QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for the Environment and Water) (14:39): Thank you, Senator Hanson. One inconvenient fact for the One Nation party is that this government has nearly halved net overseas migration since it spiked after the COVID epidemic. Most people in this country recognise that, during the COVID epidemic, essentially, migration into Australia ended.
People couldn't come here. Most people recognise that after the epidemic migration skyrocketed because people were trying to get back into the country, including many Australians who were seeking to come back into our country. Also, of course, we inherited, when coming to office, a completely broken migration system that was left behind by Mr Peter Dutton.
Do you remember Mr Peter Dutton, or have you erased any memory of him? So there was a broken migration system combined with a massive increase in migration post COVID. Ever since then, we have been working hard to fix the rorts and the other faults in the migration system, including around international student numbers.
What that has meant is that we have reduced net overseas migration by 45 per cent since it spiked—so nearly halved—and we're on track to reduce it even further. We recognise, as a government and as a party, that the migration numbers that we were seeing post COVID were unsustainable. They were too high and they needed to be brought down.
What we also recognised was that, to house Australians—which is what the One Nation party often links with migration—we needed to build more homes. That's why, as a government, we have invested tens of billions of dollars into building more social and affordable homes for the battlers that Senator Hanson pretends she cares about. How did One Nation vote every time we tried to increase funding for housing?
They voted no, along with the Liberal Party and the National Party. So don't come in here and lecture us about supporting houses for Australians, because you always vote against them. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT: Senator Hanson, first supplementary?