PUT IMMIGRATION QUESTION TO THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE

It’s time to get some skin in the game, stop running the nation down and find out if Big Australia is the path

AFTER more than a fortnight of the great Australian reality TV drama Barnaby’s Choice, it’s hard to believe there are in fact other important policy issues on foot.

Tony Abbott reminded us of one of them earlier this week with a speech to the Sydney Institute where he suggested our historically high immigration levels might not be, as environmental types like to say, sustainable. In essence, he said we ought to adjust our intake downwards to reduce the stress on housing, roads, hospitals, the job market and social cohesion caused by a migrant intake that brings us Adelaide’s population every five years.

Naturally Abbott was quickly attacked by everyone from the Treasurer down for being economically illiterate and populist. No matter the troubles people have finding a place to live or getting a raise or making it to work and back again, they suggested, the addition of 200,000 more people into the mix every year should absolutely not be considered part of the problem.

In fact, the boosters say, because of them we’ll all get rich.

Well, perhaps. But dry economic arguments about the wisdom of a large migration intake tend to fall on deaf ears, which suggests that another approach may be needed. Herewith, then, three modest proposals for members of Team Big Australia – whether from the left or right – who are looking to make their case that the pros well outweigh the cons.

First off, stop running Australia down. This applies particularly to progressives on the left who see migration as a tool to remake modern Australia away from its fusty Anglo roots. It does stretch credulity that the same mob that turns Australia Day into the biggest festival of selfflagellation this side of Ashura in Tehran can turn on a dime and demand ever more people come to colonise what they tell us is an illegitimate colonial nation.

The only way Australia will continue to successfully absorb migrants is by telling a positive story of achievement that reinforces rather than undermines what brought them here and makes them want to commit to the country.

Second, get some skin in the game.

Residents of the hip inner-city and “leafy suburbs” generally tend to be more positive about immigration and the benefits of multiculturalism (“so many cuisines!”) than those who live elsewhere. Yet in the five years from 2010 to 2015, the City of Sydney electorate took in just 247 humanitarian migrants. Out in western Sydney during that time, Fairfield took nearly 6000.

Granted, it might cost a little more to settle refugees in Paddington or Potts Point. But it’s hard not to be cynical about those who beat the drum for diversity but who choose to live where the newcomers are all bartenders named Siobhan or Mill wall supporting creative directors named Clive.

Finally, put it to the people.

Last year the nation came together over the issue of same-sex marriage in a much-derided but, for equality advocates, ultimately successful plebiscite. Aside from a few isolated instances of bad behaviour on both sides, a mature, positive debate took place.

Why not do the same thing with immigration? The biggest complaint of those concerned about the level of immigration is that they never had a say, particularly with both major parties committed to “Big Australia”. Put it to the people that the number of new arrivals be wound back to, say, a historical average of about 100,000 for a decade, to give infrastructure a chance to catch up.

You never know, the answer may just surprise.