David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens oppose the Plebiscite (Future Migration Level) Bill 2018 . It's a bill that is, in its initial drafting, embarrassingly nonsensical. I think it's the third time they've brought this legislation forward to get knocked on the head, and they didn't even have the wit to redraft the question that they initially put in their 2018 draft. So what's the question that One Nation wanted to put to the Australian public on migration? They wanted to put this:

From December 2005 to December 2016 Australia's population grew from 20.5 million to 24.4 million; 62% of this growth was from net overseas migration. Do you think the current rate of immigration to Australia is too high?

They are giving us figures from a decade ago. We're going to send that out to every Australian and then ask, 'Well, do you think the current rate of immigration is too high?' You couldn't make up the stuff that comes from this cowboy Ma and Pa Kettle outfit that calls itself One Nation.

Maybe they were desperate and embarrassed because their leader has been so utterly nationally shamed for coming in here, in that grossly disrespectful, racist, appalling, divisive way, wearing a burqa. Maybe they were so embarrassed by that that they just wanted to rush any kind of reheated vomit up, bring it in and put it into this chamber again. That's what this is: it's the reheated One Nation vomit of division, anti-immigration and Islamophobia. That's what this is. Let's not pretend it's anything else.

They want to have a plebiscite, and they say they believe in the Australian people, but what's the outcome of their plebiscite? Absolutely bloody nothing. They want to have a big national plebiscite, the end result of which is that nothing happens. That's One Nation all over, isn't it? In the shadow of their leader's appalling burqa fiasco in here, they bring a reheated 2018 bill, they don't even bother changing the wording of it, and then the end result of the plebiscite is absolutely bloody nothing. It has no binding effect. These guys are just a bunch of amateur performance racists who come in here. That's who One Nation is: amateur performance racists.