Follow the day’s news live - Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Barnaby Joyce says Labor is copying and pasting One Nation’s homework because the measures we know so far around blocking the families of international students and preventing visa hopping have some similarity to what Pauline Hanson is suggesting. Speaking to the Today show a little earlier, Joyce says Burke’s last minute cancellation at the press club was “the greatest no-show since Amelia Earhart”. [Burke] can’t possibly be about to announce One Nation’s policy. I mean, Tony’s a great guy, right? I like Tony, but honestly, he was the greatest no-show since Amelia Earhart when he didn’t turn up to the Press Club … What I’ve heard thus far is that it’s an exact replication, but not to the extent of what One Nation is doing. I will be watching this with absolute fascination and some trepidation, and I’ll be waiting for Jim Chalmers to explain his new budget. I was on polling booths with my colleagues like Sally Sitou . I was out there in Reid with her in those last weeks of the campaign, standing there for hours at a time. She would be surrounded by men a foot taller than her, stopping her physically talking to or giving information to voters. I would think secretly paying known rightwing figures to disrupt events and pretend that they are just disgruntled citizens having their say is certainly immoral, if it’s not illegal. Continue reading...
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Burke rubbishes ‘absurd’ claims of ‘mass migration’ in Australia
Tony Burke starts his address trying to dispel some of the most “absurd” claims in the migration debate – starting with the claim that Australia is a nation of “mass migration”.
Burke tells the National Press Club that there’s one simple fact to counter that:
Before the pandemic, the intergenerational report had the projections for where Australia’s population would be by 2030–31. When we get to that point, we’ll be 700,000 people smaller than what had been projected before the pandemic.
He then takes aim at claims that backpacker and Palm scheme visas don’t form part of the net migration number – most of them do. He said last year backpackers made up 48,000 of the net overseas migration figure.
There’s almost an approach, sort of the Nom version of nimbyism – I won’t try to invent the ‘nombyism’ word. It’s a concept where people say they want immigration numbers to go down, but they don’t want to mention this visa class and they immediately want to rule out all the ones that they would rely on.