Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Not counting tourists, the number of people in Australia today who are not Australian citizens could be as high as 3.7 million. In a country with an estimated population of just 27.4 million people, this huge influx is stretching our hospitals, making housing unaffordable and making life more expensive.

Noncitizens must have a visa to be in Australia. These are split into two categories: permanent residency visas and temporary visas. The latest data from the Department of Home Affairs shows that, excluding the 320,000 tourist and crew visas, there are currently 2.5 million people in Australia on temporary visas. The data on permanent residency visas is not clear; it's murky. Between 2000 and 2021, three million permanent residency visas were issued to permanent migrants. In 2023, it was estimated that 59 per cent of those three million permanent visa holders have become Australian citizens. As of 2021, that would leave 1.2 million people who have not become citizens and are still on permanent visas, plus any more permanent residents who've arrived since 2021. Adding that best estimate of permanent visa holders to the 2.5 million people on temporary visas, we get 3.7 million people who are potentially in the country on visas.

So what's the real number? How many people are currently in Australia on a permanent visa, and why won't the government tell Australians? Is it just too embarrassing for the government, after they promised to reduce immigration, to admit how many people in Australia aren't Australian citizens? My new One Nation colleague Senator Tyron Whitten, Senator for Western Australia, will be asking the government about this number in question time today. In the middle of a housing crisis, the government had better know how many additional people it is letting into our country, undermining our standard of living and way of life.