Our future in migrant hands

RENOWNED commercial lawyer, Order of Australia recipient and vocal human rights and refugee advocate Julian Burnside will be in town next week and what a message he has for Cairns.

The delightfully down-to-earth author is the guest of the Cairns Tropical Writer’s Festival but he had plenty to say this week on how Australia’s dismal record on asylum seekers could be an opportunity for regional Australia.

Just last weekend, in another News Corp publication, The Australian Weekend Magazine, was a story of how Karen refugees from Myanmar had transformed Nhill, a fast dying rural town in Victoria.

Families had moved to the town, transitioning into jobs abandoned by Aussies and rejuvenating a stagnant economy. The newcomers were grateful of somewhere safe to start again and the residents of Nhill were thrilled to see the town they loved coming back to life.

Mr Burnside said the money the Australian Government was pouring into offshore detention on Manus and Nauru Islands could be better spent bringing those people to regional Australia, providing them with a house, Centrelink and a chance to work.

By his estimates, there would be a lot less waste of the taxpayer’s money, too.

Cairns’s leaders are planning for a region which will host up to 500,000 but in the meantime, the building sector is soft and we still haven’t seen the lift in house prices predicted for several months now.

Imagine what an influx of human capital could do for the area.

All of a sudden, they’d need housing, clothes, food and Cairns’s ready and able businesses would be happy to oblige.

Alicia Nally alicia.nally@news.com.au