One Nation’s migration muddle got worse, not better, this morning with Member for New England Barnaby Joyce declaring his colleague David Farley wrong about the numbers, but refused to say what skilled workers regional areas would have to go without in order for One Nation to meet their targets.
Mr Joyce, the Member for New England, appeared on Channel 7’s Sunrise alongside Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek, hosted by Natalie Barr, less than 24 hours after Mr Farley told ABC’s Insiders that One Nation’s “true” migration figure was 130,000 net overseas migration (NOM) plus a minimum of 100,000 more, through programs such as the PALM scheme and skilled visas.
“Pauline says it’s 130,000. David Farley says it’s 130,000 plus another hundred. Which is it?” Ms Barr asked.
“It is 130,000. We’ve been saying it all along,” Mr Joyce said.
Mr Joyce was not able to clarify a specific permanent migration target, saying it was included in the NOM.
“If you’re in Australia for 12 months or less out of 16, a lot of visa holders are, that’s not included in the NOM.”
“There’s not going to be an extra 100 on top of that,” he said.
Asked if Mr Farley had simply misspoke, Mr Joyce dismissed it as a rookie error.
“That’s not unusual,” Mr Joyce said. “Show me a political career where people haven’t made, you know, made a mistake and I’ll show you a person who’s not told the truth.”
“I’m not going to throw anybody under a bus,” he said. “When people are new in Parliament, they can sometimes get things incorrect and that’s, that’s what happens. God knows I’ve done it enough.”
But on the detail that matters most to North Coast growers, Mr Joyce held the line with Mr Farley: workers on the PALM scheme, which lets Pacific and Timor-Leste workers fill seasonal farm jobs, do not count in net overseas migration at all – if they are in Australia for less than 12 months out of 16.
“We will still have things such as a PALM scheme,” Mr Joyce said. “Everyone agrees with that. The Australian Bureau of Statistics agrees with that.”
Minister Plibersek was clearly enjoying the confusion.
“If there’s three One Nation MPs in a room, there’s three different immigration policies,” Minister Plibersek said.
Barnaby Joyce shot back that there aren’t three One Nation MPs.
“That’s a great point,” Minister Plibersek said, before continuing
“I’d be interested to know from Barnaby which rural doctors he doesn’t want here, which aged care workers that work in nursing homes in his electorate, which people in the building industry or the people who work in abattoirs.”
“There’s plenty of them who are here for four years working in abattoirs, for example, or fruit picking, doing a lot of jobs that it’s pretty hard to get Australians to do, frankly,” she said.
“So, you know over to him about which jobs he doesn’t want done in his electorate.”
Ms Barr noted Pauline Hanson had separately warned some businesses would simply go without migrant workers when putting the question to Mr Joyce, but he did not answer, instead deflecting the conversation into a spiralling debate about how many doctors are being brought into the country.
“You’re being mischievous,” Mr Joyce said.
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