Richard Dowling (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

where you're going to shift construction patterns across. We live in a global economy. Migration is flexible. We need a flexible economy. I know you want some command-and-control system, but we actually live in a flexible migration system that allows our market to respond. We have a measured, humane, pragmatic system. We're seeing the migration numbers come down. That's what the market is saying. We have a consistent, steady—you know these things—permanent migration program as well. I think we can just take the heat and emotion out of it and have a fact based discussion here about what we're actually doing. We're seeing a lot of growth in visas for construction, for example, because we do need more people in those construction trades to meet the needs of Australians, such as for more housing.

The coalition come to this debate as though there's no history to it and we're just starting today. But we've heard the multiple policies—unlimited student visas was one of them. It wasn't a policy; they actually voted for it. They pledged to bring back a visa class that Labor had stopped accepting—so-called cash for visas. So they don't come to this with a clean record.

But I will move on and reflect on the Reserve Bank's decision today to hold rates at 3.6 per cent. Of course people would have liked to have seen a rate cut, a Melbourne Cup Day rate cut, but that wasn't expected. The decision was pretty much anticipated. But that comes on the back of three rate cuts. One of the most important factors in the housing debate is obviously the cost of debt, and the cost of debt is significantly cheaper than it has been for a very long time. And we've seen headline inflation continue to trend down. Yes, the most recent quarterly figures did show an increase, but it still remains in the target, and you don't want to read too much into a single quarterly set of data. It was 6.1 per cent and rising, and now it's around half of that. So it's significant progress. The trimmed mean remains within the target band for three consecutive quarters.

Now, of course, the coalition claim to be worried about inflation and government spending, but we know that, at the last election, their own costings showed that they were going to be spending more and delivering bigger deficits than the Labor proposal. Similarly, they even opposed tax cuts. Again, we have this lack of historical context as they come in to criticise things today, as though they made a clean contribution to this debate.

What we want to do is continue to bring down inflation, see real wages grow and maintain unemployment at record low levels, where it is now, in the face of global uncertainty. And that's why you've seen so much focus also from the Prime Minister about assuring Australia's spot internationally. That will help give security with our trading partners, and we can also deliver cost-of-living security at home. (Time expired)