Labor leader Michael Daley has been captured on video claiming that young people were leaving Sydney and being replaced by foreigners who were "moving in and taking their jobs".
In the video, Mr Daley can be seen telling an audience at a pub in the Blue Mountains that a "transformation" was under way in Sydney and young workers were being replaced by Asian immigrants.
"Our young children will flee and who are they being replaced with? They are being replaced by young people from typically Asia with PhDs," Mr Daley is heard saying in the video, now published on YouTube. "There's a transformation happening in Sydney now where our kids are moving out and foreigners are moving in and taking their jobs. I don't want to sound xenophobic, it's not a xenophobic thing, it's an economic question."
Mr Daley was speaking at a politics-in-the-pub event in Wentworth Falls last September when he was deputy opposition leader. The Gazette did not attend the event. A man in the audience asked Mr Daley to clarify his comments because he was "deeply concerned" by them.
Mr Daley replied: "It's just a statement of fact. Our young people are moving out of Sydney because they cannot afford to live here and they are being replaced by international workers.
"Most of those are from Asia - from China, from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore. It's not a bad thing because Asian kids are coming to work here, it's a bad thing because I'd like my daughter to live in Maroubra rather than St Kilda."
A spokesman for Mr Daley said he made the comments in the context of a discussion on "cost of living and housing affordability pressures on young people".
- The story, Daley on video in Blue Mountains: 'Asians moving in and taking jobs', first appeared on the Sydney Morning Herald.
