Laura the ‘Immigration whisperer’ rides again

You are here.

Can the ABC actually have a sensible debate about immigration? We need to be reasonable.

If you are an ageing feminist journalism icon working from a national broadcaster like ABC or anywhere in the legacy media in Australia, it has been a confronting year.

Only a week ago, the great unwashed in the United States voted pretty decisively to boot a ‘progressive social’ agenda clean off the radar. Even the black and Hispanic communities in the United States chose a right-wing nuttocrat administration, fronted by a toxic narcissist, over one pursuing the ‘woke’ agenda fronted by a President who had a ‘where am I, how did I get here, and what am I doing?’ quality about him.

They chose Trump over the prospect of the same style of administration fronted by an urbane, obviously intelligent woman who touted a billion dollars in raised funds but seemed devoid of comprehension of issues and policies related to working people.

That was after weeks of opinion and polling suggesting that woke would win with enough attitude for the legacy media to come out of the affair looking like it talks the talk but has no idea what it is actually talking about.

For the identities of the Australian national media, the looming Australian federal election is inducing ever more anxiety. The assumptions of at least two terms in the wake of the electoral meltdown of the Toxic Morrison government have given way to talk of the ALP coming back as maybe a minority government as a plausible outcome.

Darker recesses of the national soul seem to think a Tory government fronted by a millionaire ex-Queensland policeman is a distinct possibility. A once bright future for Australia’s progressive agenda is under a cloud of gloom.

The issues, as they are nearly everywhere else, are housing costs, cost of living, energy, income growth, jobs for the future and younger people in our community, and a general sense that the entire political process has become about something other than the lives of people in the electorate.

The curtain at the ABC parted to reveal Laura Tingle in the spotlight.  She is back as the ‘immigration whisperer’.

Her mission is to take the immigration discussion somewhere, after she took it nowhere in an initial foray after the opposition leader’s flick of the immigration card onto the national poker table this year.

Tingle followed that failure with a public pout, as the ABC unleashed a barrage of misinformed and generally incoherent pieces on the subject.

Fix bayonets…….

Can Australia actually have a sensible debate about immigration?

By Laura Tingle

Pauline Hanson changed the parameters of the public conversation about immigration in Australia. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)

It is sobering to realise that it is more than a quarter of a century since Pauline Hanson burst onto Australia’s national political stage with her provocative maiden speech which complained that “mainstream Australians” were being subjected to a form of “reverse racism” when it came to Aboriginal people, and that the nation was in danger of being “swamped by Asians”.

Hanson’s comments changed the parameters of what was acceptable to say and do in our national politics, just as social media has since changed what level of personal abuse is acceptable both here and globally.

Thanks, Laura and the ABC. Here in 2024 we kick off an article questioning whether we can have a sensible discussion, and we open the innings with Pauline Hanson and her maiden speech to parliament from 1996. 28 years ago.

Hanson is a kind of bogey woman no immigration discussion can be without

Laura is dating herself. Anyone under the age of about 35 is going, ‘huh?’

So serious are they about a serious immigration discussion they are kicking off with distant history. In a nation with one-third of people actually born offshore, a proportion that has increased markedly in the 28 years since Hanson’s maiden speech. She has been in parliament for the vast bulk of those 28 years, and her impact has been?

Does she represent a threat in contemporary Australia or does she represent historical curiosity?

But bringing her out now has an even more disturbing effect. Australia has taken millions of immigrants since her maiden speech, and the voting public never have had the reasons put to them.

The 1996 Australia had a manufacturing sector that was about double the size it currently is, of the economy, which actually used labour to do something constructive.

The 2024 counterpart is an economic bubble in which about 2% of the population produces that which provides the bulk of the national income—almost solely resources or agriculture.

The average Net Overseas Migration figure for a generation back in 1996 was about 70 thousand migrants per year. The Australia Laura is serving this steaming plate up to has taken more than a million in less than 3 years.

Has history borne out what Hanson was asserting?

Vilification of communities with origins in Asia, Africa and the Middle East; Muslims being generically targeted as terrorists; a rise in anti-Semitism; and abuse of Indigenous Australians: these have all, unfortunately, become things that some of our political leaders are prepared to pursue, only faintly condemn, or at the least deal with very inconsistently.

Migration is intrinsically tied up in all these provocations: our intolerance of each new wave of migrants stems back to the early days of the colony. But just now that intolerance is also tied up in questions about our economy and about a very real housing crisis faced by many Australian families.

The next morsel is laying a national guilt trip on us. That same nation where one-third of the inhabitants are born somewhere else. We are racist.

Here is an idea. Have a listen to a news broadcast or read one and see if you can get any identifying features of anyone committing any kind of crime. Whereas once upon a time you would hear or see reference to a ‘tall, thickset man with (e.g., Caucasian appearance), but we get none of that any more.

As Laura would be the first to note, it isn’t allowed. We actually get remarkably little discussion of race or ethnicity. We get people like Laura telling us discussing immigration volumes is racist.

And when Laura notes that migration is intrinsically linked with these ‘provocations’ she steps on a landmine. When she notes ‘become things that some of our political leaders are prepared to pursue, only faintly condemn, or at the least deal with very inconsistently’ she might at least acknowledge that getting a politician state anything consistent about immigration is virtually impossible.

The population Ponzi has run full bore for about 20 years and not a word has been spoken from our elites, and what they are far more likely to do is level an accusation of ‘racism’ at anyone trying to mention it.

Then, that racism would seemingly be taking place in one of the most diverse populations on the planet. Yes, there may be localised issues with a particular race or ethnicity—for sure they can occur—but how much actual ‘vilification’ do we get?

But we are racist. Thanks for reminding us, Laura.

Laura should have a look around. If you want to see racial or ethnic ‘vilification’ maybe you should take a look at parts of Asia, the Middle East, or even Africa, or just about anywhere really. Almost everywhere else on the planet has better vilification viewing scope than we do. Maybe Laura should get out into the burbs more. They are very diverse.

Why don’t we get some people from Asia, Africa and the Middle East into the piece and get what they think? Like, if we are racist, it must be so obvious the recent migrants are trembling in fear lest they get molested doing their daily stuff. Are they?

Pauline Hanson’s maiden speech to parliament, 1996

And now it is set against the backdrop of the language used and pledges made in the US election campaign — including president-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to run “the largest deportation plan in US history” to remove millions of undocumented migrants — and echoed in other anti-migration pledges made in other countries around the world.

Australia’s migration issues are very different to the ones in the United States, where the presence of 11 million or more undocumented migrants and the continued flow of more from across the border have electrified the issue.

Another serving of Pauline complete with a 28-year-old photo. Like, some photos of the Mt Gambier Neo Nazis on their road trips to Adelaide and Corowa would at least lend a sense of the current day to the piece.

In case anyone is wondering, this is what Laura looked like in 1998.

Then over to Trump, who seemingly has enough traction on issues to be voted in as the next President. There must be some reason people voted for him, and the data seems to suggest doing something about immigration is the second largest driver of his vote.

She is right to note that the US has a different immigration issue. But the basic issue is the same, whether in the US, Europe or Australia.

The developed world has moved away from labour for production and has switched over to ‘services’ and for the most part, much of the world hasn’t seen a decent pay rise in a generation.

That’s bringing about the idea that those societies don’t actually need more immigration or that incomes don’t go up when they do bring in more migrants, often because fresh arrivals have nothing to earn with but labour and will take what is on offer driven by desperation.

That isn’t racism to say that; it is a simple fact of life. And the ‘market’ for labour will almost always take lowest price. The more affluent end of town is the buyer in that market and like many buyers, they do like their bargains

But as is the case in many other countries as the world turns more protectionist, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton observed last week that the migration issues in the US “were very real in the election and I think they’re going to be real in the upcoming election here”.

He was also quick to leap on the discovery of four foreign nationals on a remote island in the Northern Territory this week, and a High Court loss by the Albanese government on ankle bracelets for released detainees, to argue our border security is weak and porous to criminals.

You are here

Note to Laura, the reason countries around the world are turning more protectionist—and one could observe it isn’t (pre Trump) much—is because many countries around the world have problems dealing with the consequences of job-starved, pay-rise devoid heavily indebted sections of society getting politically angrier with awareness of what has unfolded over the course of a generation.

But we are being poorly served by our politicians on the much more substantive issue of our overall migration numbers and what drives them; what their overall economic impact might be; how much capacity we have to change them; and, if we want to change them, what might be involved.

Laura, the most poorly served are those in the electorate who have been served a doubling of long-term Net Overseas Migration since the late 1990s and early 2000s (more recent than the ABC’s Pauline pic) and the absolute turbo charging of that in the post-Covid era by a government that claimed it had working Australians in its heart.

Capping international student numbers

Both sides of politics have talked about cutting what is known as the net overseas migration (NOM) numbers. That is, the number of arrivals minus departures. Our permanent migration program is only a fraction of this number. The NOM numbers are dominated by temporary arrivals, of which international students are the most conspicuous group.

Ever since John Howard as prime minister wanted to look like he was keeping migration numbers down, but also facilitating the movement of people to deal with chronic labour shortages, temporary skilled visas and other visas that help fill yawning gaps in our labour market such as regional workers have dominated migration patterns.

The temporary students are overwhelmingly motivated by the prospect of permanent residency and employment rights. They aren’t coming here to be temporary. Most are coming to be fixtures and will do whatever it takes to become fixtures.

Laura, as we all know, and as MB has been pointing out for 15 years, the ‘Permanent Migration Program’ is a fraction of the numbers of people we see on the streets. The NOM includes the Permanent Migration Program and the temporary students.

When the students come here, they head down to the local migration agent and then, in Australia, swap from being temporary students to permanent migrants while often being able to point out they are working and have been living in Australian society for some time.

Australians want fewer migrants

The chair of Universities Australia will call on the major parties to treat higher education as a policy priority, rather than a political pawn, in a speech on Wednesday.

There are no caps on the numbers of these visas. And you can see the sort of uproar that is created when you try to impose some in the current brawl about caps on international student numbers.

The Senate is due to consider the government’s attempt to put those caps in place next week, amid universities screaming about the impact it will have on their finances and warnings of what it will do the broader economy.

There should be caps on temporary student visas. Australian universities should be focused on educating Australians. And if Australia has established an education sector reliant on foreign students and embroiled in a load of corrupt practices to boot, then it needs to dismantle that.

The latest warning comes from English Australia, the national peak body for the English language teaching sector in Australia, which has commissioned new modelling that suggests the economy will lose about $4 billion in spending on living expenses alone by international students, as well as hitting labour markets in industries including hospitality, aged and child care and construction.

And how much of that $4 billion in living expenses is earned in Australia? And what is the effect on incomes in those sectors?

The Albanese government has already tried to cut back student numbers via administrative means such as reimposing higher visa fees and reducing the number of hours students can work in Australia — reversing policies introduced by the Morrison government in its rush to get students back into the country after the pandemic.

That would be your slice of blame apportionment to ScoMo from a government that has kept its turbocharged student return policies in play for three years.

The Coalition says it will cut the NOM, but how?

The Coalition has been walking both sides of the street on the issue of foreign students. Peter Dutton has referred to international students as the “modern version of boat arrivals”, yet the opposition has been critical of Labor’s proposals to put caps on foreign student numbers, arguing it would hurt regional and smaller universities.

The government is hoping the caps, along with the departure of at least some international students as they finish their studies, will deliver the lower NOM forecasts contained in the Budget papers, which forecast net migration will fall from 520,000 in 2022-23 to 395,000 in the financial year just finished and 260,000 in the current financial year.

Immigration expert Dr Abul Rizvi says the 2023-24 forecast has been “clearly missed by a long way” and the government is “highly likely to miss” the current year forecast “by a very long way”.

Peter Dutton announced in his Budget reply that the Coalition would cut the permanent migration program by 25 per cent to 160,000 and reduce “excessive numbers of foreign students studying at metropolitan universities” by setting a cap on foreign student numbers. His shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, said the Coalition would cut the NOM by 25 per cent.

So that is ‘Permanent Migration’ down by 25% according to Dutton and NOM down by 25% according to Taylor. Even a NOM of 260k per annum reduced by 25% only brings us down to a net of 185k per annum, which is actually more than double the long-term average between 1980 and 2005 of circa 80k.

But the Coalition has given little detail about how it would actually cut the NOM. And it is exceptionally difficult to do that both because of the lack of caps and because, well, we need the people.

The high number of temporary visas is a function of demand: we still have a very tight labour market, particularly in areas like health and aged care. People come to Australia because they are confident they will get a job.

Countries like New Zealand and Canada have seen big falls in their migration numbers. But that has followed significant increases in their unemployment rates.

Is Laura saying we need an uptick in unemployment to do something about immigration volumes? She is right that we need people in nursing and aged care, but that is a function of our planning for the education sector in not training enough locals to do those jobs for a generation—where we always knew there was going to be an ageing society driving demand for those services.

The education sector, which has so monumentally screwed that in combination with governments that have monumentally screwed that, is the same one palming off dire warnings about student living revenues going AWOL.

And the governments that have screwed up aged care are one and the same as those which have completely unhinged immigration and are the ancestors of the ones currently on offer now.

Which brings us back to the possibility they aren’t about serving the interests of Australians.

Both sides are culpable for the mess

So migration numbers, under current policy settings both reflect, and add to, economic growth. But the current policy settings don’t necessarily give us the range of skilled workers we need.

The complaint that our skills targets list doesn’t adequately reflect the need for “tradies” overlooks the way systems in Australia works against any tradies actually being able to come here.

A complex set of arrangements surrounding apprenticeships — and requiring the cooperation of TAFEs, federal and state government, and industry (for starters) to change — makes overseas hires difficult: foreigners can’t access apprenticeships because apprenticeships receive government subsidies and because there is a mismatch between the minimum number of hours apprentices have to spend in the classroom and how many overseas students have to spend in the classroom.

It’s all very complicated. And it has been complicated for at least as long as Pauline Hanson has been around. That means both sides of politics are culpable for the mess.

It’s just such a shame that beyond any issues of social cohesion, the cheap points of politics mean we have little sensible debate about fixing our migration system so that it works better for everyone and for the economy. A looming election only appears likely to make sensible debate even more unattainable.

It seems like Laura’s whole view of immigration revolves around aged care and trades types, which would point to a massive policy cockup by those who dismantled the vocational education system we once had, which was replaced by a load of fly-by-night spivs selling certificates, visas, and part-time jobs at convenience stores.

We do need root-and-branch reform of the immigration and education policies on offer. But Laura doesn’t go within a bulls roar of asking why we need such population growth, what those people will do, or where they will live. Why?

We can give Laure a D+ for this lengthy and incoherent piece of work