Critics are appalled and screaming ‘racist’ after Dutton said he’d slash permanent immigration

Whether Peter Dutton has gone far enough to fix the issue of mass immigration is one thing, but he’s right on one main point.

How telling: the ABC objects to Peter Dutton putting Australia first.

“Australia First doesn’t sound like a very Australian-type thing to say,” 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson complained in interviewing the Opposition Leader on his plan last week to cut immigration.

Where does the ABC think Dutton should put Australia? Second? Last?

Maybe that’s what media Left critics of Dutton’s budget reply speech do actually mean.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is putting Australia first. Picture: Getty

They’re appalled and screaming “racist” after Dutton said he’d slash permanent immigration – just like 74 per cent of Australians want, according to a new survey by The Australian Population Research Institute.

In the Financial Review, I read that Dutton’s message “carried a touch of xenophobia” because “it is obvious to Sydneysiders that their city is becoming more Chinese, and these middle-class immigrants are helping drive property prices”. Obvious indeed.

Laura Tingle, another Financial Review columnist, complains Dutton “opened the doors to migrants being blamed not just for housing shortages but for … congestion on our roads”, and noting this other obvious thing is “divisive”.

How often do we see mass immigration passionately defended as if it exists for the benefit of foreigners, and that putting Australians first is racist? That’s how we also got this disastrous policy of multiculturalism.

But if you put Australia first, you must listen to what Australians say they want, having seen what mass immigration has done to them. Whether Dutton has gone far enough to fix it is one thing, but he’s right: we’re importing many more people than we can build homes for.

We used to import, on average, 80,000 immigrants a year, net, in the quarter of a century to 2006.

We’re importing many more people than we can build homes for. Picture: iStock

Then the Rudd Labor government came and tripled that to 220,000 a year. Liberal governments went along with this Ponzi scheme that fattened the government’s tax take but stuffed our cities to bursting.

The pandemic briefly stopped the circus, but this Albanese government then more than doubled our net intake again – to 530,000 people last financial year, or 2 per cent of our population.

Madness, when we’re building only half the homes the newcomers need.

True, there’s something else about this massive intake which Dutton doesn’t dare raise. It’s the growing tribalism, as immigration becomes colonisation.

Dutton isn’t saying that, but his critics are punishing him anyway. That debate, too, must come.

Originally published as Critics are appalled and screaming ‘racist’ after Dutton said he’d slash permanent immigration