Workplace relations minister Amanda Rishworth is on the Nine network, where she is asked about the weekend rallies. There is a bit of a move on within some of the media to reframe the marches as ‘good people who were snowed by Nazis’ which discounts the amount of information available before the march about who was helping to organise it and support it. As well as the themes of the march. Which was not just ‘good people want to support Australia’. The grace given to protesters at these marches, where neo-Nazis were platformed (and we are yet to hear condemnation from the anti-semitism envoy Jillian Segal, who was very quick to criticise anti-genocide protests) compared to those who attended Palestinian marches is very, very clear.

The debate has turned to ‘when will you release the next migration target’ rather than ‘how do we counter growing white supremacy and fascism in our community’.

Rishworth:

Well, firstly, I would say that there should be no excuses for people behaving badly like we saw on the weekend, making people feel uncomfortable in their own communities.

So I think we all need to stand up and say that there is a no place to be calling for people, particular groups of people, if they don’t look like you, to be excluded from this country. So I’ll just make that point.

When it comes to migration policy, we’ve been doing a lot of work when it comes to migration policy. And for example, we have seen a reduction in the net overseas migration from the peak of Covid levels, down 37%, particularly as a result of a number of things, but including sustainability around student visas. 

So, look, we continue to work on this. Obviously, we’re working with states and territories on the permanent migration figures, but we do need to recognise there was a large bump as we came out of Covid, but we are working on a sustainable migration system across the board.