Stop playing the “racist” card on immigration

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The question before the nation today is whether or not immigration at such high levels is serving to better citizens well being. The answer to that is a very obvious “no”. You can read this MB presentation at your leisure as evidence. In the meantime you can also marvel at the outright drivel pursued by our parliament instead:

Mr Dutton said on Monday that two-thirds of the 33 people most recently charged with terrori­st-related offences in ­Australia were second- and third-generation Lebanese Muslims.

In a speech to parliament yesterday, the Opposition Leader ­accused Malcolm Turnbull of lacking leadership and demanded Mr Dutton be “brought into line” for his comments.

Mr Shorten said Mr Dutton was “profoundly wrong” when he had said the Fraser government “did make mistakes in bringing some people in” as part of Australia’s migrant intake in the 1970s.

“Suggesting it was a mistake to allow a generation of migrants to come to Australia, more than three decades ago, because of the crimes of a tiny handful of their grandchildren, is not just ignorant and insulting,’’ he said. “His ignorant comments contra­dict and undermine and fly in the face of every briefing I’ve ever received from our security agencies, who explain to us how best to counter radicalisation, about defeating extremism.’’

In question time, the Prime Minister accused Mr Shorten of “misrepresenting” Mr Dutton’s comments. “He (Mr Shorten) has no regard for the truth. He gave a long speech today in which he thoroughly misrepresented statements by the Minister for Immigration, dishonestly did so,” Mr Turnbull said.

He took aim at Mr Shorten for quoting the member for the West Australian seat of Cowan, Labor’s Anne Aly, who said: “I am fearful that the Minister’s comments will be used by an ­extreme few who would seek to harm the fabric of our society.”

…Ms Vanstone, immig­ration minister from 2003 to 2007, said Mr Shorten’s remarks reduced an important debate to the “lowest common denomin­ator”.

“Given immigration is so important to us — it’s one of our essential characteristics that we’re an immigration nation — any debate should be a frank and truthful one and not used as a cheap political football,” she said.

The Australian seriously needs an editorial enema. Trying to feed racism calls against Labor while also running a campaign to kill off 18c is absurd.

More broadly, playing “who’s the racist” instead of debating what level of immigration will best serve the nation is pure lowest common denominator. Leave race out of it. The only question that matters is are current levels of immigration serving the interests of the Australian people.

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The answer is no. It is choking city infrastructure (and there is no plan to address it), killing productivity, disenfranchising youth via ludicrous property price increases, keeping the currency too high and inhibiting Australian rebalancing, and driving the rise of actually racist identity politics that will threaten multiculturalism.

It needs to be cut back to levels consistent with history around 70k per annum. That leaves Australia with a still high intake that is manageable in terms of standards of living.

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.