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Labor's great big hypocrisy on immigration

Tuesday 4th May 2010

Last week Gordon Brown called one of his voters a bigot. Her crime, voicing her concerns about immigration policy in the UK. Brown was condemned for an act of outrageous insensitivity and dutifully marched back to her home for a 45 minute apology.

Talking about immigration is not easy in western democracies. There is an elite consensus that seeks to deny the conversation. Apparently, we’re not mature enough to have this discussion without our raw, untamed racial prejudices overwhelming our capacity for reason and having their way.

To protect us all from our dark side, the self appointed elite apply the tags of racism, bigotry and dog whistling to anyone who cares to discuss the topic. After all, it’s ‘for our own good’.

These are strong terms that have been used cheaply in the media and the political left to deny legitimate policy discussion. Their misuse diminishes their impact, blunting their effectiveness to decry the real face of racism when it appears.

As Gordon Brown found out, using these terms to demonise people for expressing a genuine concern is insulting. It is also insulting to the millions of others who may not share precisely the same views as the lady he encountered that day, but they do harbour similar concerns.

Last year Kevin Rudd was less discrete than Gordon Brown when it came to insulting people who held different views to his own.

In the ETS debate Kevin Rudd chose to demonise anyone who didn’t share his view on climate change as being unconcerned about their own children. I’m not sure where that leaves him now. It was difficult for those who didn’t share his view to determine what was more disturbing, his proposal for a great big new tax or his arrogant moralising and lecturing of Australian families.

We are seeing the same thing again when it comes to the debate about population policy.

For months now I have been making the obvious point that Australia’s population growth rate at 2.1% per annum, with a net overseas migration of 300,000, is unsustainable. For the past 40 years we have been growing on average at 1.4%, and even Kevin Rudd’s Big Australia projection of 36 million by 2050, requires only 180,000 net overseas migration per year.

Raising such issues is apparently racist dog whistling according to my political opponents and some in the media. But race simple doesn’t enter into it. The Coalition has always championed a non discriminatory immigration policy.

This is in stark contrast to the Rudd Government’s recent decision to refuse assessment of asylum seekers based on their nationality and reserve for those the harshest detention facility on the mainland. This policy has proved as ineffective as it is discriminatory.

While there is no shortage of those prepared to criticise the Coalition for our policies in this area, we have always advocated that everyone gets the same treatment, regardless of their race, nationality or religion. Labor cannot say the same.

The population debate is a rational discussion about whether our services, infrastructure and environment can cope with current rates of growth, where failure will see a loss of living standards for Australians, not to mention the environmental consequences. The only ones bringing race to the table are those either trying to stop the debate or hijack the debate.

I have argued in the Coalition Policy Directions Statement released last week that we need to put some guard rails on population growth. These guard rails would take the form of growth bands set for the short, medium and longer term. Each year, migration intakes would be set to ensure our overall level of population growth stayed within these bands.

The bands would be based on the independent and credible advice of a reconstituted Productivity and Sustainability Commission and what they consider is sustainable population growth. This approach would inject some science and rationality to the planning process that does not currently exist. It will also serve to depoliticize these questions over the longer term.

The benchmarks for what constitutes a sustainable growth path would be liveability, environmental sustainability, economic productivity and national security. We have also made it clear that skills would be the top priority for a migration programme run by the Coalition.

Again, these are not issues of race, religion or nationality. It is a simple a debate about carrying capacity, process and planning.

Some have tried to argue that because we remain in favour of natural increase policies that this is somehow discriminatory to our migrant population. Policies favouring natural increase do not distinguish between race, ethnicity or religion. It is the simple process of the population reproducing itself.

A migration programme has a secondary function to natural increase in relation to population growth. It’s purpose is to supplement our natural population growth to achieve whatever objective we consider important.

There is no implied right within the UN Charter of Human Rights or elsewhere to permanent residency in Australia. The decision on our annual migration intake is a sovereign one, to be taken in our national interests. If we choose to increase or decrease our migration intake, these decisions apply equally to all, regardless of race, ethnicity or religion, based on the rules we set down.

Gordon Brown’s candid comment on the views of one his own supporters betrays Labor’s hypocrisy on immigration. It highlights the contradiction both here and in the UK between the elite who run their Party, and those they claim to represent. In private they demonise and ridicule the socially conservative views of many ‘workers’ and those on lower incomes, while claiming champion status in public.

For example, consider the union leaders who decry the Coalition for our position on immigration and asylum seekers as xenophobic and racist, yet run emotion driven campaigns demonising business and skilled migrants for accessing 457 visas in the workplace, as taking aussie jobs.

There are just not enough sides of the street for these guys to walk on.

This article is also published on The Punch where you can make comment and join the conversation by clicking here.

Last week Gordon Brown called one of his voters a bigot. Her crime, voicing her concerns about immigration policy in the UK.

Brown was condemned for an act of outrageous insensitivity and dutifully marched back to her home for a 45 minute apology.

Talking about immigration is not easy in western democracies.

There is an elite consensus that seeks to deny the conversation. Apparently, we’re not mature enough to have this discussion without our raw, untamed racial prejudices overwhelming our capacity for reason and having their way.

To protect us all from our dark side, the self appointed elite apply the tags of racism, bigotry and dog whistling to anyone who cares to discuss the topic. After all, it’s for our own good.

These are strong terms that have been used cheaply in the media and the political left to deny legitimate policy discussion. Their misuse diminishes their impact, blunting their effectiveness to decry the real face of racism when it appears.

As Gordon Brown found out, using these terms to demonise people for expressing a genuine concern is insulting. It is also insulting to the millions of others who may not share precisely the same views as the lady he encountered that day, but they do harbour similar concerns.

Last year Kevin Rudd was less discrete than Gordon Brown when it came to insulting people who held different views to his own.

In the ETS debate Kevin Rudd chose to demonise anyone who didn’t share his view on climate change as being unconcerned about their own children. I’m not sure where that leaves him now. It was difficult for those who didn’t share his view to determine what was more disturbing, his proposal for a great big new tax or his arrogant moralising and lecturing of Australian families.

We are seeing the same thing again when it comes to the debate about population policy.

For months now I have been making the obvious point that Australia’s population growth rate at 2.1% per annum, with a net overseas migration of 300,000, is unsustainable. For the past 40 years we have been growing on average at 1.4%, and even Kevin Rudd’s Big Australia projection of 36 million by 2050, requires only 180,000 net overseas migration per year.

Raising such issues is apparently racist dog whistling according to my political opponents and some in the media. But race simple doesn’t enter into it. The Coalition has always championed a non discriminatory immigration policy.

This is in stark contrast to the Rudd Government’s recent decision to refuse assessment of asylum seekers based on their nationality and reserve for those the harshest detention facility on the mainland. This policy has proved as ineffective as it is discriminatory.

While there is no shortage of those prepared to criticise the Coalition for our policies in this area, we have always advocated that everyone gets the same treatment, regardless of their race, nationality or religion. Labor cannot say the same.

The population debate is a rational discussion about whether our services, infrastructure and environment can cope with current rates of growth, where failure will see a loss of living standards for Australians, not to mention the environmental consequences. The only ones bringing race to the table are those either trying to stop the debate or hijack the debate.

I have argued in the Coalition Policy Directions Statement released last week that we need to put some guard rails on population growth. These guard rails would take the form of growth bands set for the short, medium and longer term. Each year, migration intakes would be set to ensure our overall level of population growth stayed within these bands.

The bands would be based on the independent and credible advice of asomehow discriminatory to our migrant population. Policies favouring natural increase do not distinguish between race, ethnicity or religion. It is the simple process of the population reproducing itself.

A migration programme has a secondary function to natural increase in relation to population growth. It’s purpose is to supplement our natural population growth to achieve whatever objective we consider important.

There is no implied right within the UN Charter of Human Rights or elsewhere to permanent residency in Australia. The decision on our annual migration intake is a sovereign one, to be taken in our national interests. If we choose to increase or decrease our migration intake, these decisions apply equally to all, regardless of race, ethnicity or religion, based on the rules we set down.

Gordon Brown’s candid comment on the views of one his own supporters betrays Labor’s hypocrisy on immigration. It highlights the contradiction both here and in the UK between the elite who run their Party, and those they claim to represent. In private they demonise and ridicule the socially conservative views of many ‘workers’ and those on lower incomes, while claiming champion status in public.

For example, consider the union leaders who decry the Coalition for our position on immigration and asylum seekers as xenophobic and racist, yet run emotion driven campaigns demonising business and skilled migrants for accessing 457 visas in the workplace, as taking aussie jobs.

There are just not enough sides of the street for these guys to walk on.

This article is also published on The Punch where you can make comment and join the conversation by clicking here.

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