Do-nothing Malcolm does nothing on Pauline

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I’m sure we all recall the heyday of John Howard when a fly could not pass by without the good PM making comment. Howard subscribed to the Carl Rove doctrine of filling the airwaves with yourself to drown out all alternatives. He was very good at it, to the point where it became quite annoying not for any political reason but because at times it felt like the nation was domiciled beneath his fundament.

For that reason I’m no great fan of the pervasive leader approach to governance.

That said, there are times when a national leader needs to stand up and define what the Hell is going on. This might not be to circumscribe debate but it ought at least to define the national limits on decency and what we all stand for as a country.

One of those moments is upon us now in the burgeoning immigration debate. From Waleed Aly:

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“Sonia Kruger is not evil – she’s scared,” The Project host said in an editorial on Tuesday evening, in which he called for an end to the “cycle of outrage”.

“Yesterday she [Kruger] admitted to not feeling safe. And how do you think she feels now? How do you expect her to react? It’s this cycle of legitimate fear that’s met with hostility or derision that’s led to more than 500,000 Australians voting for Pauline Hanson two weeks ago.

“Where we’re presented with something that we perceive to be an outrageous opinion we can consider what motivated that person and try to understand their fear. Because the truth is that what motivates them is fear, and fear is the one thing we’re all sharing right now because I’m scared too. I’m afraid for this country.”

“I can’t escape the thought that how we deal with our fear is becoming the defining measure that determines us as a people. Awful news leads to fear which leads to an outrageous statement, which leads to a pile-on, which leads to a hardening of positions.”

“I kinda feel like we’re on a Gravitron and spinning around and around and no one is interested in getting off. We’re all in this cycle and as the year wears on we’re spinning faster and faster and we’re all pushed to the edges and it is harder and harder for us, like it takes superhuman strength, to meet in the middle. Eventually, someone is sick and this is what that looks like.”

In drawing attention to his own fears about the nation’s future, Aly highlighted a letter that was printed in The Australian newspaper this week, in which a Malcolm Martin from The Entrance in NSW appeared to suggest that Muslims be locked up.

“Eventually, the secular world is going to have to decide if it’s going to accept these outrages [terrorist attacks] as the new normal, or if it’s actually going to do something other than lay flowers and mouth pointless platitudes,” the letter to the editor said.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if just once we could send forgiveness viral?

“The solution is radical. We will have to consider internment. Outrageous? See if you can come up with an alternative.”

Aly said it was attitudes like this that made him afraid for his friends and family and “scared about where I belong”.

“This is presumably an Australian man talking about locking up Muslims. People like me. Without trial or even allegation in camps. And this comment was published in a national Australian newspaper,” he said.

“You know, I get it. I get that this stuff is concerning and it’s dangerous and the stakes are high and I’m right in the middle of those stakes. And we’re afraid. Sonia, Pauline, Malcolm and me. We’re all afraid.

“But it’s how you deal with that fear. You don’t have to be calling for the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of innocent people to be acting destructively. You might just be angrily tweeting at someone who said something outrageous. But what I’m suggesting is, while it feels good to choose destruction, right now I think we need to try construction.”

Well said and quite right. This argument marginalises the radical voices on both sides without preaching. It’s precisely what our national leader should have said.

But where is he?

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I know we’ve just had an election and he’s a got loon pond to drain but where is Malcolm Turnbull? This issue has extraordinary implications for Australia’s social harmony and economic model. How do we explain the silence?

It could be that:

  • Turnbull couldn’t lead his way out of a wet paper bag;
  • he is distracted;
  • he is happy to let the debate rage around racists like Pauline Hanson so as to discredit resistance to immigration, given Australia’s current economic model is based entirely upon flooding the nation with migrants to boost flagging consumption and investment. If so, he is happy to sell out local Australian Muslims in support of the population growth rent-seekers that run his party;
  • he agrees with Pauline Hanson;
  • he just reckons he has no role in the debate.

I put it to you that there is not one single good explanation for Malcolm Turnbull’s silence on the immigration debate and if it continues then several outcomes are guaranteed:

  • Pauline Hanson will rise;
  • Australia will head towards some kind of Brexit-style dislocation socially, politically, economically or all three.
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My own contribution to the debate is that the voices calling for anything that targets Muslims specifically must be addressed head on. Any institutional shift in that direction whether it be limiting immigration or anything else is a disastrous sectarian policy failure in violation of everything contemporary Australia stands for. It makes marginalisation and radicalisation of local Muslims more likely and Australia less safe.

Nonetheless, the fears of many Australians that some maniac inspired by a pack of Islamic frauds do something monstrous is fair enough given events in Europe.

The only solution that I can see is a wholesale slowing of Australia’s massive immigration program in general which needs to happen anyway given the national economy is straining under the weight of it. It is gigantic, after all:

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Let me make clear again that I am a long term supporter of multi-culturalism, am immensely proud of Australia’s extraordinarily success with it, and see many of the benefits of a sustained immigration program.

But you cannot foist it on a fearful population with a falling standard of living without endangering it.

The compromise solution of slowing Australia’s immigration program to historic norms can help appease local fears on both sides of the debate.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.