From Elder of the Australian Parliament, Bob Katter
I was thrown out of Parliament today for daring to raise what millions of Australians are already talking about – that the Australian Government must immediately address the unsustainably high level of migration and its serious impact on the state of the nation, by urgently implementing a policy of ‘no migration without integration’.
That was the subject raised in my Matter of Public Importance. The Labor Government opposed it. So did the ‘woke teal’ MPs on the crossbenches. The Member for Warringah went so far as to try and have me sanctioned just for raising the issue.
Australians deserve to know why.
The figures are staggering. It’s reported that, on average, about 340,000 student visas are issued every year… yet only 40,000 actually leave Australia. That means some 300,000 people are staying on, year after year, via the student visa system alone. Add 400,000 permanent migrants and you are looking at some 700,000 people coming to stay every single year.
You don’t need to be a double-degree do-nothing to work out what that means. Keep this up for 15 years and Australians will become a minority in their own country. I’m not prepared to pretend that doesn’t matter and I refuse to apologise for saying as much.
Worse still, nearly three-quarters of these new arrivals are funnelled into Sydney and Melbourne – cities with no housing capacity, no infrastructure, no jobs. We’ve sent our manufacturing and industry offshore. Thousands of jobs have vanished. So why is the government flooding people into cities where there is nowhere to work or live?
What we are instead seeing is communities forming with no expectation or intention of integration. That is social disintegration, not multiculturalism.
To be crystal clear, this is not about race or religion. Australia has enduring, successful relationships with many nations and cultures. I come from a part of Australia where almost everyone comes from some minority background somewhere along the line – including many First Australians. Integration works when our values are expected and reinforced.
But assimilation matters. Shared values matter. Democracy matters. The rule of law matters. Respect for other Australians matters.
When people can stand in front of the Sydney Opera House and chant calls for murder; and authorities do nothing… something has gone badly wrong. When those who stand up and say “we don’t do that in Australia” are punished, then something is broken.
Australians are sick of being shouted down, silenced and smeared as racists for asking reasonable questions about the future of our country. We’ve had a gutful. That anger isn’t going away, it’s growing.
By trying to shut this debate down, Labor and the teals are not stopping it – they are fuelling it.
I was thrown out of Parliament today – but the issue isn’t going anywhere. Australians love this country. They want to remain Australians. And they have every right to demand a migration system that is sustainable, fair, and based on integration – not denial.
