How Fake Left suppresses concerns around high immigration

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By Leith van Onselen

Dr Katharine Betts from The Australian Population Research Institute (TAPRI) has published a thought-provoking article explaining how the ‘fake left’ has stifled debate around immigration, which has enabled politicians to maintain a ‘Big Australia’ policy against the wishes of Australian voters:

The major parties ignore voters’ preferences because they can, believing voters have nowhere else to go. They may also be reassured by a dearth of effective public criticism.

Why this dearth? Taking voters’ concerns seriously risks breaching norms of polite discourse established and enforced by the group French economist Thomas Piketty calls the Brahmin class. These are left-leaning intellectuals with clear ideas on what may not be said on questions concerning race which, for many, includes questions about immigration.

This acts as a muffler on serious public debate…

Bipartisan support for high migration, backed by a vocal and cashed-up growth lobby, offers few openings for effective dissent. And for a long time this arrangement has been fortified by the Brahmins’ ability to smother criticism within the broader electorate.

But as the polls show, dissent is there…

Taking a strong stand against racism is a core moral principle, and rightly so. The problem lies in automatically equating any criticism of high migration with racism. All this does is feed the growth lobby and stoke growing discontent among the silenced.

We must be able to debate the future of Australia clearly and publicly. Whispering is not enough.

Too right. It’s impossible to deny that public support for mass immigration has collapsed, as evidenced by all recent opinion polls:

  • Australian Population Research Institute: 54% want lower immigration;
  • Newspoll: 56% want lower immigration;
  • Essential: 54% believe Australia’s population is growing too fast and 64% believe immigration is too high;
  • Lowy: 54% of people think the total number of migrants coming to Australia each year is too high;
  • Newspoll: 74% of voters support the Turnbull government’s cut of more than 10% to the annual permanent migrant intake to 163,000 last financial year;
  • Galaxy: two-thirds of Victorians believe Melbourne’s population is growing too fast; and
  • Herald: 63% of voters support restricting migrant numbers while 50% opposed more development in Sydney to accommodate population growth.
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And yet our politicians refuse to normalise immigration back to historical levels:

This disconnect between public opinion and policy will only breed hatred and contempt from the electorate, placing at risk the multicultural consensus.

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It also highlights why Australia desperately needs to have a plebiscite on Australia’s future population.

We need to take decision making out of the elitist’s and politicians’ hands and give the Australian people the opportunity to choose Australia’s future population size (and by extension immigration levels) via a democratic vote.

Australia recently had a plebiscite on same sex marriage, so why can’t we also have one on this issue? It is just as contentious but, unlike same sex marriage, also has direct impacts on current and future Australians’ living standards.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.