Greens leader Zack Polanski has rejected claims his party would push for open borders on immigration, telling Sky News it is “not a pragmatic” solution for a world in “turmoil”.

Mr Polanski distanced himself from his party’s “long-range vision” for open borders, saying it was not in his party’s manifesto and was an “attack line used by opponents” to question his credibility.

It came as Mr Polanski, who has overseen a spike in support in the polls to double figures, refused to apologise over controversial comments he made about care workers on BBC Question Time that were criticised across the political spectrum.

Mr Polanski was speaking to Sky News earlier this week while in Calais, where he joined volunteers and charities to witness how French police handle the arrival of migrants in the town that is used as a departure point for those wanting to make the journey to the UK.

He told Sky News he had made the journey to the French town – once home to the “Jungle” refugee camp before it was demolished in 2016 – to tackle “misinformation” about migration and to make the case for a “compassionate, fair and managed response” to the small boats crisis.

He said that “no manifesto ever said anything about open borders” and that the Greens had never stood at a general election advocating for them.

“Clearly when the world is in political turmoil and we have deep inequality, that is not a situation we can move to right now,” he said.

“That would also involve massive international agreements and cooperation. That clearly is not a pragmatic conversation to have right now. And very often the government try to push that attack line to make us look not pragmatic.”

The party’s manifesto last year did not mention open borders, but it did call for an end to the “hostile environment”, more safe and legal routes and for the Home Office to be abolished and replaced with a department of migration.

Asked why the policy of minimal restrictions on migration had been attributed to his party, Mr Polanski said open borders was part of a “long-range vision of what society could look like if there was a Green government and if we’d had a long time to fix some of the systemic problems”.

‘We should recognise the contribution migrants make’

Mr Polanski, who was elected Green Party leader in September and has been compared to Nigel Farage over his populist economic policies, said his position was one of a “fair and managed” migration system – although he did not specify whether that included a cap on numbers.

He acknowledged that there needed to be a “separate conversation” about economic migration but that he did not believe any person who boarded a small boat was in a “good situation”.

While Mr Polanski stressed that he believed asylum seekers should be able to work in Britain and pay taxes, he also said he believed in the need to train British workers in sectors such as care, where one in five are foreign nationals.

Asked what his proposals for a fair and managed migration system looked like, and whether he supported a cap on numbers, Mr Polanski said: “We have 100,000 vacancies in the National Health Service. One in five care workers in the care sector are foreign nationals.

“Now, of course, that is both British workers and we should be training British workers, but we should recognise the contribution that migrants and people who come over here make.”

I’m not going to apologise’

Mr Polanski also responded to the criticism he attracted over his comments about care workers on Question Time last week, where he told the audience: “I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly want to wipe someone’s bum” – before adding: “I’m very grateful for the people who do this work.”

His comments have been criticised by a number of Labour MPs, including Wes Streeting, the health secretary, who said: “Social care isn’t just ‘wiping someone’s bum’. It is a hard, rewarding, skilled professional job.

“This is immigration as exploitation.”

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Asked whether he could understand why some care workers might feel he had talked down to them, the Greens leader replied: “I care deeply about care workers. When I made those comments, it’s important to give a full context. I said ‘I’m very grateful to people who do this important work’ and absolutely repeat that it’s vital work.”

“Of course, it is not part of the whole job, and I never pretended it was part of the whole job.”

Mr Polanski said he “totally” rejected the suggestion that he had denigrated the role of care workers in the eyes of the public and said his remarks were made in the context of a “hostile Question Time” where he had “three right-wing panellists shouting at me”.

Pressed on whether he wanted to apologise, he replied: “I’m not going to apologise for being really clear that I’m really grateful to the people who do this really vital work. And yes, we should be paying them properly, too.”

As Australia slides into its summer, it is leaving behind months marked by nationwide protests on one major issue – migration.

In August, around 50,000 people demonstrated in towns and cities across the country. There were clashes at separate rallies between far-right and far-left protesters in Melbourne.

In October, there were more protests. This time police accused the far-left of attacking officers and trying to confront right-wing protesters.

Tension on both sides is running high.

Sydney protester Fran Grant has attended all the rallies.

“I love Australia and I’m not happy with what’s happening now,” she explained.

“It looks like the Labour government are continuing to bring in immigrants. I have no problem with that if we have the infrastructure to support it, but we don’t.”

Migration levels now falling

During the COVID crisis, Australia introduced strict border closures and migration plummeted.

Then in the years following the pandemic, there was a migration boom. A total of 1.4 million people entered Australia.

These were huge numbers. However, the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows net overseas migration has since fallen by almost 40% since its post-COVID peak.

But many Australians still believe the numbers are still too high.

‘We can’t keep going like this’

Australia’s multicultural heart is in suburbs like Auburn in Sydney, where almost 80% of families use a language other than English at home.

Steve Christou is a Cumberland City councillor and the son of Greek-Cypriot migrants.

“All we’re saying is put a stop to excess immigration until the country’s infrastructure can keep up,” he said. “We can’t keep going like this.”

He added: “We’re not blaming the migrants in the country, let’s be very clear about that. The government is being blamed for letting in 1.4 million migrants in the last three years to the point where the country can’t cope.”

Mr Christou spoke to protesters at the rally in October. There were families, students and seniors in the crowd, flying Australian flags and singing Australian songs.

Critics have called these protests racist, inflammatory and dangerous, but many people attending said they were there to show their pride for Australia and its way of life.

Others were demonstrating against the country’s housing shortage and increasing cost of living.

Australia’s neo-Nazis emboldened

In August, dozens of Australia’s neo-Nazis also attended the Melbourne and Sydney protests and addressed the crowds.

In Melbourne, migration demonstrations and counter-protests turned violent. Neo-Nazis allegedly attacked an indigenous camp in the city.

Speaking at an anti-racism rally in Sydney, deputy leader of the Australian Greens, Mehreen Faruqi, told Sky News: “The far-right are emboldened in a way that I have never seen before.”

Senator Faruqi was born in Pakistan but has lived in Australia for more than 30 years.

“They [far-right] are coming out on the streets, they have signs and slogans and chants that are white supremacists, white nationalists, and of course, this is happening across the world.”

Terrorism and far-right expert, Dr Josh Roose, from Deakin University in Melbourne, said: “We know that the Nazis see this as their time to capitalise.

“They’re not only attending these rallies, but they’re seeking to position themselves at the front, to mobilise people and shape the public conversation by normalising extreme ideas.”

At the “March for Australia” rally in October, organiser Bec “Freedom” told Sky News that the neo-Nazis are “proud Australians .. standing up for our country against mass immigration. So long as they’re not violent, they’re welcome here.

“While they’re at my event, they’ve been told to keep it respectful. No hate speech, no violence, no Hitler talk,” she said.

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Ms Freedom said she’s “definitely not” coordinating with the neo-Nazis, that she has spoken with them and “that’s as far as it goes”.

Asked if she was worried that the presence of the neo-Nazis at the August rally would give the March for Australia movement a bad name, she replied: “The thing is we’ve been abused, and name-called by the media for so long… If you want to call me a Nazi, then fine, call me a Nazi.”

Other demonstrators said they wanted nothing to do with the neo-Nazis and had no time for the group and its messages.

On 8 November, more than 60 neo-Nazis gathered on the steps of the New South Wales state parliament, holding a banner reading “Abolish the Jewish Lobby”.

The brazen stunt shocked the public and was widely condemned by the state government.

The government is now strengthening laws against public displays of neo-Nazi ideology.

A bill to ban the burqa

There’s been political controversy too.

In November, Australian senator and leader of the far-right One Nation party, Pauline Hanson, created a political storm when she wore a burqa (a full-face Islamic covering) inside federal parliament.

Ms Hanson is calling for the burqa to be banned in public places. Her party is rising in the polls and drawing disaffected Coalition (or Conservative) voters to its ranks.

At home with Fran Grant and her reptiles

Ms Grant’s home is where she can really express her pride in Australia.

She has an Australian flag flying out the front, an Australian-map-shaped coffee, and a collection of native goannas and snakes.

Ms Grant said being born in Australia, she’s won the “lottery of life” but believes there are too many “economic migrants” coming in.

“I’m very happy for people to come here. My mum was a 10-pound pom (British migrant),” she explained.

“At the moment where the cost of living and housing is so high, instead of just saying ‘racism, racism’ let’s look at what’s best for people who live here now.”

A group of crypto organizations has pushed back on Citadel Securities’ request that the Securities and Exchange Commission tighten regulations on decentralized finance when it comes to tokenized stocks.

Andreessen Horowitz, the Uniswap Foundation, along with crypto lobby groups the DeFi Education Fund and The Digital Chamber, among others, said they wanted “to correct several factual mischaracterizations and misleading statements” in a letter to the SEC on Friday.

The group was responding to a letter from Citadel earlier this month, which urged the SEC not to give DeFi platforms “broad exemptive relief” for offering trading of tokenized US equities, arguing they could likely be defined as an “exchange” or “broker-dealer” regulated under securities laws.

“Citadel’s letter rests on a flawed analysis of the securities laws that attempts to extend SEC registration requirements to essentially any entity with even the most tangential connection to a DeFi transaction,” the group said.

The group added they shared Citadel’s aims of investor protection and market integrity, but disagreed “that achieving these goals always necessitates registration as traditional SEC intermediaries and cannot, in certain circumstances, be met through thoughtfully designed onchain markets.”

Citadel’s ask would be impractical, group says

The group argued that regulating decentralized platforms under securities laws “would be impracticable given their functions” and could capture a broad range of onchain activities that aren’t usually considered as offering exchange services.

The letter also took aim at Citadel’s characterization that autonomous software was an intermediary, arguing it can’t be a “‘middleman’ in a financial transaction because it is not a person capable of exercising independent discretion or judgment.”

“DeFi technology is a new innovation that was designed to address market risks and resiliency in a different way than traditional financial systems do, and DeFi protects investors in ways that traditional finance cannot,” the group argued.

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In its letter, Citadel had argued that the SEC giving the green light to tokenized shares on DeFi “would create two separate regulatory regimes for the trading of the same security” and would undermine “the ‘technology-neutral’ approach taken by the Exchange Act.”