Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are plenty of people in this place and outside of it who want to talk about immigration. But, by the way you talk about migrants, we know which migrants you are really talking about. We are talked about as literal aliens, as outsiders or as problems to be managed and never as people who live with you, who are your neighbours or who are your colleagues. We're never talked about as people to be heard and listened to. We are, as Reni Eddo-Lodge so perfectly put it, 'Schrodinger's immigrant'. We are lazy and a drain on welfare while simultaneously also stealing jobs and undercutting wages. We are not successful enough, yet also too successful, taking opportunities away from so-called 'real Australians'. We live in ethnic ghettos and refuse to integrate while also taking over housing in every corner of this country. The absurdity of the media and the political establishment is genuinely mind boggling.

Migrants are not some small group either. Unless you are First Nations, you have a migrant story, whether you like it or not. The way this community is talked about is, quite frankly, appalling. We came to this country for a better life but we also want to contribute something to this country to make it better. We are engineers, doctors, caregivers, nurses, taxi drivers, cleaners, scientists and food delivery workers and we work hard! We are the glue that keeps this country going.

Some might think I am too loud, too migrant, too Muslim, but our belonging cannot be conditional on keeping our heads down and keeping our mouths shut. We have as much of a right as anyone to speak up on issues that we see as unjust and unfair, without being abused and vilified every single time. Here is something that might just blow your mind: migrants are living through the exact same housing crisis, the same inflation crisis, the same wages crisis as everyone else. Migrants did not cause these crises; decades of political failure did, decades of sucking up to billionaires did.

Let's be honest about who has been failing. It is not just a One Nation problem; Labor and Liberals have spent years creating the conditions of this antimigrant environment. Instead of showing leadership, they have dabbled and continued to dabble in far-right-wing talking points and policies, trying to out-right the Right. It was Labor that introduced some of the harshest antirefugee and anti-immigration laws. They pointed the finger at international students for a housing crisis built entirely on their own policy failures. They created the scapegoat and now they act surprised when One Nation picks it up and runs with it. Even when they think they are defending migrants, they do it in the most warped ways imaginable. South Australian Premier Malinauskas thought it was clever to pitch to One Nation voters by asking: 'Who is going to feed you and bathe you and wipe your bum when you are 90?' Just stop. We are not here to wipe your arse, Premier.

Migrants work in every industry in this country, including aged care, but our place here is not conditional on servitude. It is not conditional on wiping the backsides of people who campaign against us. Let me be direct: stop scapegoating migrant communities for economic pressures that were never of our making and start investing in real solutions for housing, for cost of living; issues that are hurting all of us. Every time a politician reaches for the migrant caricature instead of doing the hard work of fixing the broken system, they are making a choice. They are making a choice to send us further into the hellscape that One Nation is building and that choice has consequences for real people, for real communities, across the whole country.