Turnbull pushes immigration ‘bait and switch’ on Germany

Advertisement

Do-nothing Malcolm making friends oversees:

Malcolm Turnbull has delivered an impassioned defence in Germany of Australia’s tough border protection policies, declaring it is “absolutely essential” that governments protect their sovereign borders to gain the trust of the public to allow immigration and have a successful multicultural society.

Almost directly echoing the famous words of John Howard that Australia “will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come,” the Prime Minister told an elite audience in Berlin of academics and diplomats that the public needed to be able to trust that the government “ is determining who comes into the country”.

“You have to be able to assert your sovereign right to control your own borders,” Mr Turnbull said.

Sound familiar? It is the exact same approach adopted by former Prime Minister John Howard when he performed a ‘bait-and-switch’ on the Australian people whereby he slammed the door shut on the relatively small number of refugees arriving into Australia by boat all the while stealthily shoving open the door to economic migrants arriving here by plane.

The ultimate result was a massive lift in Australia’s net migration intake, which surged from the mid-2000s and pushed population growth to roughly twice long-run norms. Moreover, the official projections are for this high intake to persist at least until mid-century (see next chart).

Advertisement

Is it working, Malcolm? Essential:

The latest fortnightly survey of 1,026 voters finds that 54% of the sample believe Australia’s rate of population growth is too fast – which is up from 45% recorded five years ago.

A higher percentage, 64%, think the level of immigration in Australia over the past decade has been too high – up from 50% recorded in October 2016…

The latest survey indicates the current concern is broadly based. A majority of all voting groups, apart from the Greens, believe that population growth is happening too fast, and more than 60% of Coalition and Labor voters think there has been too much immigration over the past decade.

Advertisement

Newspoll:

An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian has revealed that 56 per cent of Australian voters believe the existing immigration cap of 190,000 a year is too high, 28 per cent think it is at the right level and 10 per cent consider it too low.

It’s certainly working to kill off support for immigration more broadly.

Moreover, what is Do-nothing Malcolm doing selling as good policy the notion of the political persecution of refugees, to the Germans of all people.

Advertisement

I suggest Germany immediately revoke Tin-eared Turnbull’s visa.

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.