QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator CADELL (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (15:29): That word salad was as coherent about private health insurance as anything I've ever heard. It's like a year 7 artistic dance version of private health insurance, that response. It was quite the thing.

I want to go back to the issue of the day. We're talking about immigration. We heard the great immigration policy apparently, presented to the Press Club today by the Labor Party, but they didn't want to really get into it.

They didn't want to go anywhere near the detail. They're out there saying, 'We're cutting these immigration numbers. We're going out there and we're fixing these numbers.

We're going to pull this down.' They're taking these steps just to actually reach the target that they set for themselves. They're not pulling anything down. They're actually saying, 'We've been so incompetent for the rest of our time.

We've got to do all these changes just to do what we'd said we'd do,' which is quite odd. You sit there and you say: 'There's our target. This is what we're going to do.' Well, they're not even close to it.

They cut these numbers—let's get this reality on target here. Pre COVID, they talk about this drop from a peak. Guess what?

After COVID, a lot of people wanted to come home. People that have not been able to come here for a couple of years couldn't get here. There was a peak after COVID of people coming to Australia.

I don't blame them. But that was one year. If you go the history of immigration to Australia pre COVID, it was roughly 190,000 people per year.

That was number—198,000 per year. What has it been since Labor? Almost 400,000.

It has been 398,000 people per year, double the amount which, historically this century, has been coming here, and they've set a target, and they can't even reach it, so they go, 'Look at these big changes. It's actually going to fix up the mistakes we've done,' and where are they doing it? They're doing it in all the wrong places.

They're doing it on working holiday visas. Hear that working bit? The people that come here to do things, the working holiday visas, not the people that are coming here as the hangers on, not the leaners, not the leeches, not the bludgers—they're actually hitting the workers who want to come here and make a difference.

Here are the numbers. Year 2 working holiday visas are now a ballot. Imagine you're travelling with your partner or with your friend.

One of you gets one, and one doesn't. Who knows what happens there. All the people—when you go to country pubs, who cooks your schnitty?

Who pulls your beer? Who works in the fields? Who pulls these things in?

These people that are important, because there's a generally—I won't say always—a regional compact to this. It's down to 45,000 from 57,000—a 12K cut in year 2. In year 3, it's down to 5,000 from 31,000.

That is almost an 80 per cent cut there. That's what we're talking about here. They are taking these people away, and there is a real chance, because of your actions—the Farmers' Federation said today that we may have a food shortage because of the processing delays in getting these people in.

If you can't process these people's visas to come here to go to regional areas, to pick the fruit, to bring in the crops and to help out the way they always have, we may not be able to have enough food come Christmas, because you're not doing your job right and you say to these people 'we're going to cut you because it's easy'. We're going to cut the builders, not the bludgers.

We are going to cut the lifters, not the leeches. What a stupid policy that is. We heard the answers today about how they're fixing some wrong, about how they're going to go and do this and fix some wrong.

They are just merely trying to correct their own rubbish policies that have failed Australia, seeing double the immigration contact from the rest of this century since they have been in. That is not governing. That is an exercise in butt covering, and this needs to be better.

This needs to have a system done. We need to bring in the people that our people need, not who want to come here just for the free ride. Question agreed to.