Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

What new policy? What have we heard today or any other day from this shadow minister for immigration? Absolutely nothing. Let me read a quote from the Australian of 15 April last year:

[I] do not oppose fee-paying overseas students taking up apprenticeships in regional Australia as long as it is not at the expense of local students getting their opportunities.

We absolutely agree with that statement, and the training visa gives effect to it. That statement could have been made by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations or the Minister for Vocational and Technical Education. All three agree, as all on this side agree, 100 per cent with that proposition. But it was not made by them; it was made by the President of the ACTU, the leader of the union movement, Sharan Burrow. In other words, the unions agree with the government on the proposal of this visa.

So why did we have the charade we witnessed here today? It was a charade we witnessed on Monday evening when this matter was debated then. Why do we have all the feigned anger of the shadow minister, the puffed up indignation, the litany of lies and falsehoods and the predictions of doom and gloom? Does that remind you of something, Mr Deputy Speaker? It is so over the top, so manufactured and so false. I am certain that what we are witnessing from those opposite is a purely political exercise. It is plainly an extension of the campaign of lies and scaremongering we witnessed during the workplace relations debate—month after month of lies and scaremongering. For what reason? I will tell you what the reason is. After a fourth election loss and the leadership meltdown that was Mark Latham, Labor are desperately trying to galvanise their base. If I were them, I would also be doing what I could to breathe some sense of purpose back into a disillusioned base. I understand their motive. I would be looking to do what I could to unite base support around a cause. That is what they have been seeking to do for the last few months—unite their base around a cause to try to give them some heart—but they should be trying to do it around a good and worthwhile cause, not a cause based on lies and scaremongering, not cheap petty politics. I would not base it on lies and scaremongering because, ultimately, it comes back to bite you. All this stuff they have gone on with in the House today, and have done for six months on these issues, when the prophecies prove wrong it will come back to bite them. And proved wrong they will be. If Labor were smart, they would seek to galvanise their base around policies they thought would make Australia a better place.

But it is not happening. It is even starting to worry their own side. We heard the member for Batman belling the cat this morning when he said in the Australian newspaper:

On my own side of the chamber, policy innovation that inspires the people, that puts pressure on the government to perform, and that demonstrates Labor’s capacity to lead the nation in government has also been too rare ... after a decade in opposition, we have plenty of storytellers but not much of a story to tell.

Only 19 Labor members elected in 1996 remain in parliament today and they, together with their more recently elected caucus colleagues, according to the member for Batman, ‘are too focused—by necessity—on internal party dynamics that have a lot to do with factional dominance and little to do with a Labor view of how to make Australia a better place’. Try and spend some time galvanising your base around policies that will make Australia a better place and I think you will start to see a lot more success politically and in every other sense.

All we hear in this debate is a series of falsehoods and misrepresentations. We have heard it again today from the shadow minister. The member for Watson, Mr Burke, has claimed in this place:

I do not think it is any accident that this visa was introduced at the same time that those industrial relations laws came in.

Again, you are trying to link it to industrial relations; trying to link it to a cause around which you have peddled lies and misrepresentations from the outset. This is false and can be shown to be demonstrably false.

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