Failure of federal leadership fuelling xenophobia

Eric Lobbecke

IN a crisis of national political leadership, xenophobic sentiment that can only harm our national cohesion and development is being given succour by all sides of politics. There is no Pauline Hanson figure to blame - and the old cliches blaming those who support border protection no longer wash - the culprit here is just populist and small-minded politics.

At one end of the country we've had union leaders and Labor senator Doug Cameron speaking angrily about how Enterprise Migration Agreements will see companies "marching Chinese workers" in to take jobs from Australians. At the other, Coalition frontbencher senator Barnaby Joyce has whipped up anger over the prospect of "selling large parts of regional Australia to the Chinese".

Neither Cameron nor Joyce have been rebuked by their leaders - in fact Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have failed adequately to contest this narrative, presumably for fear of a paying a political price. And you don't have to go far back into history to see their form on this issue. Both Gillard and Abbott retreated from a "big Australia" approach at the 2010 election, and promised a rethink, and, either explicitly or implicitly, a revision downwards in Australia's immigration policy.

For a country experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime mineral resources boom, facing labour shortages, and supposedly keen to explore and embrace the opportunities of this "Asian century", this seemed a remarkably insular and myopic stand to take.

Just a decade ago, anxieties about immigration, and some of the xenophobic ways they manifested themselves, were blamed on the political outsiders who were given voice by Hanson.

But now, if blame is your game, it must be shared at least in equal part by the selfish materialism, and distant environmentalism, of the inner-city green elite. The Greens and their fellow travellers, including prominent businessman Dick Smith and even one-time blogger, now Foreign Minister Bob Carr, have argued against high levels of immigration on the unlikely basis that this island-continent, the planet's sixth-largest country in landmass, is pretty much full. (Road trip anybody?)

On top of this Greens aversion, and the usual concerns about competition for jobs and pressure on infrastructure, immigration is suffering from a collapse in confidence over border control. With constant boat arrivals now bringing in more than 1000 asylum-seekers a month, and ABC's Four Corners revealing that even the people-smugglers can game the system and win permanent residency, the public rightly realises the system is broken.

This is the government's great shame - by dismantling a tough but effective border protection regime it has rebooted the people-smuggling trade, putting lives at risk, creating an ongoing shambles, and undermining confidence in our immigration system.

A poll published in Sydney's Daily Telegraph last month showed opposition to immigration had risen to 51 per cent, up 10 per cent since 2005. Monash University social researcher Andrew Markus is sceptical of such crude polling but has been tracking attitudes to immigration, noting a range of influences. Markus notes that we are one of the most welcoming countries in the world and that from the late 1990s to 2009, Australians exhibited a positive attitude to immigration. This diminished noticeably from 2009.

His research shows the obvious impact of other factors; when unemployment rises, immigration, unsurprisingly, is less popular. He also notes that support wanes following periods of high immigration. So the net overseas migration peak of 299,000 in 2008/09 will have influenced attitudes, as will anxieties about the global financial crisis.

But it is impossible to avoid the observation that immigration was popular during most of the period in which the Howard government exercised tough but effective control of the people-smuggling issue. And one crucial point about 2009 is that this was the year when Australians started to see the impact of Labor's softening of the border protection regime.

In 2008, just seven boats arrived with 179 asylum-seekers, in 2009 there were 61 boats and 2856 asylum-seekers.

The government's unspoken compact with the electorate during the Howard years - high levels of immigration supported because of demonstrably orderly processes - has been broken.

Given the government and opposition are seized of the possibility of further tragedies and now support offshore processing as part of the solution, we might expect a political compromise. Cogent arguments can be made against the likely success of either the Malaysia or Nauru options. Yet, given Nauru has worked before, is currently available under the law, could be fortified with fresh legislation, and is not restricted to a set number of detainees, it is the obvious option. Only political pride precludes it.

Aside from regaining control over borders, our political leaders need to make the deliberate choice to speak positively about immigration. Gillard had a perfect opportunity to do this over the Roy Hill project. She could have gone to the desert and spruiked a project that will generate thousands of Australian jobs and billions of dollars of national wealth. The agreement for up to 1700 temporary, skilled, foreign workers could have been announced as a crucial underpinning of the mine.

Instead, she mangled the policy, the politics and the publicity by turning the foreign workers into the issue, and a negative one at that.

Instead of showing national leadership in favour of development and immigration, the Prime Minister again appeared lilliputian, focused only on appeasing her union backers.

In response to Joyce complaining about Chinese investment in agriculture, Abbott has defended the benefits of foreign investment, and our history of welcoming immigrants, but has not publicly chastised his colleagues.

The Greens continue to run a bizarre population policy that suggests lower immigration levels to protect the environment rather than foster economic growth. Yet at the same time they have an open borders policy on boats and suggest we should be preparing for "large-scale humanitarian migration as a result of climate change".

Our immigration intake will always fluctuate according to economic circumstances, and is currently well below 200,000. But we need our leaders to constantly make the case for the immigration and foreign investment that have always fuelled our progress.

We will need plenty more of both to take advantage of the Asian century. The field is wide open for a political leader who will wholeheartedly embrace a "big Australia" agenda. This could provide the backbone of a visionary platform to lift voters eyes above the bruising, street-to-street rumbling of the permanent campaign.