The frenzied debate about asylum seekers shows no signs of abating, although this time around there does appear to be more people trying to inject some basic facts and balance into the debate, rather than just pure panic or unthinking emotion.
But it is still very unfortunate that the migration debate in this country continually gets derailed by such intense focus on a few thousand people, when it is a minuscule proportion of the total number of people coming to this country every year. If you add all the people who enter Australia each year with various types of residency entitlements – both permanent and long-term temporary – you easily get over half a million.
We desperately need more attention paid to how to better plan for, engage with and settle this large number of new arrivals. Instead we seem unable to break out of our fixation on a small number of people arriving in boats. There are some difficult issues involved in figuring out how best our region and the globe can handle asylum seekers and refugees, although we seem to focus almost exclusively just on whether or not we should try to keep boat people out – and if so, how.
The Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, has signalled a couple of times his desire to have full community discussion about the medium and long-term nature and size of our immigration intake. Some of those who oppose migration are prone to suggesting that somehow this is a forbidden debate, and one which Australian political parties (who all tend to favour sizeable migration intakes) supposedly avoid.
But there are plenty of people, including the Immigration Minister, who would dearly like a detailed public debate on all aspects of our migration system. One would like to think that the more detailed the debate was, the more chance there would be that some of the long-standing myths about the supposedly harmful economic, social and security aspects of migration would be finally debunked, although is probably being over-optomistic. But more debate and discussion is almost always better than less.
However, on the whole it appears that most of us amongst politicians, the media and the public only get interested in engaging with migration issues when a small number of people arrive in boats. Our inability to get more effective immigration and settlement systems, and particularly our failure to improve the cultural responsiveness of our services and institutions in an ever more diverse community, leaves us with a poorer future than we would otherwise have.
10 Comments
The Australian Government has pledged all sorts of aid to the Sri Lankan Government to help stop people getting on boats, such as computers, cameras and evidence collection kits. Somewhere in all this kerfuffle, I seem to have missed the part where our government is applying pressure to ensure Tamils in Sri Lanka are treated with something even remotely like equality and humaneness. In all this debate (and it is indeed a sad indictment on Australian society that we are even having it) nobody has suggested solutions to stopping the push factors causing the outflow of refugees from various countries.
Sadly, Kevin Rudd has shown a propensity to fall back into the populist cesspool in regards to climate change and now asylum seekers. Malcolm Turnbull also pretends to be a liberal (in the true sense of the the word) however he too takes the easy ‘bogan-appeasement’ route when dealing with difficult and moral decisions. All this shows that Australia lacks moral leadership and the legacy of Whitlam and Fraser is being eroded at a fast pace.
Given that over 33 years, the number of boat asylum-seeking arrivals in Australia would not fill 10 per cent of the MCG grandstands, it astounds me that Australians see this issue as one of major concern. As a wealthy nation, surely we have the capacity to open our arms to those people desperate enough to place their lives at risk in boats to get to our shores. It is so easy for the Sharman Stones and Colin Bartletts of this country to cast stones at these people but have they ever considered what life must be like for these refugees in their countries of origin that would force them to take such desperate steps for freedom? It is also easy for them to suggest that refugees should wait in the queue and come when asked, but have the considered what measures they would take if they, themselves, had to wait up to 10 years for a decision, while they see family and friends raped, kidnapped or murdered?
Whilever this debate rages (both out of control and reasonable context) Australia cannot rightfully consider itself to be a true democratic or just society, rather we should see ourselves as a bunch of xenophobes peering fearfully over the horizon for the next… red, yellow, Muslim… peril coming to drag us to hell. I’ve got news for you… with our current stance on humanity issues… we’ll all be ending up there anyway.
Good point chupachup. There is a lot of talk about push factors, but the blatant one is the current prolonged incarceration of a quarter of a million Tamil civilians. This action by the Sril Lankan government occured after the end of the civil war and has led directly to an increase in the number of Tamils trying to flee that country.
The single best way to stop boats arriving from Sri Lanka is to get the Sri Lankan government to start adopting basic human rights.
Andrew what exactly are the advantages of a diverse community? Is there such a thing as a community that is so diverse that every individual has nothing in common and society breaks down? What is the optimal level of diversity we should be aiming for?
OMG these people get on a boat with just self interest in mind. Nothing about improving Australian polity and homogeneity. Shocking. PS They said the same thing about the Oirish, once.
Were not the Oirish the first boat people to arrive here?
mmcdono asked “Is there such a thing as a community that is so diverse that every individual has nothing in common and society breaks down?”
If people had nothing in common and society broke down, then it wouldn’t be a community. I’m not suggesting endless difference amongst a land filled with disconnected individuals is the way to go. But people are endlessly diverse in many ways – not just nationality, language, religion, etc – and I don’t see any reason why there should be some natural limit. But you do need to have a shared set of overarching (or foundation) values or norms – not least of which is a commitment to the rule of law.
Which is why it bothers me that little focus is being put on settlement, responsive engagement, two-way integration – or good old genuine multiculturalism, to use a seemingly unfashionable term – in respect of half a million new residents a year (maybe only half of whom will stay for good), while we work ourselves into a lather about a few thousand boat arrivals.
In general, cohesive diversity in society is more dynamic – in the same way that a diverse economy or a diverse ecosystem is better than an economic monopoly or a monoculture environment. But it doesn’t all work perfectly by default (although people usually can make a pretty good way of working things out, given the opportunity and the support). Attention needs to be paid to keep it in balance, and maintain a cohesive, just framework built around equality – otherwise we’ll end up with the sort of problems some of the European countries have.
Nein, nein. It vos ze zo-called Aboriginalz. Zey came on paperbark Kanoos. Or maybe zey volkked akros from Neue Ginnei. Maybe I know nussing. But zen zere vos ze Malays who kommen and even Willem Janszoon, and Dirk Hartog. Do dingos count?
Maybe I’m too old for this, but I remember it was the same in the late 1970s: people all talked about getting the Vietnamese govt to stop boat people from leaving, instead of getting it to start treating them decently so they wouldn’t want to leave. But does anyone now think Vietnamese immigration was a bad thing?
You are so right, AB. This set piece theatre is all about airbrushing the intense economic immigration racket that BOTH MAJOR parties sign up to uncritically because their big donors pay them off.
Only one fatally weakened Victorian federal MP Kelvin Thompson was heard to squeak recently that Australia needs population policy reform, not 35M by 2030 or whatever.
I’m all for hypothecating refugee for economic migration. At least then I would know the most courageous and likely freedom loving and intelligent people are being woven into our fabric.
In regards to Tom’s last comment, this bit on Trevor Cook’s blog about a ‘migrant gene’.
Sounds rather overstated to me, but still interesting.
I have to say that I’m not against high immigration intake – in fact I think its almost essential – but I think the processes we use currently are pretty poor.
In any case, I’d prefer we had debates about it and a population policy in general, rather spend almost all our time getting into a frenzy about a small number of boat arrivals.
If we actually spent some time examining overall migration policies, we might do better at planning for increasing local population, rather continually playing catch up, which seems to be where we’re at now.