Mr SCIACCA (4:50 PM) —I will answer some of the things that have been said by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs: first of all, we talked about the number of people who applied under the previous regulation, which allowed people to sponsor their aged relatives over here at a cost of some $17,500. There were approximately 2,300—I do not know exactly how many—who had five months to make that application. In fact, one would have thought that, out of those 20,000, those who had that sort of money would have taken up the option fairly quickly. For the minister to suggest that people in five months would not have all known—those that at least were within that queue—is a little bit fanciful. The reality is that about 2½ thousand or something like that applied. To suggest that the queue, as he said again, would have been reduced by a proposition which is something like four to five times as much as he was originally saying is fanciful, and he knows that. He knows that in reality it was quite easy to put 4,000 aside at $64,000 a couple, because he knew there was not going to be much of a take-up rate. The reality is that a lot of people cannot afford that, Minister.

There was no imputation on your credibility as to why you are not taking this back. I did not mean it that way. But I am aware that the minister did go around certain places and talk to people about this in an attempt to sell it—and he was not able to; he did not get much support. If he thought for one moment that he had support for this, do you think that he would not be putting it forward? Of course, you would. You would be putting it back, for sure. You know that there is not a lot of support and so, for the time being, you probably do not want to do anything about it.

In saying that we were suggesting that we would allow the whole 20,000 in, you know that that is not something that we would do.

Mr Ruddock —We don't know that.

Mr SCIACCA —I'm telling you that we wouldn't do it. I will tell you that, all right?

Mr Ruddock —How many?

Mr SCIACCA —I am not going to tell you how many. You have told us 500. We will decide about that later on. The fact is that, at least if it is 1,500 or 2,000, over 10 years you might be able to get rid of that queue of 20,000. Under your proposition of 500, that queue will last for 40 years. Most of them will be dead, Minister, and you know that. By virtue of the fact that they are aged, they will not last 40 years—some of them are in their 60s and 70s. So the reality is that you have given them no hope whatsoever. You have only to take that back to what you were doing before you knocked it down to 500. If I remember correctly, some were borrowed from the spouses category which were unused. I think it was 2,700 or something like that that you allowed in the year before. Dividing 20,000 by 2,700 I think works out at about nine years. That is a reasonable thing. That is not going to cost billions. Of course, if you or our minister say that Labor will bring in the whole 20,000 queue in one year, it will cost billions. The reality is that you know that that is just a trick.

Mr Ruddock —That included the reinstated categories.

Mr SCIACCA —Yes, but the point is that you know full well that this is just good politics—you think it is. We believe that what we have done here is the right thing. We are not going to tell you what it is that we will do. Immigration, Minister, as you know, is the purview of the government in power. You are the ones who make the rules. We can only attempt to stop you when you bring in things that we think are wrong. We believe that this is wrong. We believe that the community will not cop it. Fair-minded Australians do not believe this rhetoric of yours about how it costs us billions and billions of dollars. I know you would like to peddle that, because it is a good political point. You say that you do not play politics with this. Of course you do. You yourself have said that you are looking at opinion polls and everything else. You are also saying, `You go out there and sell that to the Australian public.' We are about good policy. We are not about going out there and selling these sorts of things. This is just good policy. I do not want to say anything else and I hope that you do not either so that we can get on with the business of the House.

Question resolved in the affirmative.