buy not only shares in Australian companies but entire industries. Except for two of our insurance companies, all our insurance companies are foreign owned. 

Major retailers Coles, Woolies and Bunnings are foreign controlled. The Australian big four banks are foreign controlled, and so are our telcos and oil and gas companies. Satan’s bankers then put up prices, knowing they control the markets, so consumers become price takers. There’s no market anymore; it’s controlled. Australians working at the top of these companies take extremely high salaries—in many cases, multimillion dollar salaries—in return for compliance, and everyday Australians go backwards into poverty. 

The government is making things worse, allowing so many new arrivals that housing prices and rents are forced upwards, while quality of life and standards of living go backwards. In Sydney, median unit rents have surged 40 per cent since 2021, and Melbourne and Brisbane aren’t far behind, climbing more than 30 per cent. For low-income renters, over half now spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing—30 per cent on housing! Our prime minister went to the last election promising to leave no-one behind, knowing his policies were doing exactly the opposite. The government is now increasing spending on housing, on paid parental leave, on child care and on hiring more and more and more public servants on high wages to paper over what is a crashing economy. The government can’t use debt and money printing forever to save its backside. Debt and printing money cause their own severe economic problems and then more poverty. 

One Nation has opposed the net zero war on business investment. We have opposed the migration invasion, and we warned that these policies, combined with the red bureaucratic tape, green tape and blue United Nations tape would destroy the standard of living in our beautiful country. And it has. We bloody told you so! We have put forward solutions and practical, effective policies to solve all these challenges—proven solutions. All these issues are due to decades of dishonest Liberal-Labor uniparty policies and laws. As President John F Kennedy said: 

Our problems are man made. Therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. 

One Nation is right. 

A good idea has many parents—just look at the push to suspend costly National Construction Code changes. One Nation proposed it first, saving $50K per home. Now the Liberals and Labor are claiming credit.

Yet the real crisis is homelessness, driven by mass immigration policies started by the Liberals and turbocharged by Labor—over 500,000 arrivals a year while Aussies sleep in cars.

Only One Nation has a comprehensive housing policy. We would cut demand by stopping illegal immigration and visa abuse, ban foreign home ownership, slash construction costs by ending net zero and overregulation. On the finance side, One Nation would roll HECS debt into home loans and allow super to fund deposits.

It’s time to put Australians first.

Transcript

A good idea or a popular idea has many parents. A bad idea or an unpopular idea is an orphan. Well, look at this! One Nation came up with the idea of holding the National Construction Code changes—stopping them, suspending them—to save $50,000 per house in construction costs. That was One Nation, before the election! Now we see Senator Bragg taking ownership of it for the Liberal Party. Then we see the Labor Party coming up with the idea at the roundtable. Where did it come from? One Nation. We have a homelessness crisis in this country. Every major provincial city in Queensland has homeless people sleeping in cars. Working mums and dads are sleeping in their cars. They come home to see if their kids are still there. Why? Because the Liberal Party started mass catastrophic immigration under John Howard, and the Labor Party has turbocharged it now with over 500,000 new immigrants per year. 

That’s what’s driving the homelessness crisis. And only One Nation has a comprehensive policy for housing—working on the demand side, working on the supply side, working on the cost side and working on the finance side to reduce demand. To stop immigration, we would deport immediately 75,000 people who were here illegally and deport students who were not in compliance with their visas. On the supply side, we would stop foreign ownership of houses in this country—just stop them! We’d give them two or three years to sell and get out. Free them up. Many of those homes are locked. On the cost side, we would reduce regulations, stop the National Construction Code changes, and end net zero to reduce the price of energy. On the finance side, we would roll HECS debts into home loans and allow access to super accounts to get a deposit. Why can’t your super account invest in your own home when it can invest in other people’s homes? This is bloody ridiculous! 

I asked Mr Sivaraman, the Race Discrimination Commissioner, whether he stood by his comment that “the bile of racism” is spilling into public forums and many political debates. He confirmed that he does. I then questioned whether simply asking about migration intake numbers is racist, and he agreed that it isn’t necessarily so, though he warned that targeting certain groups can make it problematic.

I raised the fact that there are four million non-citizens in Australia while we have record homelessness, and that years of mass migration have put pressure on housing, schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. I asked if acknowledging these facts makes someone racist. Mr Sivaraman said linking migration directly to these issues is overly simplistic and can lead to scapegoating, though I clarified I never claimed migration was the sole cause—just a significant factor.

We discussed fairness for migrants themselves, who sometimes lose housing when new arrivals come, and the mismatch between the skills Australia needs and those brought in under migration programs. Mr Sivaraman agreed that failing to recognise migrants’ skills is a real problem and mentioned campaigns to address this. I pointed out that, in construction, only a tiny fraction of arrivals have the promised skills, which raises serious concerns.

— Senate Estimates | October 2025

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Mr Sivaraman, as Australia’s race discrimination commissioner, you say ‘the bile of racism’ is spilling out into the public forum and many political debates. Do you stand by that comment?  

Mr Sivaraman: Yes.  

Senator ROBERTS: Is questioning the migration intake numbers racist?  

Mr Sivaraman: In and of itself, it doesn’t have to be, no. It’s a question of what’s associated with that and whether certain groups get targeted.  

Senator ROBERTS: There are currently four million people in this country, our country, who are not Australian citizens taking up beds while Australians are homeless—there is record homelessness—after years of unprecedented levels of mass migration. We have been at record numbers for multiple years in a row. That’s not saying anything disparaging about those people who have arrived; that’s just a fact. It is just a mathematical fact that, if we continue to accept arrivals at the rate we are, our schools, hospital, dams, transport and housing are going to become even more overwhelmed than they are. That’s a fact. Is anyone who acknowledges that fact a racist? 

 Mr Sivaraman: I think to simply connect, in a very linear way, migration to the various problems that you’ve described would not be accurate. The problems that you’ve—  

Senator ROBERTS: What is inaccurate about it, Mr Sivaraman?  

Mr Sivaraman: The problems that you’ve alluded to, like housing and the cost of living, are complicated problems with many different sources. Migration is one of the many different factors that may or may not contribute to those issues. Directly linking them is something that I wouldn’t agree with, and it’s that simplification that often then leads to the scapegoating of migrants, and I think that can be problematic.  

Senator ROBERTS: Could you tell me how I’m scapegoating migrants, when I am one? And can you tell me how it’s simplifying the issue?  

Mr Sivaraman: It is a simplification of an issue if you directly say that there is only one cause for the significant problems that you’ve— 

Senator ROBERTS: I didn’t say there was only one cause. It’s the significant factor. 

 Mr Sivaraman: Even that, in itself, is a simplification. It can be any number of factors that contribute to those issues.  

Senator ROBERTS: We know for a fact that we’ve got record homelessness, and the government is bringing in record numbers of people year after year after year. They haven’t got anywhere to go, Mr Sivaraman. We even see migrants coming here, being given housing and then being turfed out when the next wave of migrants comes. Is that fair to the migrants?  

Mr Sivaraman: I’m not sure if I can take it further. Homelessness is obviously a serious and significant issue. Simply pointing to migration or migrants as the problem, or the cause of that issue is overly simplistic.  

Senator ROBERTS: What about the misalignment between the skills we need in this country for people to get straight to work and bringing in people without those skills and them not being able to find work? Is that dehumanising to the migrants? Is it dehumanising to the people here?  

Mr Sivaraman: Senator, I’m glad you raised that issue. I think there is a real problem with the failure to recognise skills, experience and qualifications of migrants, which often leads to people being underutilised and dampening their productivity in the workplace. I note that Settlement Services International are running a campaign now called Activate Australia’s Skills, because we do want to fully utilise the skills of migrants that come here so that they can contribute to our workforce. That’s a really important issue.  

Senator ROBERTS: But, if they don’t have the skills—for example, in construction, the government is bringing in, supposedly, construction workers with skills in construction, but only 0.6 per cent actually have those skills and experience. How are they going to build houses for the other 99.4 per cent?  

Mr Sivaraman: I’m unaware of the statistics you’ve quoted, so I can’t speak to those statistics specifically. But in a general sense there is a lot of research and data that shows that we have failed to recognise the skills and qualifications of migrants, and that is a significant detriment to the Australian economy.  

Senator ROBERTS: This is my final question before moving on to Dr Cody. I understand in your role as Race Discrimination Commissioner you are being paid $398,450 per annum—almost $400,000—plus 15.4 per cent super. Are those pay figures correct? Mr  

Sivaraman: I think that they would be, yes. I’d have to check the Remunerations Tribunal determination. 

I’m an immigrant, and I love this country deeply. Like many others who marched in the March for Australia, I came here legally, embraced the culture, and built a life as part of the Australian community—not separate from it. We weren’t born here, but we’re proud Australians.

What we’re standing up against isn’t immigration itself—it’s immigration without assimilation. We’re tired of politicians pushing mass immigration without thinking about the social and economic hardship it causes. We’re fed up with being called racist or hateful just for wanting to protect our way of life, our jobs, and our communities.

Australians aren’t against migrants — we’re against policies that prioritise foreign workers over Aussie ones, that erode secure employment, and that replace permanent jobs with insecure subcontracting. Labor used to stand for workers, but now they’ve abandoned the working class in favour of globalist agendas, predatory billionaires and their corporate interests.

The truth is diversity is not our strength. Our strength lies in people from all over the world with different backgrounds coming together as Australians, respecting our laws, values, and culture. That’s the Australia I believe in – the Australia I marched for. If you love this country, if you want to contribute and be part of a united Australia, then join us.

Transcript

Immigration without assimilation is an invasion.’ So read the T-shirt that a lovely, older immigrant lady wore in the Cairns March for Australia on Sunday. Many of the tens of thousands of Australians who marched for Australia on Sunday were not born here. Like me, they’re immigrants. I spoke with marchers from all over the world, of every religion and skin colour. They are wonderful Australians who came here as migrants legally, who love this country and who have built a life in Australia, not on top of it—not those who impose their religion, their culture, their intolerance and their perpetual hate onto Australians and who marchers rightly criticised. Marchers criticised politicians and others who hate this country so much that they seek to flood Australia with like-minded arrivals to destroy our culture and to carve off religious and ethnic enclaves in order to divide us. The Australian public are not against immigrants. We’ve had a gutful of excessive, mass immigration—a simple distinction that the unhinged rants from Greens and Labor senators yesterday were designed to cover up. I appreciate the far left in this country have disappeared up their own nobility complex and have completely abandoned any pretence of democracy, decency or civil discourse. Vile, unhinged abuse devoid of facts—indeed, devoid of any relevance to the motion I presented yesterday—doesn’t work on One Nation. It doesn’t work on our supporters and it doesn’t work on those who attended the many marches for Australia. Our beautiful country can embrace and lift up only so many people before the economic and social costs cause the elastic of society to snap back, which is the process you’re watching with confused looks on your faces and fear in your eyes. 

The immigration debate is not an argument about someone’s past nationality, religion or skin colour. It’s an argument about wealth, opportunity and security. Former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard knew this to be true. In an address to the University of Western Sydney in March 2013, then prime minister Gillard promised Labor would ‘stop foreign workers being put at the front of the queue, with Australian workers at the back’. She said: 

We will support your job and put Aussie workers first. 

What a difference 10 years makes! Now those foreign workers are being advanced to the front using DEI, and Australian workers are being told not to apply. Often, the application is not even for a job with secure employment, an award or guaranteed conditions. In the new Australia, jobs are now a subcontracting arrangement requiring an Australian Business Number, an ABN. A microbusiness with a single customer—the same business which used to employ Australians on permanent employment, with awards protecting wages and working conditions—is no more. In just 10 years, the Greens have pushed Labor so far to the left they have abandoned their working-class base, embracing a UN/World Economic Forum sustainability agenda which gives their members less and foreign, predatory billionaires more. 

It’s no surprise that marches included members of the AWU, the CFMEU, the ETU and other unions who’ve seen their wealth, opportunity and place in Australia be reduced. Labor has failed to defend Australian workers from employment arrangements that destroy the standard of living of everyday Australians. Instead of listening to the public, rightly complaining, Labor came into this place yesterday and ranted against One Nation. They name-called, lied and misrepresented out of confusion and fear. One Nation has a message for this government: go back to your masters at the World Economic Forum, go back to your owners—the world’s predatory billionaires—and tell them Australia has had enough. We’re not going to be ground zero for your evil plan to tear apart Australian society, culture and cohesion and rebuild in the image of the World Economic Forum. Everyday Australians want our country back. Our success is inevitable because our Australia, built on family, on community and, yes, on national pride, is paradise compared to your ugly vision of a society based on an ever-changing agenda relying on intimidation and bullying. 

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam found that the greater the diversity in a community the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and the less they work on community projects. A massive new study based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America supports those who marched on Sunday. In the most diverse communities, neighbours trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogeneous settings. The study found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings. Ask the five tight monocultures—Japan, Taiwan, China, South Korea and Singapore. Diversity is not our strength. Our strength is Australians who’ve come here from all over the world, with different races and religions providing different perspectives on life, working together as a community of Australians old and new. One Nation welcomes anyone who loves our country, who wants to join in and who wants to pull their weight, follow our laws and, in so doing, lift themselves up. If that’s the Australia you love, please join One Nation and help us reverse the decline of our beautiful country. 

Australia’s migration program is failing to deliver the skilled workers we were promised.

An analysis shows that in 2023-24 only 12% of permanent migration spots went to skilled workers — and 0.09% to tradespeople. Meanwhile, the housing crisis worsens.

The system is broken!

— Senate Estimates

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing tonight. I want to go to an analysis of the migration program—it’s an analysis done by Emeritus Professor Peter McDonald and Professor Alan Gamlen, who are affiliated with the Migration Hub at the ANU—and also a comment on their analysis by Leith van Onselen, the economist, who says of the report:

Australia’s immigration system is unskilled and broken.

They say, ‘In 2023-24, the permanent migration program’—185,000—’delivered just 166 tradespeople, negligible against national needs.’ The report also shows that just 12 per cent of places in the nation’s permanent migration program are going to skilled workers. Instead, many of these place are being allocated to members of skilled workers’ families. Zero point zero nine per cent of new permanent residents are in the trades. Australians have been promised that the migration program is to fill skills shortages to fix the housing crisis, and that’s being used to justify hundreds of thousands of arrivals—millions over the last few years. Yet now we know that just 166 tradies arrived in one year. Why is your department failing to make sure the people who are granted permanent places in Australia are actually skilled?
Senator Watt: Maybe the place to start, Senator, is what figures the department has around—there was a little discussion about this earlier in a session you weren’t here for, but maybe that’s a decent place to start.

Ms Sharp: Certainly. Thanks, Minister. Going very specifically to primary visa applicants who work in the construction sector, in 2024-25 there were 15,524 skilled visas granted to workers in construction.

Senator ROBERTS: Excuse me—what was the total migration that year?

Mr Willard: 185,000.

Senator ROBERTS: 185,000?

Ms Sharp: That was the permanent program, Senator, yes. Of that permanent program, 8,741 were skilled workers in the construction sector.

Senator ROBERTS: That’s about four per cent.

Senator Watt: But very different to the numbers you were just quoting, Senator.

Senator ROBERTS: Depends how they’re classified, Minister.

Senator Watt: Well, I think you gave a figure of 150-something—

Senator ROBERTS: 166.

Senator Watt: Yes, whereas the actual number is over 8,000—so, pretty big difference.

Senator ROBERTS: We can argue about the accuracy because it depends on the classification, but keep going.

Mr Willard: Senator, I’d add that the permanent program—it’s roughly two-thirds allocated to the skilled program. You are correct that the skilled program includes the primary applicants and their immediate family members, and there were 132,148 places delivered in that skilled program in 2024-25.

Dear Labor – “why do you hate our country?”

It’s “rumoured” the Labor government are planning to bring hundreds of thousands of Indian workers into Australia on top of the current mass migration crisis.

After days of coverage, this “rumour” has not confirmed nor denied.

Across Australia, construction companies are collapsing due to rising costs. The Treasurer must know that this massive construction plan will drive up the price of building materials even further because of demand.

The result?

More Australian businesses destroyed. More Australian jobs lost.

Transcript

Homelessness in my birthplace, India, is a national scandal. Close to two million people are living on the streets—children, women and the elderly—vulnerable to violence and disease. 

Why would the government be discussing bringing hundreds of thousands of Indian labourers and tradesmen here to build one million new homes, financed with a United Arab Emirates loan? Is it a loan or will these be build to rent? 

How about India borrows the $500 billion and builds housing in their country, getting their children, women and elderly off the streets? The Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, told us about this plan and Indian mainstream media confirmed it. After days of coverage, this government has neither confirmed nor denied it. One would think that’s a concession. If you are not planning this, say so. If you are planning it, then admit it and answer our questions, starting with the fact that hundreds of thousands of Indian migrants have to sleep somewhere. Is that what the spare bedroom tax was for—billeting these new migrant workers? If not, then the first two years will be spent building homes for these imported workers who will, no doubt, never leave them. Where does that get us? Are these 200,000 workers on top of the 2.9 million new visa holders the government has let in since 2022 or are they extras? 

It’s been four years now, and I understand that less than 10,000 of the 2.9 million you’ve let in are qualified construction workers. That’s 0.3 per cent building houses for the 99.7 per cent. Where are your plans to provide land, building inspectors and trade qualification checks to make sure these homes are built to standard? All over our country construction companies are going broke due to rising costs. The Treasurer must know that this massive construction plan will cause runaway demand inflation in building materials, forcing more of our builders to the wall. All you’ll do is destroy Australian companies and take jobs from Australians. Why do you hate our country? 

On Sunday 31 August, One Nation senators joined the tens of thousands who marched against the program of mass migration.

We believe in one Flag, one community, One Nation. Thank you to all who came despite the scaremongering.

We will not be shut down because the truth is politically inconvenient to Liberal and Labor.

Thank You

Thank you to all Australians who turned out today for Australia and building a better country for our children.

Here’s my quick wrap up.

One Nation moved to establish a Senate inquiry into the program of mass immigration.

On Monday 1 September, I asked the Australian Senate to establish an inquiry into the impact of immigration on our economy.

The Australian public and the government must be properly informed about the data and the impacts of this policy. Without that, there can be no genuine policy debate or discussion.

That’s why we want to establish this inquiry, to take the emotion out of the debate and deal with the facts and data.

See the Senators who voted NO to our inquiry 👇 Almost all Liberals, Labor and Greens teamed up to block the inquiry.

Live Debate: 1 hr 16 mins.

Motion Defeated – 37 to 9

Number of Temporary Visa Holders in Australia

Mainstream media is out there gaslighting Australia, telling us that immigration is going down.

Can anyone point to the part of the graph where we aren’t currently at record migration levels?

Source: Number of Temporary Visa Holders in Australia, Department of Home Affairs.