The mood on immigration is tinder dry and Dutton has lit a match

The issue with the debate on immigration is not the numbers. Both major parties have committed to cutting the intake of temporary and permanent migrants.

The problem is the way the debate is conducted. In such a tinder dry environment, politicians conscious of community wellbeing take extra care with tone and content.

Illustration: Dionne GainCredit:

Unfortunately, Peter Dutton has not. Not on immigration and not on nuclear energy.

Politicians in strife, desperate to save their backsides, have often reached for dog whistles. These days it’s a loudhailer. It’s cheap and guaranteed to deliver the short-term reward of improved poll numbers. A sugar hit laced with acid.

Ask Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Asian, Indigenous or other people of colour, or those of us who grew up being called wogs or dagoes whether they think racism or bigotry is a serious and growing problem in this country.

Dutton flagged his intention to make immigration an election issue last year. This column warned during the Voice referendum where and how it was likely to go.

Whenever Dutton has struck trouble, he has moved cleverly to change the story. After losing the Aston byelection, he hastily arranged a party meeting to declare opposition to the Voice.

After failing to win the Dunkley byelection in March, the Coalition pledged to announce sites for nuclear reactors before the budget. When the CSIRO first declared nuclear was not viable for Australia, Dutton said the report was “discredited” and “not genuine”.

Initially, the CSIRO chief executive, Professor Doug Hilton, publicly rebuked Dutton without naming him. Subsequently, Hilton told this masthead’s Angus Dalton in May: “I think when you stop debating the scientific merits of ideas, you are almost dog-whistling that the science itself is untrustworthy. And the scientists are untrustworthy. And that there is some grander conspiracy that organisations like CSIRO are part of. I think that’s dangerous.”

Too right it is. Good on Hilton for having the guts to call it out.

With his key policy threatening to look like a cross between Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, Dutton was facing pressure to produce alternative economic policies in response to the budget.

Hallelujah. News that released detainees had been involved in violent crimes paved the way for his budget reply on May 16, which had little to do with the economy and a lot to do with licensing those with grievances to blame migrants.

Don’t take my word for it, take his.

That night, he told the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson that Labor was “ramping up” migration, before rattling off where Australians were being dudded.

“It’s not just housing,” he said. “People know that if you move suburbs, it’s hard to get your kids into school, or into childcare. It’s hard to get into a GP because the doctors have closed their books. It’s hard to get elective surgery. These factors have all contributed to capacity constraints because of the lack of planning in the migration program.”

The fact migrants are building whatever houses there are, staffing most of the medical centres and aged care homes, serving at every 24-hour retail outlet, packing and delivering every meal, supermarket bag or online parcel, appears to have escaped Dutton.

This is the context in which my fellow panellist Laura Tingle made her wholly legitimate remarks at the Sydney Writers’ Festival which enraged the Coalition and its media surrogates. Rather than backing its most prominent political reporter and one of its prize assets with little hesitation (taking long enough to check the recording) and without qualification, the ABC wilted.

Instead of ignoring the usual attacks from the usual suspects with the usual agenda – to discredit Tingle and the ABC – the ABC committed a serious act of self-harm by rebuking Tingle, while denying it had buckled to News Corp.

Here was an experienced, respected political commentator calling out a politician’s divisive political strategy, a strategy which discomfits even some of his own colleagues.

Tingle had not said anything she had not said before on ABC platforms. Even if she hadn’t, if senior reporters are muzzled, if they are not allowed to report truthfully, if they are prevented from calling out the questionable behaviour of politicians they have been observing for decades, then the Murdoch empire’s relentless campaign to cripple the competition will have succeeded.

If the ABC fails in its duty to protect and preserve quality journalism and to improve the quality of those who seek to represent us, it will deserve to have its funding slashed because it will be a waste of taxpayer dollars.

It is to the ABC’s enduring shame that it surrendered to such a campaign. More distressing is that its management could not see its actions undermined its own integrity and undercut a respected senior employee.

Missing for almost the entire debate on immigration, whether it was while the Coalition was bamboozling everyone with numbers or frightening the pants off them over both the release of violent detainees and the presence of peaceful, productive migrants, was Immigration Minister Andrew Giles.

Unless Anthony Albanese wants himself and the government to be dragged down all the way through to election day, he will remove Giles as part of a wider reshuffle during the winter break, which is expected to follow announcements from high-profile ministers including possibly Linda Burney and Brendan O’Connor they will not recontest.

While he’s at it, he should take Tanya Plibersek out of the freezer.

Albanese boasts about the stability of his government. That is important; it is not everything. Competence is. Loyalty to colleagues is also important, but loyalty to the people must come first. With an almighty battle ahead and facing a nimble, ruthless opponent, he needs to ensure his best people are on the frontline.

Niki Savva is a regular columnist and author of The Road to Ruin, Plots and Prayers and Bulldozed, the trilogy chronicling nine years of Coalition rule.

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