Duncan Kerr

Duncan Kerr, Labor Shadow Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, outlines his party’s current thinking about population policy and immigration issues.

DOES AUSTRALIA NEED A POPULATION POLICY?

When the Government announced its program for the current year, the Minister, Mr Ruddock, said quite accurately, that he was meeting the Coalition’s election commitment to maintain an immigration program broadly of the same dimension as the previous government.

Yet despite this, the Prime Minister chose to announce the Government’s decision by going on John Laws’ program where he spoke of ‘slashing’ the immigration program, and the Deputy Prime Minister spoke of the previous Labor Government as having allowed the program to ‘go out of control’.

The Minister for Immigration is currently undertaking a consultation process regarding this year’s program numbers. I confidently expect that the program will be reduced again. I believe it will be reduced for one reason only and that is to position the Labor Party to oppose that reduction. The reduction will not flow from any assessment of Australia’s longer term interests because no research of the kind necessary to make such judgments has been done by this Government. Instead it will be driven entirely for political reasons to comply with the Prime Minister’s demand that the program numbers be reduced so that the Government can attract the Hanson inspired anti-immigration backlash vote.

So, how to respond. I believe that we need to respond by moving beyond the short term and starting to think long term. And that is why the Labor Party argues that it is time for Australia to develop an explicit population policy.

An explicit population policy would allow us to look forward some 30 to 50 years and decide the kind of Australia we will pass to our children. Once we develop a population policy we should work from that point to determine what our year by year immigration intake ought to be.

An incidental benefit of a population policy would be that it ought to allow us to get away from the narrowly focused wedge politics (as discussed below) and racism that has been so ugly in the immigration debate so far.

But a population strategy should not direct debate solely to immigration. While an explicit population policy will inevitably require us to frame immigration policy within a band consistent with the overall population strategy, it will also expose other elements which will require strategic planning — issues such as city infrastructure, resources and energy management, internal population movement, planning for our ageing population, protection of wilderness and coastal zones, sewerage and waste disposal, and our management of the large numbers of short term visitors that come to Australia as tourists and students. And of course all this within our over-arching framework of what is possible to sustain in Australia within an environmental context.

Nor should we treat the adoption of a population policy as identical with a fixed commitment to a precise numerical outcome for a projected future. Rather we should identify a range within which year to year policy making will operate and a process for updating and modifying those planning objectives.

There are a couple of points I would like to make about how we should think about our future and immigration. First, most of the factors shaping future population size are not very policy sensitive. Australia is unlikely to adopt policies which attempt to intervene in strategic ways with matters of family composition, fertility or mortality rates. We see these matters as individual and family choice and accept those rates may change, and therefore we also accept that any population framework will have to be flexible and adaptive. Minor changes for example in the birth rate would have significant impacts on population projections over a fifty year time horizon. But, assuming present fertility levels continue and no substantial fluctuations in migration, Australia’s population will continue to grow, but increasingly slowly until about the year 2030, and then decline. Australia’s birth rates are already below replacement levels and it is only the relatively high number of women in the peak child-bearing years which causes births to exceed deaths.

In other words, when the present band of women who are of child-bearing age, themselves age out of that process, Australia’s birth rate, which is already below replacement level, will begin to decline. So an ageing and declining population past the year 2030 is foreseeable. That will require planning either to change that outcome or to address its consequences.

Now there are some who say that Australia should welcome a population decline; but an ageing and declining population post the year 2030 will present some very serious economic and social problems for us. For example, we have become accustomed in the housing market to have a continually increasing population demand. If we eventually have a decreasing population, what will that do to real estate values, and what will that do to many similar sectors of the Australian economy that have been planned around growth, or at least stable population numbers. Sustaining the medical and social security system for the aged will also present some greater difficulties. If we make such choices we must plan to address such difficulties.

Labor has rejected as extreme calls for our population to be either massively increased or decreased. What we want is a process to find moderate ground upon which all Australians can stand. A final statement of such a population policy will require both further scientific research and wide community consultation. But it is in Australia’s interests to do this.

IMMIGRATION PROGRAM ISSUES

While immigration is more subject to policy than is the national demographic fertility and mortality rates, it shouldn’t be regarded as simply a free variable. A certain minimum immigration intake is both inevitable and desirable. Spouse and partner visas, will remain a significant component of our immigration intake for the foreseeable future. The influx of marriage partners each year just about balances out those Australians who choose to leave Australia for other countries. A zero net intake is therefore the absolute minimum base for immigration. However, this is unrealistic as it excludes any component of family reunion, any humanitarian or refugee resettlement and any business and labour market program recruitment. And, as recent statistics have shown, we have no control over trans-Tasman population movements. There is free, and increasing, population transfer from New Zealand.

In this context discussion about migration should be in terms of net migration. Net migration post war averaged well over a hundred thousand per annum. Net migration for the Keating Government years was fifty thousand, near the lowest for any period since World War II. And a net program of about fifty thousand is around the lowest level of migration which allows for modest levels of family reunion, humanitarian and refugee settlement and some business and skills arrivals.

And also, just by coincidence, a program of that size fits within the framework of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Long Term Strategies, (The Jones Report) population stabilisation option, which implies a stable population of about 23 million by year 2045. This Report is a useful starting point for any discussion about these issues.

To conclude on population policy, I think I should mention that it is not a panacea which will enable us to overlook other issues. For example, we shouldn’t think that population policy can be a substitute for addressing urban sprawl and pressure on urban services. That problem will persist whatever we do with migration. At least until the year 2030, our population will continue to grow and the dramatic internal population shifts that Australia has seen, the shift of populations from the country to the city will continue unless we can make the country more economically viable to live in. This is the exact opposite of what is happening under the Howard Government.

Secondly, the size of households looks as if it will probably continue to decrease. So pressure on urban sprawl and pressure on services have to be addressed irrespective of whatever view we take about population policy. You can’t close the tap on population and fix Sydney’s problems, or close the tap on immigration and fix the urban sprawl problem.

Nor can we fix rural and regional decline through a population policy. Similarly we cannot deal with pressures on the environment by shifting all the debate to population policy.

The period in Australia’s history during which we did the worst damage to our environment, was when our population was between three and five million. There is not a direct relationship between environmental impact and our population.

SUB-PROGRAM ISSUES

I now turn to some sub-program issues. The starting point from our perspective is that our policy will remain unambiguously non-discriminatory.

My preliminary thinking is as follows. First, we should reassert the absolute right of husbands, wives and dependent children of permanent residents to live with their partners and children in Australia. In other words we should assert that it is a fundamental human right to marry and to form a family and to live together as a family unit in this country. I reject the idea that you can limit the right of any Australian to marry a person of their choosing. Similarly, if you are a child born to an Australian family, you should have a right to live with your family. So that would be my starting point — saying that there are certain absolute human rights which grow out of our respect for the close and immediate family.

Second, I don’t think that it does Australia any honour or credit to walk away from maintaining a humanitarian and refugee program. To the extent that the Coalition has already reduced our commitments in those areas, I regard that as something which lessens us as Australians. We should therefore maintain a commitment to an adequate refugee and humanitarian program.

Third, I think we should insist that skilled migration be more closely linked to labour market needs. That is a point I will take up and develop later.

Fourth, I think we should give a degree of preference in skilled migration to the extended family of permanent residents of Australia, in recognition of the importance of family links and the assistance that those links provide towards effective settlement in Australia.

Finally, I believe we should maintain an element of the program to enable the transfer of resources and technology through business migration.

SOME NEW IDEAS

I indicated I would return to the issue of linking skilled migration more closely with labour market needs. One of the ideas we are contemplating is to collapse what is now regarded as an unskilled element of the program, the concessional family category, into the skilled component, whilst giving extra points to those who have family links already in the country, in recognition of the help with settlement that that provides.

It makes sense because over recent times the concessional family category has come to require very high levels of skills. Yet it is still spoken about as if migrants who come here as part of family reunion are unskilled and a burden on the larger Australian society.

Since it is now the case that the concessional family scheme is no longer an unskilled element of the migration mix, the sensible thing would be to frankly acknowledge this. We should not continue to hold out false hope for extended family settlement as if every new settler in Australia is entitled to have extended family come here under a ‘concessional’, notionally unskilled, family program. It would make more sense to say family reunion should be recognised by allowing an applicant to get special additional points if they have relatives already in Australia. That concession is a valid one because we know that this is one of the things that makes for successful migration, helps people get into the workforce, and helps them to make their settlement more effective and less expensive to government. So I am teasing out the implications of this policy shift and have raised this matter on a number of occasions with the Minister.

We ought also think about whether or not now is the time to delink the transfer of people across the Tasman from discussion about the immigration program. Australians and New Zealanders have reciprocal residential rights. We don’t try to control it, yet ebbs and flows of trans-Tasman movements can distort debate about the migration program. Certainly this movement has to be taken into account in any population strategy since it is significant in terms of the overall shape and dynamics of the demographics. But whether we should take out trans-Tasman settlement from the reporting of immigration statistics is an issue which needs some thought being given to.

Finally, on the matter of program issues I might just say that one of the things that I have been extremely critical of is the Government’s push to increase the number of migrants coming under the independent category. The Minister has cut almost every other element of the program, but increased the independent category. The problem with the independent category is that there is no intelligent rationale for the program. There are no requirements to match the skills brought to Australia by independent entrants and the labour market. So that, for example, we can end up bringing in large numbers of engineers for whom we have no requirement in the Australian labour market.

It seems to me that if we want a program both better grounded in Australia’s self interest, and which gives also a proper resect to the rights of those who are settled in this country, we should give weight to the ACTU’s submission to the Government which argues that most, if not all, skilled migration should be market labour linked. Without such links there is no coherent rationale for the maintenance of a large untargeted independent visa category.

THE POLITICS OF RACE

Since the 1996 election, Australia’s public life has been destructively influenced by the politics of race and by the coded political agenda of the Howard government’s attacks on the inclusive message of multiculturalism. And, although some will contest this, I believe it is impossible to understand the Government’s rhetoric and actions with respect to the immigration program except in this context.

Many decisions taken by the Howard Government contradict the promises made by the Coalition before the last election. Prior to the last election, the Coalition sent reassuring messages to those within and outside Australia who were concerned about the possibility that the new Government might be anything other than sympathetic to multiculturalism. The Coalition said it supported multiculturalism and committed itself to maintain an immigration program of about the same size and scale of the Keating government. The Coalition also supported family reunion and made plain that it was turning its face against racism by committing a Coalition government to fund an anti-racism campaign.

But since the election, Mr Howard has played a double game. Professor Mary Kalantzis and Mr Bill Cope in a commissioned paper claim that John Howard has acted as if to say ‘how dare you insinuate I am a racist’ yet has cynically played the race card since the election in a way which is deceptive, divisive and destructive.

Kalantzis and Cope have identified five elements which they say are a part of a ‘sophisticated and systemic new racism’.

First they identify John Howard’s obsession with political correctness. When John Howard said ‘I welcome the fact that people can now talk about certain things without living in fear of being branded a bigot, or a racist’, Professor Kalantzis and Bill Cope ask what else can this have meant except that people espousing views that would otherwise have been considered racist and bigoted can now speak without that accusation?

Second is an attack on multiculturalism. Howard, no less than Hanson, is opposed to multiculturalism. Since the election, we have seen the abolition of the Office of Multicultural Affairs in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (contrary to an election promise), and the effective abolition of the Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research. The agencies of government responsible for multicultural policy have been crudely lopped. Without sound, strong information, public discussion amounts only to an exchange of our prejudices.

That brings me to Kalantzis and Cope’s third point — the promoting of false stereotypes. On unemployment, the Prime Minister has said that if people are anxious about immigration in the context of unemployment that is completely understandable. Understandable maybe, but wrong. We know that research consistently over decades has shown that immigration has had at worst a neutral effect on unemployment and probably a positive effect on overall employment levels in this country.

And as to Asian immigration in particular, the Prime Minister has reflected popular misinformation in emphasising its concentration in particular parts of the country. Again, research shows that recent immigrant groups and Asians in particular, are much more geographically dispersed than were previous waves of immigrants.

Fourth, Kalantzis and Cope point to John Howard’s attack on some historians for what he has called the ‘black arm band’ view of history.

The final point that Professor Kalantzis and Bill Cope draw attention to is the emergence of what they call ‘wedge politics’. Wedge politics seeks to marginalise and attack everyone except the ‘men and women of the great Australian mainstream’. It relegates the rest to a marginal role and defines their advocates as special interest elites. Kalantzis and Cope conclude that since the election, multiculturalism has been replaced by the triumphalism of populist and racist wedge politics.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, I return to some of the issues that I raised in beginning this address. There is an alternative to the approach of the current government. The alternative is to return to an inclusive pluralism in which no Australian is treated as marginal and outside a favoured ‘mainstream’. It also requires us to provide a cogent rationale for Australia’s migration program. This is best served by reframing the discussion on immigration so that we can move away from divisive short term year by year decisions and instead develop, after detailed consultations, an explicit national population policy, in which immigration is a significant, but not dominant element. Through this approach a sustainable and cogent rationale for an Australian migration program for the year 2000 and beyond can emerge.

This is an edited version of speech delivered to the Migration Institute of Australia, 14 April 1997.

Back to People and Place Home Page