STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Mr FRENCH (Moore) (13:58): Tim Minchin has a very clever song called 'Prejudice'. The joke is that prejudice looks pretty ridiculous when you change who it is aimed at. In my family, that is easy.

There are seven of us. Five of us have red hair; my mum and I are the only non-gingers. I grew up in what One Nation might call an unsustainable level of ginger migration.

We were completely overwhelmed, yet somehow civilisation survived. We didn't introduce a ginger cap. We didn't decide the correct number of redheads was zero for three years.

That is the problem with One Nation's new migration policy. They have started with the answer: net negative migration. Australia needs controlled and sustainable migration, but migration policy should respond to what Australia actually needs—housing, infrastructure, workers and economic capacity—not working backwards to make it fit.

A number is not a policy just because you say it loudly enough. If you build an economic policy around a number, eventually someone will ask you to explain it. When asked, the member for New England seemed to suggest that that required supernatural powers.

Well, he is not the Messiah. He is just a very naughty boy, because nobody was asking for a miracle. They just wanted him to do the maths, and apparently that remained a problem.

If your answer to economic scrutiny is to stop listening to economists, that is an economic policy. If the numbers fall apart under scrutiny, the problem isn't the scrutiny. The SPEAKER: In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded.