PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Ms MILLER-FROST (Boothby) (17:21): I'm very happy to speak on this private member's bill and, particularly, to speak to the gross hypocrisy of it. This comes from an opposition that's busily talking about slashing immigration numbers in their fight against One Nation. In a race to the bottom, they are squabbling over immigration numbers and encouraging the community to buy into their divisive rhetoric without any reflection whatsoever on the impact that their policies would have on the Australian economy and on the standard of living of Australians.

So I'm actually really pleased to find that the member for Gippsland has recognised that their rhetoric of slashing migration numbers would have real-life impacts on current industry, let alone future productivity or growth—although he seems to have only managed to recognise this in relation to one industry important to his own electorate, not to all the other industries across Australia.

I sit on the migration committee and we're currently undertaking an inquiry into skilled migration. We've heard from diverse industry sectors from across the country: city, rural and regional. So, yes, we've heard from the agricultural sector how important overseas workers are—through PALM, through backpackers or working holiday makers and also through permanent migrants.

But we've also heard from the hospitality and tourism sectors. We've heard from the education sector about the importance of being able to get teachers and lecturers from overseas—but also the importance of overseas students. Overseas students are an important part of the financial sustainability of the university sector, but they're also an important strategy for soft diplomacy.

Many of those educated in Australia go on to be heads of government and heads of industry in their home countries when they return home, and their connections to Australia are important. We've also heard from the housing and construction sector how desperate they are for skilled labour and, indeed, semi-skilled labour. Infrastructure Australia estimated in 2025 that we were short about 141,000 workers, which will grow to 300,000 by 2027.

In my home state of South Australia, we have many, many large projects underway: the North-South Corridor, the Flinders Medical Centre extension, a new women and children's hospital, the Northern Water Project and the defence industry, including AUKUS—not to mention our need to build more houses and associated infrastructure. The AUKUS project is estimated to need 27,000 engineers and, of course, due to security reasons, these people need to be Australians, which drains all the other industries of these workers.

Local businesses tell me they are losing welders to the submarine corps already and are struggling to replace them. We heard from the health, disability and aged-care sectors about the importance of skilled migration to the clinical and carer workforce. Around 40 per cent of nurses currently working in Australia come from overseas.

Some of them came as international students and then got snapped up by a hungry health or aged-care sector desperate for more skilled staff to provide services for our growing ageing population. Others were recruited as already-qualified skilled migrants. Having worked in the health sector, I can assure you that the health sector would not work without skilled migrants.

And all these sectors would be very happy to employ Australians, but we have low unemployment. It won't surprise you to know that if you want skilled migrants to come and contribute to our country, our community and our economy, they are going to want to be part of that community, and they're going to want to bring their families. Fifty-one per cent of us are migrants or have at least one parent who is a migrant.

I myself am a migrant. My father was a skilled migrant as part of the '10-pound Pom' scheme. We came out as three generations.

We settled down. My brother and my cousins were born here. And I'd like to think we have contributed positively to this country.

We've all worked and brought up our families here. So while those opposites squabble over numbers with no regard to the economy and mislead on what the norm is or try to redefine it, we've heard today from the Business Council of Australia on the latest version of One Nation's immigration cuts, saying it would have a significant detrimental effect on our economic growth and on delivering prosperity for Australians and noting that with our ageing population we need more workers.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has said they do not support arbitrary cuts. Farmers, miners and business leaders have warned that sharp reductions would worsen persistent workforce shortages. So the summary is: if you want to destroy the economy, if you want to reduce GDP, if you want to reduce services available to Australians and if you want to reduce their quality of life then these sorts of slash-and-burn cuts in migration will achieve all of that.

I'm really pleased that the member for Gippsland is starting to work this out.