In May this year, Labor’s immigration spokesperson, Kristina Keneally, had a rare lucid moment where she recommended that Australia cut immigration and “put Australian workers first”:
Our economic recovery must help all Australians get back on their feet, and to do that we need a migration program that puts Australian workers first.
Governments of all stripes have relied on high levels of migration to boost population to fuel economic growth. Arguably, at times this has been a lazy approach. Letting lots of migrants come to Australia is an easier way to drive economic growth than increasing productivity or investing in skills and training…
“The post-COVID-19 question we must ask now is this: when we restart our migration program, do we want migrants to return to Australia in the same numbers and in the same composition as before the crisis? Our answer should be no”…
This was immediately met with condemnation by Labor’s open borders brigade, which accused Keneally of racist “dog whistling”:
Several of Senator Keneally’s colleagues privately voiced frustrations on Sunday about her decision to write an opinion piece arguing against the “lazy approach” used by governments to prop up economic growth through immigration and suggested that the overall migrant intake could be less under Labor…
One Labor MP from the Left faction, which tends to support a more-open approach to migrants and refugees, said they were concerned about being accused of “dog-whistling”.
“We don’t have a problem with the call to look at temporary migration, but we don’t have to sound like Peter Dutton while doing it,” he said…
It appears the open borders zealots within the ALP have won out, with Kristina Keneally backtracking at a furious place when challenged on Monday night’s ABC Q&A (watch from 42.40):
JARRI HAIDERI’m a recent law graduate from the University of New South Wales. I came to Australia as an international student, and I’m now on a temporary work visa. My question is for Kristina Keneally. You recently argued in an article that Australia’s post-pandemic response to temporary migration should be to limit it as far as possible. One of your reasons was that the presence of guest workers drives down wages for Australian workers. As an elected representative of the Labor Party, shouldn’t your priority be to target the businesses that underpay their international workers, rather than wishing that those workers themselves should disappear into thin air?
KRISTINA KENEALLY
First of all, that’s not what I said. I don’t want them to disappear. I want them to be able to stay. Do you know what, under this government, they’ve capped permanent migration at 160,000 people, but they have let temporary migration soar to historically high levels. And temporary migrants, like you, don’t have access to the same rights. You can’t assert your rights in the way that Australian citizens can at work.
HAMISH MACDONALD
Senator, I’m just going to pull you up. Because I think it’s worth reminding our audience what you did actually say.
KRISTINA KENEALLY
Yeah.
HAMISH MACDONALD
You said that, “The post-COVID-19 question we must ask now is this – when we restart our migration program, do we want migrants to return to Australia…”
KRISTINA KENEALLY
“In the same size…”
HAMISH MACDONALD
“..in the same numbers and in the same composition as before?”
KRISTINA KENEALLY
Exactly.
HAMISH MACDONALD
And you said our answer should be no.
KRISTINA KENEALLY
“..should be no.” And that’s where I’m going, before you pulled me up. Because here’s the thing – when we have a country that is propped up by temporary migration, we have a group of people amongst us who are second-class. You can’t assert your same rights. You don’t get the same access to services like JobKeeper and JobSeeker. You’re cut out of all of that. And, in fact, this government has narrowed the pathways to permanency. So, in certain occupations or certain graduate programs, you’ll never get the chance to stay here. Australia is a country made great by permanent migration.
HAMISH MACDONALD
Are you sort of twisting…
KRISTINA KENEALLY
I came as a permanent migrant.
HAMISH MACDONALD
..what your original argument was?
KRISTINA KENEALLY
No, no! My argument has been…
HAMISH MACDONALD
It was widely viewed as a dog whistle on migration.
KRISTINA KENEALLY
Hamish…
HAMISH MACDONALD
And now sort of spinning it as, “This was something that was pro-migrants.”
KRISTINA KENEALLY
Hamish, this has been my argument since I’ve had the portfolio. Go back and read a speech I gave at the Curtin Institute. It was reported in the media at the time. The big hoax that this government is pulling is that they’re capping migration – permanent migration – but they’re letting temporary migration soar to historically high levels. And that’s a view of people as a disposable commodity. That’s a view that we let temporary migrants come here, we use them for their labour, and then we ship them off when times get rough, like COVID, or we never let them stay. I don’t want us to be a guest worker nation.
HAMISH MACDONALD
So, coming out of COVID, do we need to increase our migration intake?
KRISTINA KENEALLY
What we need to do is move towards greater pathways to permanency.
HAMISH MACDONALD
No, but my question is, do we need to increase our intake?
KRISTINA KENEALLY
Hamish, that’s an impossible question to answer right now.
HAMISH MACDONALD
Why?
KRISTINA KENEALLY
Because we don’t know when the borders are going to open, we don’t know what the unemployment rate’s going to be. We don’t know where the skill shortages are. That is an impossible question.
HAMISH MACDONALD
But this goes to whether you believe in population growth as part of the pathway out of this.
KRISTINA KENEALLY
Oh, population growth is definitely part of the pathway out of this. My argument is if we’re going to bring migrants back in – and, of course, I think we should, because they play an important part to building the economy – there should be pathways to permanency. There should be more… What’s your visa class? You said you were a…
JARRI HAIDER
It’s called Post Study Work Visa – it’s for graduates.
KRISTINA KENEALLY
And do you have the opportunity to stay here permanently?
JARRI HAIDER
No, I don’t.
KRISTINA KENEALLY
See, my feeling is…
HAMISH MACDONALD
And how did you interpret the senator’s article?
JARRI HAIDER
I thought the article said we need less immigrants, not more.
KRISTINA KENEALLY
No, what we need is more people like you to be able to stay. What’s going to happen to you under this government is that you’ve come here, you’ve gained skills, you’ve made connections, you might have even found someone you want to settle down and live with – I don’t know. But this government’s going to tell you you have to leave. My argument is, we’re a country built by permanent migration. Think of the Snowy Hydro team…
HAMISH MACDONALD
Kim Rubenstein, I know you want to get in.
KIM RUBENSTEIN
Well, I just think there’s an interesting return to a point which is Kristina’s point, which is a fair one about permanent residency being a more secure pathway to citizenship. But what value’s citizenship if your citizenship does not equate with any rights or connections? So, I think we… There is a profound question which COVID is amplifying…
KRISTINA KENEALLY
In this case, Kim…
KIM RUBENSTEIN
..about having to think through those issues.
KRISTINA KENEALLY
To be fair, a citizen or a permanent resident is getting JobSeeker and JobKeeper. Temporary migrant holders are not. What COVID has exposed is the vulnerable situation that temporary migrants are in and the way that we have failed to support them.
MICHAEL McCORMACK
And we have extended certain measures to ensure that those people – migrants on certain visas – were able to stay here and work. Because, obviously, there’s a lot of work with the bushfires, a lot of work in regional Australia. The Regional Australia Institute has identified 40,000 jobs available in regional Australia now. And not necessarily just in agriculture or indeed the resource sector. There are so many jobs in regional Australia, and we’re encouraging migrants to fill those jobs.
So, according to Keneally and Q&A host Hamish MacDonald, there were no problems with Australia’s pre-COVID mass immigration levels, which for 15 years ran at roughly triple the historical average:
Nor is there a problem with Australia’s cities roughly doubling in size over the next half-century on the back of these mass immigration levels, as projected by the ABS:
The only problem, according to Kristina Keneally, is that not enough people are allowed to migrate to Australia permanently. In which case, Keneally implicitly supports even stronger population growth in the post-COVID economy, given permanent migration drives Australia’s long-term population growth (since temporary migrants must eventually leave).
Nowhere in the discussion did Keneally mention the chronic strains on infrastructure, housing, the environment, or general amenity caused by mass immigration, nor the deleterious impacts on local workers competing for increasingly scarce jobs against low wage migrants.
No, Keneally instead kowtowed to an ABC ambush starring a graduate visa holder, promising to make his path to permanent residency easier under a Labor Government, rather than questioning his true motivation for studying in Australia in the first place – i.e. as a backdoor to permanent migration.
Australians have basically been given two false choices on immigration:
- High immigration under the Coalition; or
- Massive immigration under Labor.
Both are disastrous for Australia’s working class, especially in a time of mass unemployment. Running mass immigration into a heavily oversupplied labour market will merely lengthen Australia’s dole queue and crush wages even further, while also raising housing costs.
Somebody should sue “Labor” and demand they change their name because they no longer represent Australian workers.
Rather, Labor are the useful idiots of the wealthy elite that privatises the gains from mass immigration via cheaper labour costs and an expanded consumer base, while ordinary Australians bear the costs.
