Jana Stewart (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to oppose this disgraceful motion, referral, whatever you want to call it. It's dog whistling dressed up as an inquiry. That's all that it is. It gives a platform to people who want to punch down on migrants. That is what this is. No matter how you might want to dress it up by talking about the numbers, you actually just want to attack migrants.

You want to blame migrants for the lack of housing policy for a decade when those opposite were in charge. If you want to blame somebody for the challenges that we have and the housing crisis, One Nation, all you need to do over there is look to your right. They're all on your right over there on the opposition benches. For a number of years they didn't even have a housing minister, not a single housing minister. They've opposed demand measures, they've opposed supply measures. Anything to do with housing they've opposed and got in the way of, and they failed to do anything in the decade that they were in charge. But, sure, punch down on migrants.

It is motions like the one before the Senate today that fuel hate and division in this country. They fuel the rallies we saw yesterday, which you're over there celebrating, but actually lots of migrants in this country are living in fear right now because of them. You're celebrating that, and it's an absolute disgrace. If you can't see how your motion today and the words that you've used in this place fuel that division and hate, then you're delusional, absolutely delusional.

Australia's story is woven from so many threads: Sudanese nurses, Vietnamese grocers, Indian engineers, Lebanese artists. Migration is not a threat to who we are; it is a gift to our nation. It brings flavour, it brings resilience and it brings innovation. As a First Nations woman in this place, I honour the families who have crossed borders and oceans to build lives here on Aboriginal land. I honour them in this place. Their stories are stitched into our streets, our schools and our hearts. Before any migration, before any colony, this land holds stories older than time. We are absolutely the luckiest of countries—the most successful multicultural country in the world combined with the oldest continuous culture on this planet. What a gift that is! That is something to celebrate, not to protest.

This Labor government has zero tolerance for hate and discrimination in all its forms. This is absolutely a continuation of that. We're a proudly multicultural nation, and every one of us, no matter our heritage, has the right to feel safe and welcome in our community. Motions like this undermine that.

I could absolutely stand in this chamber and read out a bunch of statistics that reflect our balanced migration program. I could talk about our very sound management of the economy that means that the inflation figure now has a two in front of it instead of a six. I could talk about those numbers, but that's absolutely not what this motion is about. It is about stoking fear and division. That's what it's about. It's about blaming migrants for the failure of the opposition to build homes over their decade in power. It's about blaming migrants for the lack of policy by those opposite to help people get into their first homes.

There's a little clue that makes you think this isn't about migration specifically. They've lauded the values of yesterday. If this was really about migration then you wouldn't have seen people from the rallies yesterday attack First Nations people at Camp Sovereignty. We're not migrants to this country last time I checked. We're First Nations people. We've been here for 65,000 years. Those protesters somehow found their way to Camp Sovereignty. It's an absolute disgrace. So don't pretend that this motion is about migration. It's about racism—absolutely.

We reject any movements that are raised on the sidelines out of fear like we saw yesterday. Instead of stoking division like some people in this place, the Albanese government is focused on bringing people together. That's what we stand for. We want an Australia that listens before it speaks, that welcomes before it judges, that heals before it divides, one built not on fear but on fierce love for country, culture and community. We stand for unity in diversity, truth in history and future shaped by care. This is not about politics; it's about people and the kind of nation we want to be.