Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you are an Australian who is uneasy about what you see going on in our country today, I want you to know that you're not alone. Being uncomfortable with the sheer number of migrants that have arrived in this country in recent years and indeed continue to flock to our shores doesn't make you xenophobic. More so, being uncomfortable with the values of those people arriving en masse doesn't make you racist. If you don't recognise Australia in the scenes from Melbourne and Sydney that you see on the news, that doesn't make you a bigot.

I want the Australians who quietly assembled across the country this weekend to express their patriotic pride to know that as a Liberal MP I was heartened. I was heartened to see adolescents, young families and grandparents alike united the need to express a statement that Australia is still a country that values a fair go, the rights and freedoms of individuals and a tolerance for all who come to this country because of what this country is. I was heartened to see those who deeply respect our forebears who laid down their lives so that we could express a view freely in this country and to see those looking for leadership that doesn't turn a blind eye to those who burn our national flag while holding aloft the flags of terrorists.

We need to have a debate about migration in this country, because we need control over how many people come to this country and the values of those people. To lose control of migration, as this government has, threatens not only the confidence of the Australian people and the very system of migration that for decades has welcomed literally millions of new Australians to our shores but also the preservation of a free and democratic Australian society into the future. To be very, very clear, there is no place for fascists and Nazis in this country, who are as much a threat to our democracy as the terrorists who would tear down our very way of life.

For the mainstream media to obsess over a tiny minority of unwelcome extremists is to ignore the clear voice with which those Australians who proudly marched this weekend spoke, and it exemplifies the disgraceful double standard that we see in this country today. The question that has sat very uneasily with me for months now is asked quietly by many ordinary Australians, who have felt the need to first look left and then right and make sure that nobody could overhear them before asking. Why are so many people who don't even believe in Australia being welcomed to this country?

The reality is worse than those proud Australians might have even feared. In its first year, comparing the Albanese government's budget migration estimates to actual arrivals reveals they let 300,518 extra people into the country. In its second year, the Albanese government undercooked migration numbers by 200,198. The good news is that they're getting slightly better at this. In their third year, the government only undercooked the migration numbers by a hundred thousand. In short, in just three years in their first term, the Albanese government blew even their own migration numbers by some 600,000 people. Is it any wonder that we don't have sufficient new housing, with the biggest surge in migration in real terms since the end of World War II?

These numbers only speak to the number of arrivals, not to the values of those who are coming here. We need confidence that people are coming here because they want a better life and want to become proud and contributing Australians themselves. There should be no place for those who would seek to import their own hatred, division, conflict and even extremism into our country, yet Australians today have no confidence that this Labor government, who can't even get the migration numbers right, are holding the line on values. Tomorrow, on National Flag Day, if they can't look at the Australian flag—the only flag that flies above this building, the only flag our soldiers wear on their left sleeve when they go oversees to protect our freedoms and the only flag that drapes their coffins when they fall—with uninhibited pride, they shouldn't be here.