I am a migrant. As a child, along with my parents we came to Australia seeking the opportunity that this country offered, and like the millions of others who have made Australia their home I will never forget what that opportunity meant to my family.
That is why I find the Liberal Party’s new immigration policy deeply concerning.
There is a big difference between managing migration and making migrants the convenient explanation for every economic and social problem confronting Australians.
The Liberal Party’s new immigration policy appears crafted for political survival rather than economic or social prosperity. It will cruel our economy and tear at our social fabric. The Liberal policy is being presented by leader Angus Taylor as putting Australians first. I believe it will do precisely the opposite.
Migrants spend, they pay tax and the majority who arrive are of working age and this country simply needs them. Our country is ageing and in the next three years, the number of Australians aged over 70 is expected to pass 4 million. From 2030, the ageing of our population accelerates further, with over-65s expected to outnumber under-15s within a decade. This is an economic and social reality.
As more Australians retire, we need enough working-age people to build houses, care for older Australians, staff hospitals, teach our children, run businesses, work in agriculture, build infrastructure and pay the taxes that support government services.
If the number of people leaving the workforce exceeds the number coming into it, our expenses increase while our capacity to generate the income needed to meet those expenses declines. The Liberals’ slash to migration is a blatant act of economic self-harm motivated by political expediency with an eye to the ballot box not to the best interests of this country.
Migrants are workers, taxpayers, entrepreneurs, doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers, tradespeople and business owners, they spend and underpin our businesses and over time, they become Australians.
That argument cannot be dismissed whilst a political race to the bottom based on head count occurs.
That is an extraordinary political development for a country whose prosperity and identity have been shaped by migration for generations.
And now the Liberals with scant regard for the damage it will wreak are proposing what it describes as the biggest cut to immigration in Australian history.
All of us should be concerned by where this leads. The Liberal Party and those of the far right who respond to community anxiety simply by promising fewer migrants, knowingly and purposefully create an environment in which every grievance can be attached to migration and people like me.
Housing is too expensive, cost of living too high, hospitals under pressure, roads congested, simply blame migrants. As an argument it is economically weak and socially irresponsible, but unfortunately for some tantalisingly attractive due to its simplicity and whilst historically the province of the extreme fringe of politics the Liberal party have now willingly been seduced by it.
I will always accept that in a representative democracy the Liberal Party is entitled to argue for reform. But that is very different from suggesting that slashing the overall number of migrants is the answer to Australia’s structural economic problems. We need to fix the problems, not find someone to blame.
For a party of government to believe its survival is dependent upon chasing One Nation down this particular rabbit hole astounds me.
Politics should always be about standing for something rather than simply responding to the loudest voices in the room. What is so disappointing now is that the Liberal Party has conveniently forgotten that.
Sadly, it has lost sight of the fact that migrants strengthen rather than diminish Australian identity and that economic growth and nation building are not achieved by looking inward.
I write this not simply as a former politician. I speak as a migrant. My family came here because they believed Australia could offer a better future.
That opportunity changed my life. It allowed me to become an Australian citizen, build a career, build businesses, enter parliament and ultimately serve as premier of Tasmania.
People arrive with very little. They work. They contribute. Their children grow up Australian. They become part of our communities, our sporting clubs, our workplaces and our neighbourhoods. Like mine that is the Australian migration story.
My greatest concern though is not simply the Liberal Party’s slashing of migration numbers, rather it is the political message that accompanies it.
When mainstream parties point to migration as the explanation for housing, cost-of-living or infrastructure challenges, they risk giving legitimacy to the much darker proposition that the people who have come here from somewhere else are responsible for problems that governments have failed to solve.
That can damage social cohesion and our country.
It can make Australians with different accents or different surnames feel that they are somehow less Australian. And unfortunately, it signals a greenlight to people who are prepared to exploit fear and division to go even further.
They should instead be factual: migration is neither the cause of all our problems nor the solution to all of them. It is one of the tools that has helped build this country and one that is critical to us all as we build its future.
We need political leaders with the courage to explain why migration matters. Australia has never been made stronger by finding someone else to blame. It has been made stronger by giving people an opportunity to contribute and then allowing them to become part of us. As a migrant who was given that opportunity, I know exactly what that means.
We should not close the door on the next generation of Australians simply because some politicians have lost confidence in their ability to solve the problems that are ours to solve.
Peter Gutwein is a former premier of Tasmania.
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