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

This legislation is an amateur racist attempt to divide Australia. That's what this legislation is. It comes from a bunch of cowboys who play on Islamophobia and division. Do you want to know why we've got a housing crisis in this country? Do you want to know why, as the coalition says, there aren't enough tradespeople to build houses? I'll tell you why there aren't enough tradespeople to build houses: because Labor and the coalition privatised TAFE across the country, destroyed TAFEs across the country and destroyed the pipeline of public TAFEs providing skilled trades to the country. That's why we've got a shortage of trades: because Labor and the coalition, in their neoliberal push to privatise anything that's not nailed down, privatised TAFE and screwed the Australian future. Not only that—the coalition and Labor between them have sacked pretty much every apprentice from every public department in the country. They don't employ apprentices, they don't have public TAFE, and then they come in and wonder why there aren't any tradespeople to build houses. It's because of their neoliberal privatisation crap.

And then One Nation, the Nationals and Labor want to blame the housing shortage on migration. They privatise TAFE and destroy the pipeline for tradespeople, and then they come in here and dog-whistle on migration. Labor and the coalition want to talk about a housing crisis. Even in the answers that Labor gives to the inevitable racist questions that come from One Nation about migration—linking migration to a housing crisis and talking about record migration—they validate One Nation's racist attack on migration, because they never challenge the attack on migration. Labor always comes in here says, 'Oh, we've got a housing crisis—we know that—and we're reducing net migration.' Well, I call rubbish to that, because the reason we've got a housing crisis is that Labor and the coalition refuse to build public housing. The reason we've got a housing crisis is that Labor and the coalition think the answer to the housing crisis and young people having no homes is to give discounts and tax credits to the property industry, to try to manipulate the capital gains tax system and to reduce the home deposit to five per cent and balloon out housing prices. They will do everything they possibly can in the face of a housing crisis—and we know we've got a record housing crisis—except for what the Greens and young people have been calling for for years now, which is to build public houses, build public TAFE, train tradespeople, give people a home, invest in hospitals and transport, give people a future they can believe in, pass environmental laws that give young people a hope that their future will be protected, and reject the racist dog whistling from One Nation. That's the answer—build public housing, build public infrastructure, build public institutions, train people in public TAFE, tackle the climate crisis, fight racism and put the racist rhetoric from One Nation in the bin, where it belongs.