Weasel words from Prime Minister Turnbull overnight at the UN migration conference, from the AFR:
Governments that fail to control their borders face political destabilisation and a losing battle to win public support for a humanitarian approach to refugees, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has argued.
In a speech early on Tuesday AEST to the United Nations Summit on Refugees and Migrants in New York, Mr Turnbull said the Australian government would never have been able to accept 12,000 Syrian refugees, who are in addition to the annual humanitarian intake, nor increase the annual intake over time, had asylum seekers still been arriving by boat.
“Addressing irregular migration, through secure borders, has been essential in creating confidence that the government can manage migration in a way that mitigates risks and focuses humanitarian assistance on those who need it the most,” he said.
How about addressing out of control regular migration? Let’s revisit the Sydney and Melbourne population outlooks:
And the next chart plots New South Wales’ historical and projected population change:
The situation is even worse in Victoria:
These outcomes are far more transformative than a few pathetic refugees as:
- the existing population’s standard of living is lowered to breaking point yet we see little rise in competitiveness as infrastructure is choked;
- Australia’s Chinese and Indian populations grow enormously;
- the importance of Chinese participation in the “citizenship exports” sectors of education, property and migration grows to dominate Australian services exports in the same way it did raw materials;
- a great social divide develops between those exposed to Chinese capital and those who are not (most obviously via property prices but also falling wages and asset sales);
- the influence of these sectors will mushroom in policy-makers minds as they grow and other tradable sectors are hollowed out, and
- ANZUS will cease to have meaning beyond the paper it is written on.
That’s the rub. Australia is drifting blindly into the Chinese sphere of influence just so a few real estate agents can get richer. China is a communist, one-party state that has resorted to outright violence in the recent past to retain power. Its foreign policy ambitions are clearly growing more aggressive with its wealth and power. It is showing no signs of reforming towards democracy, the opposite in fact, and is engaged in overt soft-power building as a part of a radiating economic imperialism. We have no idea what it intends for the multi-lateral regional power structure and, I would argue, neither does it beyond wanting to push the US back wherever it can. Thus, the rules-based system of international relations that benefits Asia’s middle powers is in clear jeopardy.
This is not managed migration. It is an insane gamble by folks proven to be inept at managing the process.
None of these things is the least bit surprising yet we are completely unprepared for them. Australia’s political parties are the worst kind of short-term can-kickers. The Coalition is rife with property rent-seekers and the Labor Party is unable to see past a kind of “chardonnay left” fear of racism. Those holding the balance of power in the senate are trapped by the same false binary.
The Australian media is a fully-fledged property parasite with no regard for what it does to the nation. It is now structurally unable to debate with objectivity any issue that might negatively impact property prices.
We’ve already seen overseas what this kind of set-up does to a political economy. In the UK it generated Brexit. In Europe it is threatening EU disintegration. In the US it has disgorged Donald Trump. Wherever the plutocrats ignore globalisation’s underclass for long enough, opposing movements have risen and are taking power.
Enter Pauline Hanson here, whose rise at the margins will continue so long as Australian plutocrats sell everything not bolted down. She is not powerful enough politically or personally to force change but she can be an outrider for someone who is, an Australian Donald Trump, a ravening populist that will rally the disenfranchised.
There is only one candidate for that that I can see. Tony Abbott, the great wrecker, who in recent days said this in Europe, from Domainfax:
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has told a group of European conservatives the migrant crisis afflicting the continent has the “look of a peaceful invasion” as he urged European leaders to adopt Australia’s strict turn-back policy.
In an address to the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists in Prague on Saturday night, Mr Abbott said it was “more important than ever to be brave” and a post-Brexit Britain and Europe needed to consider immigration changes.
Mr Abbott said a country that could not control who entered its territory “will eventually lose control of its future”.
“That need not end free movement – but it would end uncontrolled movement – and why shouldn’t each country keep the final say over who can enter,” Mr Abbott said in the speech, which he posted to his website on Sunday.
Clearly there is hypocrisy here given that when in power the Abbott Government did not rein immigration through the front door. But it can claim that it did control part of the immigration program (albeit the wrong part) and it installed laws to prevent illegal buying of property by foreign interests (that have gone limp under Turnbull). Sensing his moment, Abbott has also been sidling up to Pauline Hanson recently so he may be preparing a wider push to lower immigration. He is also a dunder-headed geo-political hawk that will back the US without subtlety. That will be reassuring to the dis-empowered and be internally consistent versus the current foreign policy led by the Property Council.
Australia’s mainstream political parties would be wise to learn the lessons of other nations before we see the rise of something ugly here.
