Europe’s waking up — when will Australia?
The PM is still deaf to those who say they want less migration and needs to understand that it’s not just his critics who are calling for the rate of immigration to fall, writes Peta Credlin.
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AMIDST all the sound and fury in Canberra this week about company tax, there’s one issue that senior politicians are still refusing to debate and that’s immigration.
And while they’re all burying their heads in the proverbial sand, Australia is adding a city bigger than Canberra to our population every two years, through immigration alone.
Right now, as well we know, wages are stagnant, housing is unaffordable, roads and public transport are clogged and integration is under pressure — especially in Melbourne — but to the government and the opposition, it’s still “bring-them-in-as-usual.”
And here’s why they’re on a unity ticket. The government wants more migrants because they add to nominal GDP and make the budget look better than it really is. And the opposition wants more migrants because of the left’s manufactured ‘compassion’ narrative and the (mistaken) view that most migrants will vote for Labor.
The PM is still deaf to the majority of Australians who — poll after poll — say they want less migration and needs to understand that it’s not just his critics who are calling for the rate of immigration to fall.
Last week, West Australian Liberal Senator Dean Smith pointed out that current levels of migration mean a doubling of our labour force over the next five decades. That will make it even harder to keep unemployment down especially as technology is already threatening to make so many jobs redundant.
As it stands, Australia’s population growth rate is almost double that of Asia and North America, and 20 times higher than in Europe, despite the migration crisis there. I bet that last statistic will surprise you. The ABC and others covering the European boat crisis, always imply that we’re shirking but, when it comes to having more people, we’re doing 20 times better than Europe.
So why is scaling back immigration to Howard-era levels proving to be so hard? It wouldn’t need senate approval so it could be done tomorrow — with no drawn out negotiations needed. It would create another clear difference between the Coalition and Labor, much needed in my view. And of course, it would be popular, if the polls are to be believed.
Yet when Immigration Minister Peter Dutton proposed a tiny cut of 20,000 a year in the permanent migrant numbers, both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer strongly opposed him.
Don’t get me wrong. It is a political virtue to oppose populist measures when they would be damaging to our long term national interests. But it’s a form of political self-harm to reject something just because it’s popular. In a mature democracy like ours, I think voters understand that governments can’t always respond to the loudest political clamour. But political parties and governments that consistently defy common sense have no long-term future.
In France and in Italy, the post-war political order has been overturned because established parties failed to respond to voter concerns about immigration.
Things aren’t nearly so bad here — and that’s fortunate — but there’ll be a big political dividend for the side of politics which first understands that it’s not racist to want lower immigration; it’s actually in the national interest.