Tgk1946's Blog

From Speeches and Essays of Geoffrey Blainey (1991) pp229-35

55
Australia’s immigration policy once served our economic and political interests but now it shuns or neglects those interests. At one time it was designed to serve the whole nation but now it serves mainly the needs and ideologies of minorities.
The minorities are powerful partly because they have stolen the high moral ground. Believing that they are upholding high principles, they denounce their opponents as “racist” , and therefore immoral. Consequently most people with some self respect and some standing – and professional politicians fall into this category – say they are reluctant to speak out publicly against the immigration policy. I understand their reluctance. The high principles said to underlie the present immigration policy are violated too often to be called principles. Likewise Canberra’s appeal to morality on ethnic and racial matters is too often the easy triumph of hypocrisy over morality.
Significantly, many politicians and commentators now say that they welcome a public debate on immigration – a subject they once said was taboo. But they insist that under . no condition will they accept a debate on those areas where ’ high principles must continue to reign. They are sadly mistaken. Those areas must be debated if only to show that their high principles are low.
The first weakness of Australia’s immigration policy is that v it is not a coherent policy but a rag doll hastily made of bits and pieces. In contrast, the immigration policy of the period 1945 to 1970 was generally successful because it was a coherent policy that served Australia’s needs.
Australia then had an accepted motive for building up its population. It believed that a high population would enable the continent to be defended more effectively. It behaved that a higher population would strengthen the manufacturing . base, then deemed so important to equip the defence forces. Today the defence and manufacturing motives have largely faded away. A new political and economic rationale for large-scale immigration has not taken the place of the old.
Likewise in the years 1945 to 1970 immigration was justified by a continuing: shortage of labour. Newcomers quickly gained jobs. Today, however, large numbers of the new migrants live entirely on the public purse and contribute nothing to the nation.
We are importing too many unemployed and too many who – in the medium term remain unemployable. Such a statement is not anti-migrant. It is essentially a criticism of politicians of all parties who for too long were blind to elementary facts or nervous of an ethnic backlash if they , took those facts seriously. Today many politicians, to their credit, are thinking twice about this policy.
For too long we have been fed the story that the migrants are needed because they work so hard, whereas old Australians do not. But how can migrants in aggregate be working hard when so many are idle? In the 1980s, for probably the first time in Australia’s history, we have recruited an alarming proportion of migrants who long after their arrival do no work but receive large public subsidies.
In March this year, 24 per cent of Lebanese in the workforce were out of work. More than 17 per cent of Vietnamese in the so-called workforce had no work. To a much lesser degree the same can be said of New Zealanders with 7.7 per cent unemployment, compared to 6.2 per cent for Australian-born people. ‘ The total taxpayers’ subsidy for these migrants who cannot cope is enormous. The figure has never once appeared in the annual report of the immigration department. Presumably it would be too devastating.
In lean economic times it is madness to run immigration in such a way that a large slice of the program simply turns Sydney and Melbourne into sheltered workshops for the relatives of migrants, many of whom have themselves been on the dole since the day they arrived.
Homeless Australians are partly the victims of this policy. Many Australian youngsters whose poverty was to be abolished in 1990 are also victims. As new migrants, – especially refugees, often receive a high priority for public housing and as such housing is now scarce, some groups must suffer if others are to gain. It is the Australian homeless who too often wait in the queue while the new » migrant jumps ahead of them.
The present migration policy, in effect, discriminates against the Australian homeless. It is one of the ironies of a government which claims to oppose all ethnic discrimination that it has no hesitation in discriminating against Australian Australians.
It is right that Mr Hawke should shed tears for new migrants arriving here with nothing. But his tears are really crocodile tears when he thereby elbows aside – as he must, when money is scarce – many Australians with an equal right to be helped.
Overall, the economic effects of large-scale immigration are harmful for a nation entering a crisis in its balance of payments. The new migrants of the last decade — no matter where they come from – have done little to increase exports and much to increase imports. In short they have aggravated the overseas debt and the high interest rates.
I am not blaming the migrants. I blame the political parties in Canberra which continue to invite them in such large numbers, knowing only too well that this must weaken a frail economy. For the Hawke Government to argue that in the next few years it can simultaneously rescue us from our import-export crisis, preserve the natural environment and maintain a high level of immigration is folly. Its policies are on a collision course and millions of Australians will be hurt.
Admittedly there is a school of economic make-believe which argues that business migrants help our balance of payments by bringing in big sums. In Tuesday’s The Australian, Professor Nancy Viviani explained that business migrants in 1988 actually brought $3 billion to Australia. What she did not tell us is that part of this money could well increase our overseas debt. Nor did she explain that business migration in 1988 was sometimes genuine and sometimes a confidence trick, being too often a device for gaining Australian passports by bringing money here and later taking it away again. The former minister for immigration, Senator Ray, deserves praise for trying to improve a lastly-supervised system.
There seems to be no end to the arguments clutched at by the advocates of heavy immigration. In the last couple of years they have argued that our population will become dangerously old without a strong influx of migrants. This argument is faulty. By the time the present 9-year-olds reach retirement age, the over-65s will probably form about one in five of Australia’s population – irrespective of whether immigration runs at a fast or slow pace.
It might conceivably be in the interests of Australia to aim for a much larger population within the lifetime of children now at school. While I have an open mind on Australia’s optimum population, I am wary of the glib promise that our main economic ills will be automatically healed through the presence of a bigger population and consequently a bigger home market. A larger population can bring more headaches than it cures.
Meanwhile the economic arguments in favour of the present level of immigration in the next three or five years are feeble indeed. We have enough problems without importing migrants who, often through no fault of their own, contribute nothing in their first few years and may contribute nothing in their first decade.
Of course, tens of thousands of the migrants coming in the 1980s from Europe and Asia and Africa and Oceania work well, provide valuable skills and experience, accept the responsibilities of citizenship and will ultimately be proud to be Australian. But what they contribute is gravely weakened by the big minority who are chosen because Australian political parties pander to ethnic pressure groups rather than carefully consider the nation’s needs.
That Australia should bring a proportion of migrants from Asia is obvious. More Australians should learn Asian languages, study Asian history and trade more with Asia when the opportunities arise. But it is slightly odd that those who advocate the superiority of Asian life should be so deaf to some of Asia’s weaknesses and so blind to some of the secrets of Asian success.
Most Asian nations, for example, suffer from ethnic rivalries and tensions. And yet the politicians who shape our immigration policy ignore those tensions and are arrogant enough to think that they can create here a new nation of tribes which automatically avoids the pitfalls that even the wisest leaders in Asia have been unable to avoid.
The twin questions of learning from Asia and living with Asia are vital to our future. Throughout the 1980s they have not been freely discussed because of the taboo imposed by a medley of politicians, intellectuals, media commentators, ethnic leaders and bureaucrats.
These opinion-leaders insist that their own opinions are morally superior. That is why they view opponents with contempt. Significantly, church. leaders who share many of their opinions are more reluctant to claim moral superiority for themselves. They know the dangers of hypocrisy.
From these seemingly moral heights many talented people in the Labor and Liberal parties, the media and the universities affirm as the highest of high principles that they oppose discrimination on grounds of race, culture and nationality. They say that the present immigration policy reflects these high principles and must continue to do so.
This argument is a delusion. When a clear cut exception is pointed out to them – for instance the favoured position of New Zealand migrants or the unfavoured position of Afghans — they promptly abandon their own precious principle with the feeble excuse that these are special exceptions. Such lofty principles should admit no exceptions.
Similarly, while they insist that non-discrimination is a sacred principle – and the difference between themselves , and their opponents – they usually abandon this sacred principle inside Australia. Clearly the liberties of the average Australian include the right to discriminate in selecting a marriage partner, church, club, sporting team, weekly newspaper or school. Very often that discrimination is made on racial-ethnic grounds and will presumably continue to be so made.
Those who insist on the morality of non-discrimination have had no hesitation in violating their own sacred principle in dealing with Aborigines. It is not a question of whether their policy towards Aborigines is in the nation’s interest — parts of it are probably wise. What is curious is that their Aboriginal policy, which they treat as equally sacred, actually overturns the sacred principles invoked in choosing migrants.
If our leaders of high principle were to be accused of inconsistency they would say proudly they were practising affirmative action. And yet by their own definition – the definition they are quick to apply to others — they surely are practising both hypocrisy and racism.
The use of special labels as defensive and offensive weapons has become a hallmark of this influential group. Thus an identical attitude or prejudice is made legitimate for themselves and illegitimate, indeed shameful, for their opponents.
When traditional Australians argue that Asian migrants should be welcome but that the ethnic mix of the nation should not be altered too quickly, they are called racists. But when ethnic minorities lobby politicians to enlist as many new migrants as possible from their own race, this is applauded as multiculturalism.
Some historians looking back on our era will probably marvel at the fragile economic arguments used to justify the present migration policy. Even more they will wonder at the self-deception of whose who defend the policy largely in the name of ethics and morality.
The sooner we understand that we are being bamboozled by special words and are being swayed by hypocrisy, the sooner can a wide range of legitimate views on immigration be debated.
Weekend Australian, 2-3 June 1990