Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

Australia has a proud migration history. Migrants are the thread woven into the very fabric of our nation, blessing us with their variety in culture, belief, cuisine and, indeed, coffee and wine. Migrants have underpinned the economy and workforce in electorates like mine in Mallee, working long and hard to grow the agriculture, construction, research, technology, science, health and education sectors, and the same is true nationwide.

Australia's workforce shortage is most dire in the regions. We need migrants in the places where they can deliver the greatest value to our productivity and the Australian success story. That's why the Liberal-National government introduced the agricultural visa, which Labor scrapped. And we introduced the PALM scheme, which has been so valuable for Mallee. These are just two examples of how the coalition delivered targeted, measured policies, built to fix skills shortages and broader labour shortages in the industries that needed them most—and we still need them.

Labor's targets are very different. They aren't measured; it's just one big number. Those opposite want 1.5 million migrants over the next five years. I have questions—many questions—about that. As a nation, we are struggling to house the people we have in the country already. The national rental vacancy figure is 1.4 per cent and it's only slightly higher in the regions, at 1.58 per cent. I recently took the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Migration, of which I am the deputy chair, to Robinvale in my electorate of Mallee. We toured the Rocky Lamattina & Sons carrot-processing facility—the largest in the lower hemisphere—as well as the Cordoma Group's great operations. Cordoma Group's general manager, Adrian Cordoma, and his sister Vanessa relayed to me a story about seasonal workers who rented a house while working in Robinvale. When the season changes they move on to other regions for that harvest season but they keep the house in Robinvale for the next season. If they didn't, they would not be able to find one when they returned. Labor's signature housing policy is floundering in the Senate and provides no certainty to alleviate any housing issues, let alone regional housing issues.

To have 1.5 million more migrants in the country will put an incredible strain on Australia's already struggling healthcare system, a system that in regional Australia is in crisis already—a crisis the government refuses even to admit is occurring. How many of the 1.5 million more migrants will be doctors, nurses and other allied health professionals who will head out to regional Australia and stay there? Thanks to Minister Butler's radical expansion to the distribution priority areas for doctors, an international medical graduate migrating here is now far more likely to move to periurban settings over a regional practice. Therefore it will not mitigate the dire situation country people face and will add further burden to those periurban areas for housing.

Tuesday night's federal budget threw money into Medicare, which made for great headlines but did not give any confidence that Labor has plans to alleviate the workforce issues stressing our health sector. This budget also failed to address other critical infrastructure, pushing projects out with reviews into the long grass, critical infrastructure to build and repair roads, hospitals and other critical infrastructure in the regions to support that 1.5 million new people. In addition, migrant families will have to find their own childcare arrangements, particularly if they migrate to the regions. Why would a migrant choose to settle in a childcare desert? Labor has thrown money at the childcare sector but prioritises urban subsidies over actual services, which create demand but do nothing to fix supply. It's about not just affordability but accessibility.

The coalition wants a better Australia, not just a bigger Australia. A better Australia means a sustainable Australia, one that maximises the economic benefits of immigration while managing the negative impacts on housing, congestion, our health system, the environment and communities. Communities in regional Australia, particularly in my electorate of Mallee, are already neglected and groaning under the despair of the health and housing crisis. (Time expired)

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