John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I am quite sure that I would have said something like that on 22 June 2006—and, unlike the Leader of the Opposition, I would have consistently said it on 22 June in the nine previous years, because I have always had the view that you only bring people into these situations where there is clearly a shortage of Australian workers. What I find strange is that, every second time somebody from the Labor Party gets up, they start talking about the skills shortage but, when you bring people in to fix it, they say, ‘Oh, that’s bad.’

If there has been any breach by this company, then this company deserves to be punished. But that in no way alters the general proposition that I have maintained. That general proposition is that, where there is a demonstrated shortage of Australian workers, we do need to bring in overseas workers. As I pointed out in my previous answer, that is uniformly the attitude of every state and territory Labor government in this country. It is complete hypocrisy for the Labor Party, on the one hand, at a state level, to bring in foreign workers to fill the gaps and yet, on the other hand, at a federal level, to try to run some kind of scare campaign in relation to the bringing in of foreign workers. If the ABC company has broken the law, it ought to have the book thrown at it. But that does not alter the validity of the current situation.

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