Senator Andrew Bartlett
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
 
Looking into the future - what is migration anyway?
Apart from seeing how progress is going on that Future Directions project, I had another meeting in Sydney about a range of migration matters. I spend a lot of time on refugee matters because the injustices are so enormous and the human damage being done is so huge (not to mention the damage to our nation’s legal fabric and the rule of law). One of the extra frustrations of this is that I don’t get to focus as much as I would like on the many other aspects to do with immigration and citizenship, which affects far more people – just not in so horrendous or immediate a way.

Figures have just been released which have Australia’s immigration intake at a 10 year high. These figures showed 111 000 people settled in Australian in the last financial year, which is the highest for 10 years. There are a few points worth making out of this.
Firstly, people who say that John Howard and his Government are anti-migration are wrong. Similarly, just because he adopted some of Pauline Hanson’s policies and a more sophisticated form of her rhetoric, it is not true to say he is anti-Asian migration. The figures show that Asian countries are amongst some of the highest source countries, with 3 of them – China, India and the Philippines – in the top 7.

However, a second point to make is that the most significant shift in this Government’s policy has not been in numbers of migrants or where they are from, but the huge shift away from family migration to business and skilled migration. Whilst I believe this can be justified up to a point, what it does is drain skilled people away from some countries – especially India in our case – who could very much do with keeping them. It is also a policy based on a discriminatory and, I believe, grossly overstated assertion that family migration is a drain on our economy.

Whilst there are some figures which purport to back this assertion, there is no account taken of the broader value which family migrants bring to Australia and their local communities. This is particularly hypocritical coming from a Government that likes to portray itself as valuing the family unit, as the practical result of this policy is that it keeps families apart. For example, the waiting list for aged parents was stretched out to ridiculous lengths by this Government, although I was pleased to be able to help remedy that to some extent a couple of years ago.

Another consequence is that people with disabilities are blatantly discriminated against. Families are prevented from settling in Australia because one of them has a disability, as this is seen as a drain on our country. The negative message this sends out about people with disabilities – especially children – is very dangerous. An example of a family affected by this blatant discrimination received some publicity late last year and a question was asked of the Minister by one of my colleagues, Brian Greig. I made a brief speech as well, so you can read some more of my views on this matter here.

Finally, the 111 000 migrants mentioned above is not a net figure. The migration area can be confusing (and is often deliberately made so by Govt Ministers) as lots of different figures are used which seem to be talking about the same things but aren’t. As far as I can tell from my initial look, these figures do not take into account the number of people who left Australia to settle elsewhere. It should also be noted that it relates to people who are ‘settling’ in Australia – that is permanent residents.

What is not widely realised is that the vast majority of people who come to reside in Australia now only intend to stay temporarily (this does not count tourists or visitor visas). 3 or 4 times as many people come here as temporary residents each year, compared to ‘settlers’. Regardless of whether you are looking at the social, economic, infrastructure or environmental consequences of migration, in most ways the ‘settlers’ figure is not really the most important one. There is a very interesting report by Prof Graeme Hugo, put out by the Federal Parliamentary Library, which goes into this in some detail.

I believe this is where our migration debate should be focused, as it is an area which has big (and potentially very positive) implications for our nation’s future, for concepts such as citizenship, globalisation, multiculturalism, peace, environment and economic development.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, January 11, 2005
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