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

One Nation has long maintained that the immigration invasion is about politics, not economics. South Australian Premier Malinauskas waded into that debate last month, when he said:

My message to One Nation voters is: 'Who's going to feed you and bathe you and wipe your bum when you're 90?' … Because it ain't going to be your kids, because if I get my way, they're going to be working on submarines, with high-paying jobs, so they can afford to own their home …

And he said that, if we're taking real people out of the housing construction industry to work on the submarines, we're going to need people to do that work too—to work in aged care. What a socialist nirvana South Australia will be, with migrants, according to the Labor premier, acting as a servant class to their white masters and their children, who will have economic abundance and not have to wipe their own bums!

Elitism and socialism go hand in hand. The Russians, during communism, called this elitist cabal the 'nomenklatura'. In communist China, they're called 'princelings' for their wealth and imperial manner. In Australia, we just call them the Labor Party. What an insult to the many migrants with real qualifications who have come to Australia to lift themselves up through their own hard work and endeavour and who, in so doing, have lifted up all who are here.

A quick look at employment numbers gives the lie to the Premier's grand vision of recreating the Raj in Adelaide. Total employment on the submarine program will be 4,500 during construction of the shipyard and then 4,500 to build the submarines. The 10,000 jobs are sequential, not all at the same time. The size of the South Australian labour market is 975,000 people. Shipbuilding already employs 14,000 people, some of whom will move over to the subs. All we need to fill the remaining places is for state and federal Labor to start planning now for the subs workforce through targeted vocational and university placements for Australian workers. The Premier's big pitch to the electorate is elitist and dishonest.