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Opinion article, The Australian: Growth Is good when managed well

Friday 22nd January 2010

The Prime Minister's dismissive attitude towards immigration policy indicates Labor's failure to appreciate the consequences of its decisions in this area. In the Rudd government, immigration and border protection are taking a back seat.

While both sides of politics have supported Australia's immigration program, we differ in our priorities, track record, ability to manage and beliefs about the contribution immigration should make.

Popular demonising of Coalition immigration policy cannot be reconciled with recent research by Monash University, showing that despite the Coalition doubling the country's annual immigration intake when last in government (that's right, doubling it), we managed to halve community concerns about the level of immigration. 

In 1997 we accepted just 73,900 permanent migrants. According to Monash's Andrew Markus, almost two-thirds of Australians at that time (when Pauline Hanson was in the ascendancy) thought our annual immigration intake was too high.

In response the Howard government more than doubled the annual immigration intake over the next decade to a peak of 158,630 and those concerned about immigration fell to just over one-third of the population.

During the same decade, more than two million jobs were created and unemployment was halved. It is not surprising that Markus found a high correlation between lower unemployment and reduced concerns about immigration. When you manage things well, people are more likely to go with you.

The immigrant population is too often the first in the firing line when we fear things are not heading in the right direction. Problems with hospitals, roads, public transport, environment, water shortages and and even rising house prices are all sheeted home to too much immigration.

I would argue that rising concerns about immigration levels may be more about community disaffection with how things are being managed by our governments.

There is no doubt that Australia's population growth since World War II has been the driving force behind our expanded capacity as a nation and the prosperity that we now enjoy.

Today, 45 per cent of Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent who was. We are an immigrant nation and there is broad public acceptance, according to Markus, for the view that bringing immigrants from many different countries makes Australia stronger.

A recent Australian National University study found that net migration of 180,000 a year would add a full 10 percentage points to growth in gross domestic product per capita.

And research by Access Economics shows that every permanent migrant adds $20,000 to the budget bottom line over their first four years. For one year's intake, this presently represents more than $3.6 billion.

Skilled migrants account for more than 90 per cent of this contribution.

These figures provide a salient reminder to a federal government swimming in debt and deficit. Growth has been good for Australia and can be good again, but this outcome won't happen by itself.

This is not an argument for a population blank cheque.

We need a well-managed population policy that sets down important preconditions before allowing our population to rise. Given that immigration accounts for almost 60 per cent of population growth, we can do something about it.

Rudd is asking Australians to accept that our projected population increase is just another issue he cannot control and is not responsible for.

We need to decide how we intend to manage and how much we will invest in our infrastructure, our environment, especially water, and our services. We need to decide the size of the workforce we will need to support an ageing population, which only skilled migration can substantively address.

To take housing affordability, for example, we must agree what changes need to be made to planning policies and how much land must be released for development. Labor failures in these areas, especially in NSW, are the real reasons for declining housing affordability - not migrants bidding up prices.

Only once we contend with these issues and trade-offs can we know how large a population we can sustainably support and responsibly set the level and composition of our immigration intake.

Already Labor has cut the skills component of the annual immigration intake from 68 per cent to a planned 64 per cent, while increasing the family intake by more than 20 per cent from levels set by the Coalition.

Labor's shift back to the family program is consistent with its form in government: last time it comprised almost 70 per cent of the annual intake. At the end of the Coalition's term we had reversed the balance, increasing the proportion of skilled migration to almost 70 per cent.

Labor's shift away from skilled migration will impose greater costs on our nation.

Studies demonstrate a higher cost to our budget as non-skilled migrants have higher demand for services and welfare, lower levels of English proficiency and are less likely to find employment and pay tax. Citizenship test results also reveal less understanding of Australian values and culture.

Of course we must continue to honour our international obligations for humanitarian resettlement. However, this does not mean allowing people smugglers to decide who benefits from Australia's generosity, as is occurring under Labor's border protection failures.

If Labor is also allowed to wind back skilled migration, as proposed by Labor MP Kelvin Thomson, then we will not only have to support an ageing Australian population in the future but an increasingly welfare-dependent immigrant population as well.

Unlike Rudd, I do not consider this outcome to be of marginal impact.

The Coalition is determined to give Australians a mature debate on these important population and immigration questions.

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