Oz Parliament: Bob Brown moves for sane population policy: See who voted for & against growth

Date: 27-9-1999, Adjournment - Immigration (Full references at end of this excerpt from Hansard)

So, maybe it wasn't a maiden speech, but here it is - quite feisty and an historic and ironic document, considering where the Liberal Party later took us with immigration numbers and now the Rudd Labor government's massive and undemocratic population push:

Senator MINCHIN (South Australia) (7.20 p.m.) —I wish to speak tonight on a matter which I regard as a serious deficiency in Australian public life; that is, our lack of any population policy. I am moved to speak on this subject by a recent news report on immigration to Australia in 1994-95. The Adelaide Advertiser reported on 7 September 1995 that figures released by the Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research showed a 25 per cent increase in immigration from the previous year. That is an extraordinary increase in one year. What is also extraordinary is that it was largely ignored by the media and by the parliament. It does appear that immigration is, in fact, a no-go area in Australia.

There were 87,428 immigrants in 1994-95 compared with 69,768 in the previous year. The bureau notes that nearly half the immigrants are still going to New South Wales—43 per cent to New South Wales; nearly twice as many as go to the next highest state, Victoria, which received 22 per cent. I think that is quite interesting in the light of New South Wales Premier Carr's recent comments on the population problems, as he sees them, in New South Wales.

The concern raised by the latest figures is the fact that such a big increase in the immigration intake has occurred while unemployment in this country remains so high. We had an MPI on that subject today. Unemployment is still at 8.3 per cent—a very high level. There are still nearly three-quarters of a million Australians who cannot get work but who want it. The economy is slowing down. It is being deliberately slowed down by the government. So the likelihood is that unemployment will at some point start to rise again. Even the government's budget, which one must say is an optimistic document, admits that unemployment will not be less than eight per cent by June next year.

Yet, in the face of all that—three-quarters of a million unemployed—the government is accelerating the immigration program. I am not talking about whether there is immigration or not; I am talking about the pace of the increase in immigration. To have a 25 per cent increase in one year really makes no sense to the Australian community in the face of the very high level of unemployment. It particularly does not make much sense when you note—as I do not think many Australians do—that the unemployment rate for migrants who have arrived in the last five years is 22 per cent. That means that almost one in four of recent migrants who wish to obtain a job cannot get a job and are unemployed.

In fact, the unemployment rate for all migrants who arrived in the last 20 years—that is, since 1976—is above the national unemployment rate of 8.3 per cent. Yet, in the face of all that, the government is proposing another increase. We see that in 1995-96, the current financial year, the government has set aside an extra 14,000 places, which will take immigration back over the 100,000 mark. I just do not know how the government can justify such a rapid increase in immigration when we still have three-quarters of a million Australians who cannot find work. I really wonder what the trade unions think of all this.

The real issue, in my view, is that the government is threatening what is fragile community support for a big immigration program by this sort of rapid increase in the intake. I note that the community has really already given up on Labor on this issue of immigration. The Newspoll survey published on 20 September, which sought the attitudes of people to the handling of various issues by Labor and the coalition, showed that voters think that the coalition can handle the issue of immigration better than Labor.

That is not a surprising finding when you look at what has been an extraordinary roller-coaster ride on immigration under Labor—incredible fluctuations in numbers year by year. The net migration in Labor's first year, 1984, was 49,000; by 1988, only four years later, it was 149,000—an extraordinary increase in four years. In 1989 it was 157,000; in 1990 it went back to 124,000; and in 1991 it went down to 86,000. It is just like the big dipper at Luna Park.

Former finance minister Peter Walsh was very revealing in his book about the way this government conducts immigration policy. He noted in his book that it took five years of this government before it even had a major debate on immigration. It said:

Early in 1988, the first major cabinet debate on immigration took place.

He then says, in looking back over the five years at that point:

Thus three sequences of blow outs and cave-ins boosted arrivals from 70 to 115 thousand. The next year—

that is 1989—

it blew out again to 140 thousand. Apart from the unplanned and unintended doubling of numbers in four years, the composition at the instigation of the ethnic mafia, also changed towards `family reunion', which debased migrant employability. Frequent Ministerial changes—four Ministers in the first five years—did not facilitate the development of coherent on-going policy.

An understatement, if ever there was one.

This is the hopeless adhockery of immigration policy which former Labor minister Peter Walsh complained of and which Barry Jones in his own report—a very interesting report on Australia's population carrying capacity—complained of. The report is by the National President of the Labor Party, and the committee has a majority of Labor members on it. Its recommendation No. 2 is well worth reading in the light of what I regard as this ad hoc approach to immigration. Mr Jones's committee recommended:

The Australian Government should adopt a population policy which explicitly sets out options for long term population change, in preference to the existing situation where a de facto population policy emerges as a consequence of year by year decisions on immigration intake taken in an ad hoc fashion, such decisions being largely determined by the state of the economy in the particular year and with little consideration of the long term effects.

There is your own national president—the national president of the party in government—describing his government's policy as ad hoc. I strongly support that committee's recommendation. I note that it was a recommendation from a majority of government members. It is about time the government responded to that report in full, not just the interim report we have had.

I want to indicate tonight my personal support for committee option IV in looking at the future for Australia. Option IV was for a stable population in the possible range of 17 million to 23 million, which the committee notes has `strong community support'. I do not think anyone in Australia can read Tim Flannery's outstanding book The Future Eaters and not recognise the significant environmental limits to Australia's population carrying capacity—that is really what was being referred to in the Jones report.

Very interestingly, New South Wales Labor Premier Bob Carr referred to this matter in May. I want to quote what he said about all this. He said:

. . . the debate ought to be about the carrying capacity of the continent—a continent that has lousy soils, fragile vegetation and depleted and degraded river systems.

I do not often agree with Labor premiers, but I must agree with Mr Carr. I suspect that, like me, Premier Carr has read The Future Eaters and been moved by what he read. What was very sad was the condemnation that Mr Carr incurred right across Australia. It was a disgraceful example of the sort of intimidation and intolerance—

Senator Bob Collins interjecting—

Senator MINCHIN —Certainly. The criticism of Mr Carr was not confined to people outside the Liberal Party. I condemn everyone who attacked Mr Carr for making a very sensible contribution to what is an important debate in Australia, and a debate we have to have. It is very sad that in Australia, allegedly a free democracy, a bloke like Bob Carr cannot make those sorts of comments without being attacked from all sides.

In my view, both major parties, including my own, need to recognise the need for a population policy and need to recognise that the immigration program that the government, of whatever colour, presides over must be determined within the context of that population policy, which, as Mr Jones says, is not the case at the moment. The population policy that the government has, whether it is Labor or coalition, must recognise the real constraints on our continent's carrying capacity.

Here are the references for the speech:

Immigration, Database, Senate Hansard, Date 27-09-1995, Source Senate Parl No.
Electorate SA, Page 1608, Adjournment, System ID, chamber/hansards/1995-09-27/0175

http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;adv=;db=CHAMBER;group=;holdingType=;id=chamber%2Fhansards%2F1995-09-27%2F0175;orderBy=_fragment_number;page=;query=(Dataset%3Ahansards%20SearchCategory_Phrase%3A%22senate%22)%20Context_Phrase%3A%22adjournment%22%20Electorate_Phrase%3A%22sa%22%20Speaker_Phrase%3A%22senator%20minchin%22;querytype=;rec=4;resCount=

Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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