Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I concur with some of the remarks and disagree slightly with others that have been made. A large section of this revolves around the insertion into the Migration Act of section 140GD by the Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill. One of the issues there is that it comes with an assumption that all could be bad when all is not.

There are times where—I've worked as an accountant in areas of labour hire—you have to call people to account and say, 'I do not believe that you have a person working for you called Jim Bean, nor do I believe you have a person working for you called Johnnie Walker or Evel Knievel.' Yes, of course, this has to be dealt with because, especially in some areas, it becomes a vessel for a collection of people who are basically absconding from oversight and being exploited by people who can make money out of them. Okay—go out, catch the criminal and do what you've got to do. But don't presume everybody is a criminal. That's one of the things that is happening too much. We use a virtuous message—'We've got to catch those who are breaking the law'—but we cast a net that impinges on every person's right as if they were criminals, and they're not.

We are losing more and more in this nation—the right to be anonymous when you have done nothing wrong. It's no good to say, 'If you're doing nothing wrong, you don't have anything to worry about.' I just don't want to be watched all the time. I just don't want the government watching me all the time. Part of my freedom as an Australian is for people to have the presumption that I'm doing the right thing. I don't need observation. This is another exercise—in the inclusion of section 104GD—where we get the government saying, 'It's just to catch the baddies.' Well, everything these days apparently is 'just to catch the baddies'.

On an issue that has been brought up a number of times that, when we use the word 'multicultural'—every person in this building can connect themselves somewhere to an immigrant. Unless you're basically 100 per cent of Indigenous heritage—'Aboriginal' they call themselves in my area—then you've got, somewhere, an immigrant. I would say the vast majority of Aboriginal people are part immigrant. My father was an immigrant, and obviously, if you go back—the first person came to this country is on the memorial outside St Mary's Cathedral. Her name is on the glass. She was an orphan from Ireland. Her parents starved to death in a hedge. They could both read and write. We all have a connection somewhere to an immigrant past. It's just that the timeframe changes. But I call into question people who say 'multicultural'. We have multilingual, multiethnicity, multiracial and multifaith, but be careful, when you start saying multicultural, that that is a statement that implies absolute virtue and can never be argued against. I can assure you there are some cultures that are not virtuous. There are some practices, even in Indigenous culture, that, if you brought them in today, you would find abhorrent. Virtue does not revolve around the fact that, because you can use the word 'multicultural', all things can be applied.

It's a ridiculous example, but I'll give it nonetheless. The Incas had a culture. It's not without a shadow of a doubt that they had a culture—a very, very defined culture. It involved the beheading of people and pulling out their heart to appease the sun. That's a culture, but we're not going to start saying, 'That's a culture, therefore I can condone it, and therefore there's a space in Australia for it.' That's ridiculous. There has to be a temperance in this. There has to be an understanding that you've got to be part of a wider body of Australians. In doing so, there are certain things you've got to remove from that cultural identity. I think all of us, if we went back into our DNA and into our heritage, would find things that are most definitely part of our historical ethnic culture that are completely and utterly unapplicable to Australia today, and you just have to let that section go. If you don't then unfortunately you deliver Australia to a form of friction, a form of heat, and you create problems for our nation.

I'll give you a classic one from mine. Like most of us, I've got a vast tapestry of people that make up my history. It goes all the way to Gypsies in one section. They're from everywhere. But let's go to the Irish section. Ireland at a certain point in time had two different, very strong cultures, and they didn't get along. They really didn't. It took a long time, even in the seat of New England, for those cultures to reconcile with one another. If you said that both those cultures could live by their initial creed, you'll go right back to where we were. We're talking about people who look the same and talk the same. It's just that they pathologically hated each other. We don't want to revisit that. They both had their cultures. There was Catholicism and Protestantism. I suppose, in a way, I grew up at the tail end of it. It was toxic, completely toxic. I don't want it. One of the big things for me is growing up and saying: 'Let's cut that loose. Let's let that go.' I'm not interested in someone's interests in the IRA. I really am not. I don't want to have anything to do with it. That's why I say you've got to temper it. Don't just say that multiculturalism is the absolute good. No. You've got to be a little more discerning than that.

In a place like Tamworth, this is very evident. Even in Tamworth, we are growing flat out. The latest subdivision is seeing 5,000 new houses going in. That's about 12,000 or 13,000 people. The makeup of Tamworth is so dramatically different, and I revel in it—it's good. It's dramatically different to what it would have been even 10 years ago. I'm not a good but a practising Catholic. When I go to mass on Sunday at St Nick's, it's the Indian community that go. And it's huge. They're all there. They use that as a mechanism to then go out and have a meal. That's all good. That's great. In other parts of Tamworth, it's the Filipino community. Then there are Nigerians. Overwhelmingly, it's great. It's all good. These people have been essential for the economic growth of Tamworth—absolutely essential.

There are so many jobs—I hate to break it into the Australian culture—which Australians just don't want to do. Especially around certain areas and in abattoirs, you just cannot get people who will see a day through. It's the reality that good people who work are at work, and people who don't want to work—in some instances, it's because they are, wait for it, lazy. They don't want to work. You can bring people onto a shift, and they literally don't make it to smoko, to 9 o'clock. They just can't handle it; they're gone. But people come in from the Philippines, and they're—bang—focused all the way through and doing it with a smile on their face. It's the same with boilermaking and fitting and turning. As I said, the locals who want to work are working. Often, they're in higher management positions because they start at the bottom and fly through.

In our area, they would be terrified. If you said: 'We're not going to have any more Filipinos come in. We're not going to have any more Pacific Islanders come in. We're not going to have any more backpackers come in,' they would lose their minds. They would get very, very angry with me. I would say that they would have big meetings about how they could get rid of me. Genuinely, there's no form of racism about any of this; it's a clear understanding that what you deliver to the nation is important.

When we have citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, I always say to people that there's a contractual obligation in getting citizenship of this nation. It's the greatest gift you will ever have, to become a citizen and come to Australia. It is incredible. You have won the lottery if you get to Australia, but it comes with a contract. You have to understand that the focus of people will be more intent on you than it might be on others. So you have an obligation to your kin—to your family, your brothers and sisters—that you never end up in the crime pages, that you are not unemployed and that you are seen as an asset to the nation, not an encumbrance. No-one ever has a problem with that. That seems to make abundant sense. That is also part, we hope, of the Australian culture itself, which is egalitarian and gives people a fair go but also says: 'You have got to contribute back to the nation. You cannot be an encumbrance. You cannot bludge off other people. You have to put your shoulder to the wheel, otherwise other people have to work harder for more of their lives to cover the cost for you, and that is not fair on others.'

I want to go to one area we really need to focus on, and it's something that's close to my heart. It's people who come into Australia and end up—by reason of organised crime—in prostitution. It's the most insidious, evil thing, where young ladies come in on the premise that they've got another job—as a cook, a whole range of things—and they end up in prostitution. The people who have oversight over that are some of the baddest individuals you will ever unfortunately come across. This is still going on. It is still present.

If you go down to Sydney, you don't need to have much curiosity to be able to find where they are. You can have a look at some of the sites, ask yourself some questions, maybe turn up and say: 'Is this person really a masseur? Did this person actually know what they were getting in for when came to Australia?' That's an area we really should be focusing on. What worries me about this, in this section 140GD, is that, so many times, there are things that are self-evident, and you say, 'Surely you understand that, without too much effort, you could find those people and arrest them and do something about them.' Well, why don't we?

It's like, in a way, the illegal tobacco shops. You see people going in, going out and buying illegal tobacco. Everyone talks about it. Then they come up with the idea that, to deal with illegal tobacco, they will say to the people who might own the premises—who had been told their tenants were going to rent it out for a shop but are now selling illegal tobacco and are also in organised crime—that they're going to fine the owner of the premises, not the participant in the building. This is where you say, 'I think you've got this mixed up.' On this one here, the balance is not quite right. I believe that, if there was further work done on this, it would have the capacity to get through. I think on some issues it just ignores other problems that are screaming at you in your face. Other people know about them or talked about them, but no-one wants to do anything about them.

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