Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I am going to do my best to take the temperature down somewhat. Migration and integration are two policy areas that shouldn't be taboo, yet they have been taboo to talk about in our nation for some years. There is no doubt that in the last three years we have had a very steep increase in migration. I have enormous respect for the immigration minister, who just spoke, but it was put to me that the reason why we've had such a steep immigration increase is that we were catching up from the pandemic. I just fail to understand why we were catching up, when the rest of the world also had minimal migration. There was really nothing to catch up on.

If I look at the net overseas migration figures from ABS data, in 2024-25, 306,000 people were net overseas migrants; in 2023-24, 429,000; and in 2022-23, 556,000. So over three years this is more than 1.2 million people. It's just supply and demand. This has created significant pressure on housing. The figures don't lie. In South Australia in 2020 the median price of a home was $574,000. In December last year it was $925,000. We've done that in five years, and the thing that's changed the most are our migration numbers.

If I look at South Australia, our state government has a very pro-migration policy, and we've gone from a population of one million in 1969—when we last built a reservoir—to two million. That's enormous pressure on the environment and on water, and I think it's reasonable to have a conversation about the size and structure of the nation that we are creating.

Why are we doing this? I sometimes ask the question when I look at the life that we have created for people now, where you as a family need to have two full-time jobs just to cover a mortgage and basic costs. The Australian dream of being able to buy your home is fading away. Young people talk to me about this all the time. Our population in 30 years has grown by 54 per cent—an extra 10 million people. I gave you our net overseas migration figures before. Back in 1996, 30 years ago, the figure was only 95,000—these are, I think, reasonable conversations to have—yet our poverty has increased. In 1996, 12.9 per cent of our population lived below the poverty line. In 2026, it's over 14 per cent.

So I think we need to have a very real conversation about the size of Australia, what Australia can handle from an environmental and water point of view, and then what our nation stands for, what we value and what we expect of the people that come here. We came to Australia in 1973. It was an expectation on my family. They were told very, very clearly: 'You will follow the rule of law. If you don't, you're gone.' It was as simple as that. There were expectations on us. We are a proud, Western, democratic society. We uphold the rule of law and equality between men and women, and we should expect everyone who comes to Australia, I think, to learn our language, to know our history, to know and value our literature, to embrace all that Australia has to offer. If you come to Australia, you come to be part of our society, to embrace it, and you don't come here to expect Australia to change for you. I think we must affirm these reasonable expectations of all people.

We want to have a harmonious society, but we want to have a society where people can live and breathe and be able to afford home ownership, and right now the demand is far outweighing the supply. All we're doing is carving up as much farmland as we can to try to manage that. I think the Australian community expects us to have a very honest and sober conversation about migration, and I don't think we're doing that at this point.

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