There was some curious and occasionally concerning commentary in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail this week regarding migration intake into Queensland. Many people are quite rightly urging that governments do not react to the current economic difficulties by winding back the openness of their economies. Yet calls to slash migrant numbers can sometimes equate to another path to protectionism and less open economy.
The federal government has quite sensibly resisted most of the pressure to slash the migrant worker intake. This week, Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced the skilled worker intake would remain roughly the same, while being “more targeted”. This was reported in The Australian, under the headline “Skilled Migrant door left open”, as there being “no cut”, but rather a “retooling” of the program. The report in the SMH was fairly similar, saying the skilled migration intake had been “tweaked” by the government.
By contrast, The Courier-Mail had a huge front page headline saying “SHUT THE GATE: Immigration tightened to protect Aussie jobs”. The text of the article (with the online headline missing the “Aussie” reference) spoke of the Government’s announcement as a move “to tighten immigration laws to protect Australian jobs” and “a move to save jobs for Australians”.
The notion that cutting migration “saves jobs” is pure nonsense, so I should emphasise that these quotes are all commentary by the reporters, not quotes by Minister Evans.
The next day, Queensland Premier seemed to be picking up on The Courier-Mail’s vibe, with a report in that paper saying she had “urged the Federal Government to consider sending home foreign mining workers so sacked Australians can have their jobs.”
To give the Premier the benefit of the doubt, I couldn’t find any other media commentary, speech or media release by the Premier that matched this interpretation and the actual quotes of her in the article don’t quite reflect such a view either. The main relevant quote of hers is
“I think the Australian people would expect that when we are seeing large-scale job losses that Australian workers will be the ones who have the opportunity where they are available.”
I certainly hope she was misinterpreted or misreported, because if it was true, it would be an extraordinary move to urge migrant workers to be sent home. To cancel the visas of employed migrant workers so that an unemployed Australian citizen can be given their job would almost certainly be against the law, and would destroy the credibility of our migration program for decades – not to mention cause serious harm to those parts of our economy which still rely heavily on skilled workers from overseas.
Of course, it also plays into the xenophobic myth that migrants take Australian’s jobs, and it incredibly destructive for public leaders to give any credence to it.
The Courier-Mail editorialised on the issue the next day, saying that
Premier Anna Bligh is treading a perilous path with her call this week for the Federal Government to consider revoking the visas of foreign mining workers, and sending them home so their jobs can go to Australian nationals.
It is of concern, however, when a moderate, left-leaning Premier - no matter how she may try to spin it - plays the “foreign workers are taking our jobs” card, a move more likely to create divisions in some workplaces and communities than to offer any concrete solution to changing economic circumstances.
It might be popular with some sections of the electorate, but it risks smacking of short-term, knee-jerk politics, rather than sound policy thinking.
I agree with this (assuming they are accurately reflecting the Premier’s statements), but The Courier-Mail might also want to reflect on their own front page story from just three days earlier.
Courier-Mail front page Dec 18 2008
2 Comments
Hi Andrew. I’ve taken a somewhat tougher approach than you at times. But I fully respect your concerns to nurture multiculturalism, a colour blind merit based approach and strength in diversity. Indeed a very Democrat view of things. Good for you on that.
I have reflected on why the divergence being fond of the AD track record on social policy. Yet myself more of a ecological greenie type and bugger the political correctness.
And I think it relates to this. Your Brisbane and or Qld based. I’m Sydney based. This matters because the issue of immigration is not monolithic in the nation.
Sydney is chockers. I personally share with a majority of both coloured and diverse folks in my smallish flat building. They are damn good neighbours and I probably am more noisy than any of them too. I try to make it up by doing shared washing machine maintenance and weekly bins.
But here’s the thing - Sydney is a dedicated multicultural city - paradoxically this has been proven by Cronulla riot, and the last state election. The result of both was to re-elect against ferocious ramping by right wing strands of society a trenchantly multicultural ALP Govt. Sydney people won’t cop covert white supremacism. We just won’t right down to the hard men of the Bra Boys surfing tribe.
True this could change but not easily and demographics have pretty much locked in same in Sydney. I’m totally fine with that. For the last two years I’ve been enjoying the phrase “it’s a coffee coloured future” and that was before Barak Obama announced his run for the White House. How cool to have it come true in such a symbolic way.
Soooo …. all this brings me back to a Sydneysiders view of multiculturalism good, ecological breakdown bad. It’s a post One Nation kind of attitude here, while maybe it’s running it’s course still there in Qld. Here in Sydney the ALP have bought off the One Nation types with increasingly lax gun policy, not just gun laws as such. We now have shooters in most state forests (as distinct from national park). This is the ALP’s way of totally unscientific removal of ferals - and I mean greenie protesters scared of forest blockading, not just wild exotics. How cynical. Of course rednecks love it as annexing public land to their ’sport’.
Similarly the ALP run their appeasement of One Nat demographic with tete a tete with Shooters Party MPs AND rev head events on annual basis in Olympic Park. It’s all about rednecks with out the racism splitting the vote off the coalition. This is Pauline Hanson and John Howard’s legacy in Sydney of 4 million wider metro area. It’s a post white supremacism kind of dinosaur politics.
You in Qld probably haven’t got to that phase, and are conflating anti immigration with racism. Here we just see sell outs to developer mall operators and high rise and think record immigration and structural population growth as an economic racket destroying ecological life supports of air and water for those who can buy in to the exclusive Southern Highlands.
………………
On a proper read of your story just now I notice two serious weaknesses in your thesis about skilled migrants not hypothecated to jobs here. One is business would invest in training if they had to if cheap imports were no longer as good an option. Also I am deeply trouble personally about rich countries cherry picking the skilled migrants out of the world’s less fortunate countries. Would it not be alot more ethical for such as Australia to be excess training and subsidised exporting of skilled people overseas to those less well off? s
This might sound like I’m dreamin’, but you got to have a dream like MLK but for the modern times ….
It just looks like political spin to me. Of course it seems on the surface to be obvious. On the one hand australians losing their jobs due to economic downturn and the other we see reports of people on migrant workers visas sitting pretty. I am sure the truth is a long way from this however and there will be many migrant workers who will lose their sponsorship as the mining companies (for example) contract radically to save costs. I do actually lean towards a short-term protectionist strategy but only if there would be real benefits and it could not be retrospective in nature. In this circumstance I do not see that there would be and find Premier Bligh’s comments to be sensationalist headline-grabbers on which she will never actually have to deliver. Certainly the business sponsors would have to honour contracts or make payouts if they were to lay-off imported labour, possibly at huge cost. But remember the reason they were imported in the first place was due to a shortage of trained, experienced and skilled Australians. This situation has not changed overnight and I doubt there are now equal candidates on the dole list. Certainly the Government should not be dictating to business who they should employ as that is un-democratic meddling. We also need to act honorably towards those who we have enticed to our shores when times were flush. I still remember the plight of the West-Australian Pizza shop proprietor who could not even get itinerant surfers to deliver his pizzas for $18/hr!. Those unskilled individuals were all getting paid over $70K to sweep out the “smoko” sheds at the mines! The Pizza man was applying to bring willing workers from East Timor and Malaysia who were glad to have money to send back to their poor families. It is all swings and roundabouts in the end.