There are 500,000 more temporary visa holders (migrants) in the country than before COVID. That’s an extra 200,000 homes needed just to cater for those arrivals.
Whenever I ask government about their flood of immigration, they claim we’re “just catching up” after the COVID lull. The reality is, temporary visa holders in the country has gone from 2.3 million to 2.8 million.
That’s not a catch up – that’s a new record. While the Treasury Secretary claims they got immigration forecasts wrong by 24%, I cover in a separate video that they actually got it wrong by 120%.
Cutting immigration isn’t enough. We need to start telling temporary visa holders to leave. We won’t get cheaper rent and cheaper houses until this is done.
Only One Nation has the guts to do it and put Australians first.
Transcript
CHAIR: Senator ROBERTS
Senator ROBERTS: My questions are to do with immigration numbers. I want to know whether Treasury got it wrong or if the government isn’t telling us the truth, basically. I’m not going to ask you to decide! Right up and down our coast—and we’ve got a very long coastline in Queensland—we’ve got thousands of people without houses. We’ve got working families going home to their car to sleep. And we’re a wealthy state. There is a statement that has often been made by the government in relation to its high immigration—that we’re just catching up. Pre-COVID, the number of temporary visa holders in the country was roughly 2.3 million. It’s now at 2.8 million. That is 500,000 more people in the country. A lot of them will need a house. We haven’t just caught up; there is a record number of temporary visa holders in the country, isn’t there?
Dr Kennedy: I did some numbers in my opening statement. They’re a little different to yours, but, certainly, the current number was similar. The earlier number that you cited was a bit lower. I’ll find it in a moment. But it has been the case that Treasury significantly underestimated the recovery in temporary visa holders—I pointed that out in my opening statement—in the order of nearly 25 per cent. That is, frankly, poor performance on our behalf. We simply underestimated how many students would flow back into our universities and our higher education sector more broadly, and students were the most significant part of that increase. I just want to add that it’s an incredibly important sector, generating—I possibly won’t have the number quite right—over $8 billion, from memory, in export services. I’ll confirm that number for you. On the question ‘did Treasury get the numbers wrong?’ yes. Temporary migration recovered from the pandemic much more rapidly than we anticipated. It was predominately driven by students. The other thing that’s happened is that they came for the first year of their course and now will stay for three years. Normally we’d have a pattern of the first years coming and the fourth years leaving. We haven’t got that at the moment because they left during COVID. So we’ve got this quite substantial inflow. And, overall, the numbers as you described have comfortably recovered the levels that we were at pre the pandemic.
Senator ROBERTS: And exceeded.
Cut immigration to zero. The communist are bent on destroying western civilization.
My family has been in Australia since 1846 not liking present neo-marxist push . It’s not the country I was born & raised in.
Thank you for addressing these vitally important topics. We must “catch up” and overcome our own issues first – adding more people simply means these issues increase as well
G’day Mal .. i’ve been a supporter of Pauline and One Nation for many years and I can remember when you came on board and not being patronising, but I like your approach to politics from then.
With regard to immigration, why don’t we look at inviting people to immigrate from similar countries to Australia such as USA and United Kingdom to live in Australia rather than having to maintain the Asian onslaught.
In 100 years time there will be no such thing as the Aussie way because in my opinion the normal Aussie will be Asian looking and most probably would have adopted the Asian customs handed down to them from their parents and grandparents.
It is difficult not to be racist when everywhere you go you see Asian people in jobs working in customer service who can’t speak English very well or understand what you are trying to say to them.
From personal experience and travelling overseas I find that people from USA and Canada love Australians and would very much like to live here unlike the Asian population where they wanna live here because they have nowhere else to go or countries who will invite them in.
Thank you, Malcolm for your great work.
Best wishes and regards, Al Gordon Sunshine Coast, Queensland
I agree with Malcolm. There needs to be a DRASTIC cut in the 2.8M temporary visa holders already in the country as well the net yearly overseas immigration.
What about the cost for each immigrant coming in, infrastructure costs, medicare costs and Australian social security/ retirement pensions etc.
Treasury is overstating the dollar benefits of low wage immigrants and foreign students, I reckon they are a net cost to Australian residents.
Well done Malcolm for raising the issue.
They are doing exactly what the Dem’s are in the US to prevent the Trump Republican Party from getting in power and that is “ flooding the country with immigrants “ as the migrants will automatically vote for the Democrats and keep Trump from getting 99.9% of peoples vote