… Or have we already had it?
Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans has called for a “great debate” about immigration.
Possibly because it doesn’t involve leaked emails from Malcolm Turnbull or struggling battlers on 150k losing benefits, coverage of the immigration decisions announced in the budget has been fairly sparse, with this piece by Paul Kelly something of an exception to the rule.
The long and short of it is that skilled migration and temporary working visas have been lifted to almost 300 000 a year, with more on the way. Add in international students and those on some forms of tourist visa and you have a very large boost to Australia’s workforce.
Kelly’s correct to write that Howard lifted the migration quota over his term in office, but doesn’t add that he played the politics of it through distracting attention with all sorts of “look! over there! Muslims!” scares. I’m not sure I agree with Kelly that there’s going to be a particular political risk for Labor here. I suspect that Paul Keating took the brunt of it, with his “embedding in Asia” rhetoric and his economic case for migration a long time before the perception of the need for more migration to build a skills base and competitiveness really kicked in. Opposition to the changing face of Australia washed out of the national psyche, largely, one could argue hopefully, with the receding of the Hansonite wave of protest and indignation. John Howard may have had his face turned towards the past in this regard in his last years of office.
We probably should be having a debate on the ecological consequences of increased infrastructure spending for a bigger population (among other climate change related impacts), and on the fact that while “unemployment” might be still near record lows, there are still a lot of people either underemployed or locked out of the labour market for reasons that are fairly intractable to short term policy influence, but I doubt we’ll be seeing much of either.
What we’re seeing isn’t exactly “free movement of labour across borders”, but there is no doubt that a globalising economy has – fairly gradually – led to much more labour mobility at the low end as well as at the high end. Whether we’ve seen the end of “border control” politics is another issue, though I certainly don’t think that Kevin Rudd will be running around the shop dividing us all into friends and enemies.
The fact that – for the first time in quite some time – one quarter of those resident in Australia at any given time are born overseas has changed the lived experience of our cities, at least. Not all that long ago, in the early 90s, Brisbane for instance was still a very Anglo city. That’s been changing fast, and I’m sure others would have noticed little things like the shift on city food court counters towards recent immigrants, and the fact that cab drivers aren’t all 50 something white men any more.
I’m fairly hopeful that there won’t be any sort of backlash brewing, but then who saw Hanson coming? Or Cronulla?
There are two points to be made here. First, immigration and other forms of temporary immigrant labour are perceived to be functional – and now necessary – for the needs of capitalism in a country like this one. “Baby bonuses” and fertility panics ignore the plain fact that it’s much more efficient and cost-effective to import labour. Yet the rhetoric and the reality of the skills crisis continues to ignore huge pockets of inequality, and solutions involving both immigration and temporary workers and “welfare to work” often reinforce or exacerbate those inequalities.
The second – and here I’m just speculating – is that we really may have transcended “multiculturalism” and we might need a new paradigm to understand the changing composition of our population. It might be a good thing if we thought more globally and less locally, and if governments and others stopped worrying so much about citizenship policy styles of enculturation. I suspect people in their ordinary lives are better at doing integration – understood as the everyday negotiation of differences – than state pronouncements recognise, and I think the quotidian experience of living and working and interacting with people from a very wide range of backgrounds has its own force.
Or am I being too optimistic? Is this too much of an urban-centric worldview?
Aside from the environmental questions, the economic case for increased migration perhaps isn’t as open and closed as it’s made out.
I’d like to see more evidence on the question of whether immigration increases per capita GDP.
“First, immigration and other forms of temporary immigrant labour are perceived to be functional – and now necessary – for the needs of capitalism in a country like this one. “Baby bonuses” and fertility panics ignore the plain fact that it’s much more efficient and cost-effective to import labour. Yet the rhetoric and the reality of the skills crisis continues to ignore huge pockets of inequality, and solutions involving both immigration and temporary workers and “welfare to work” often reinforce or exacerbate those inequalities.”
This is a point that I have often wondered about myself, and wondered why the lack of nuanced debate on the issue. On the one hand we have a skills crisis and on the other hand un- and underemployment, how can we, as a nation, tap into the human resources we have? Not that I have anything against immigration but there just seems to be a bit of a paradox here
There are at least two issues here.
Underemployment is largely female and among women with kids. It’s here that effective marginal tax rates, demands for instant shifts, childcare, etc. all create problems within service industries. It’s not beyond the ken of policy to fix, though complex.
The welfare to work policies are a whole other matter – in many instances, the stick approach hasn’t been working because the folks concerned face multiple barriers to labour market entry – disability and mental health, lack of training/education, literacy/numeracy problems, to name only the most obvious.
I used to believe that from the late 70’s through 2003 when I thought that Australia turned back from its xenophobic past and embraced multiculturalism. I thought that Hanson was an aberration, but how people turned away from Labor to the Coalition after the Tampa/Children Overboard incident, and how Ruddock was portrayed in the media and amongst the Liberal party faithful as a clever saviour shocked me to think otherwise. I changed my view of Australia since that point and came to believe what some were telling even during the heyday of ‘embracing Asia’ etc. in the Hawke/Keating years. That there is an undercurrent of fear of being overrun by non-white migrants that can be exploited – which Howard to his eternal shame did.
I agree this is important but we must also be careful. I remember going to a ‘Ecopolitics’ conference in the early 80’s and there were some anti-immigration groups who were latching into the ecological concerns to run a ‘respectable’ anti-immigration agenda. The fact is that having mac-mansion, the demand for low density housing and the associated demand for roads may be more of factor in environmental degradation than more migrants.
That has always been the case. I rememember when I was working for the Victorian Ethnic Affairs Commission that my boss told me that immigration and emigration can have positive effects for the country of origin (getting rid of people who can’t find work and therefore can be a burden on the state) the country of destination (cheap and ready-to work labour) and the migrant himself/herself (by escaping a disadvantaged situation).
Migrants have always been doing better at integration by themselves. I always thought that multiculturalism was basically a con. A way for various governments to be seen as recognising different cultures as valid as the mainstream anglo/celtic one, while in reality it was only the mainstream that was going to be on top. Multiculturalism was OK as long as it was limited to food and dancing of people in funny costumes, but accepting real cultural differences and practices was never on.
I was interested in reading Mark’s observation that Brisbane is becoming more ‘cosmopolitan’ and what implications of that would be. I live in inner suburban Melbourne where there has been a large proportion of NESB (Non English Speaking Background) people and that is the norm. Problems seems to occur in areas which are not varied in their cultural make up. Cronulla nd Ipswitch in the early 90’s as examples.
In regard to attitudes to new migrants – we’ll probably go back to the attitude of the pre-Howard years, where the most recent nationality to arrive cops all the xenophobia and the previous nationalities settle into being dinkum Aussies. I think its the Sudanese at the moment, who have taken the place of the Iraqis and Afghans. And probably within a year, the Sudanese will be seen as dinkum Aussies, and some other nationality was in their place.
Despite Howard and Hanson, I think the Howard years were an abberation of our normally easy going tolerance. Now that nobody in authoeity is blowing the dog whistle (I hope) the racism will recede into the background. I think the Cronulla Riots and the shock over that, that we were like that, and the Apology have, temporarily at least,gutted that part of the Australian psyche?
Or am I being too idealistic?
“I’d like to see more evidence on the question of whether immigration increases per capita GDP.”
Why?? The evidence is voluminous. Immigration does not increase income per capita. There’s a wealth of research backing that up. For some recent work, have a look at the Productivity Commission report:
http://www.pc.gov.au/study/migrationandpopulation/docs/finalreport/keypoints
The West Australian Newspaper – in quite a dog-whistle way – is giving great coverage to problems that include refugees (eg if a Sudanese is involved in a crime, etc). I don’t know why they take this approach, other than that they are quite a right-wing rag, but I wonder how much more of our media is beating the drum for racism in this country.
The LDP’s policy was the simplest and most humane at the last election; though I would say that as a former candidate.
* No quotas for immigration. Instead a flat fee paid by those wishing to become permanent residents.
* Abolition of 457 visas in favour of companies being allowed to loan immigration fee money to employees coming from overseas. They wouldn’t be able to hang deportation overhead as a threatening way to garner workplace compliance.
* Increased humanitarian intake.
* All people claiming refugee status are still assessed, though given temporary resident status. If they are found to be genuine refugees they are accepted as citizens at no cost; otherwise the fee applies.
I guess if we’re worried about the faux Libertarians & followers of Milton (who are very annoyed they didn’t get a tax cut too) types using the immigration issue to beat the drums of xenophobia again, I guess we could always pump up the “do right by your allies” volume…invite in more of the Iraqis & Afghanis who have been trained by our skilled military units…considering those wars are goin’ to the sh*t anyway. And now some of those Pacific Islanders are wading in shallow water to recover coconuts I reckon we owe it to them to provide a decent home that isn’t joining the Titanic.
And I’m sure a few nervous Israelis might dig it over here.
Must be a few skilled Chinese looking for a new port of call too, since that dreadful earthquake.
Personally, i’d like to see more ethnic restaurants & shops…& more diversity on the Coalition’s front bench…& behind…and if I could find someone to help me fix my old oven i’d welcome them to Aussie w/ open arms & give ‘em a leftover XXXX Bitter as a thankyou for their troubles. Provided Rudd & Co. do a bit of common-sense planning & show off a few of our “best & brightest” (snore) migrants, then they might be able to convince the smart citizens of this GREAT SOUTHERN LAND that bringing a few more workers & their families on board might help keep the ship afloat. I mean, aren’t most of us new arrivals?…or at least related to same?
Might be a good idea to talk to the original caretakers of the LAND too.
Then construct a few more migrant centres, buy some language programs…train a bunch of teachers to talk OTHER languages…pay them half-decently…& go for it.
THE ABC is a good starting point. And SBS…for the campaign i mean. Oh, it’s already started…silly me. And sports…& art…i luv world music. The more the merrier I reckon. Lots of free festivities & holidays help too. Places to meet & greet & get tolerant.
I’m so pleased that the journos who’ve been sleeping &/or spinning for a decade & more have finally awoken to tell us the bleeding obvious & to define the NEW DAY RISING.
Is that a wedge-tailed eagle…or vulture…circling over the Rudd cabinet? Or just a lonely QLD dancing queen doing her last hurrah?
Underemployment and a skills shortage? You’re not seriously suggesting that the government of the last 10 years hasn’t encouraged people of all sorts of backgrounds to equip themselves with valuable skills to run the country, are you?
I can has university funding?
Jacques, just out of interest, is there evidence that goes on widely or is it an inference?
Kim;
There is only anecdotal evidence which various unions have gathered. Some research has been done, I believe, on the very similar H1B visa in the USA.
In any case, the possibility that your boss can get you deported easily can’t make Australia any more attractive as a destination to immigrate to.
I work with lots and lots of 457 people. They work hard; and they never complain. It’s pretty obvious to me that they will put up with almost anything to retain their employer’s backing. The alternative is a trip home, afterall.
Would really prefer to have an immigration and environment discussion, though! The 300,000 figure is unbelievable. These policies are driven by national greed. And the link to sustainability is always elided.
Jacques, yes it makes intuitive sense and it stands to reason. I just wondered if there were any studies out there.
wbb: I don’t really buy the sustainability argument. We export most of our agricultural and mining products anyway; that will go on regardless. As previously noted at length, most of our water usage is agricultural rather than residential.
There is a real concern about our best-loved pieces of nature being loved to death, I suppose, but at the moment less Australians are visiting them than used to!
At a global level, you might argue that third-world immigrants coming to Australia and going to a first-world ecological footprint is bad, but I put it to you that those people are going to get first-world ecological footprints sooner or later anyway. What we need ot do is reduce the ecological footprint of being an Australian.
“At a global level, you might argue that third-world immigrants coming to Australia and going to a first-world ecological footprint is bad, but I put it to you that those people are going to get first-world ecological footprints sooner or later anyway. What we need ot do is reduce the ecological footprint of being an Australian.”
Good point Robert. And if we do have a climate disaster then we won’t have much option than to open the gates for awhile anyway…at least to our nearest neighbors. If we can get on top of the recycled etc. water bit…& ensure enuff houses have water tanks…& some at least are feeding into the electricity greed & independent via solar (just in case of massive failures)…but the bulk are getting electricity sustainably & base load from gas, thermal, wind, cleaner coal (if possible) & solar (I like your idea of putting solar panels on larger structures…public swimming pools, malls, residential & business buildings) then we have a chance of training Aussies to also conserve & use wisely…who in turn can train the newbies.
It’s imperitive we keep heaps of fertile land & don’t denude forests/jungles & move away from cattle & beings that use too much food in the process of becoming a meal themselves. This Country w/ the help of the Aboriginal people could serve as a great example to the rest of the world. New migrants MUST be taken thru the SUSTAINABILITY & LANGUAGE processes tho.
We’ll also need a strong airforce & navy…& coast guard just in case.
And farmers w/ nouse who know how to grow from crappy soil…& turn it fertile…& stop/prevent/reverse soil erosion & salianation. Some farmers from areas like Burma, Bangladesh, China disaster areas should be brought in for their knowledge…& for compassionate reasons.
It is cheaper to ‘import’ a workforce whose costs of reproducton have been borne elsewhere, and business just loves it. A ‘just in time’ labour market is the best of all possible worlds-no nasty electoral fallout (a workforce that can’t vote is simply the best!). An expansion of the ‘guest worker’ schemes here and elsewhere is the wages policy you have when you don’t have to bargain with anybody.
Generally, ‘guest worker’ schemes are a very bad idea-for the host society especially. There is a limited labour shortage in some areas (seasonal fruit picking, some areas of construction and mining). However, the real issue here is the effect on existing economic and social arrangements of growing dependence on a workforce that can’t vote, and whose visas may be cancelled for infractions that will be surely ‘designed’ for the purpose.
This kind of ‘purpose built’ labour supply scheme breeds a sense of entitlement in a rent seeking business class who believes that the world owes them a workforce-for free.
If we need more people, ‘up’ the immigration levels, and ensure that the workforce you need, can register their views about you via the ballot box. Otherwise, pay the market rate, and if that is too high, either invest in machinery that will increase the surplus extracted from each employee, or place your capital somewhere else where the return justifes its investment. It’s called ‘capitalism’ and it works, just so long as the powerful actually have to ‘bargain’ socially and politically, with the workforce they rely on. Otherwise, what you get is very unattractive indeed.
Just ask the Chinese working class.
Good to see some effort to examine these issues in a reasoned way. I was surprised that the big pieces in The Australian on this issue hasn’t caused more debate. Although the policy direction that Labor’s Chris Evans is flagging is mostly an extension of what’s already been happening rather than a major change in direction, he is being much more upfront and honest about it, which is both welcome and potentially risky.
Sadly, if instead of a headline saying ‘migration intake rising to 300 000 a year’ it had said ‘boatload of 200 refugees arrives’, I’m sure we’d be hearing of nothing else in our media and talkback. Which is one example of why I think Australia’s history is such that it is reasonable to assume an undercurrent of apprehension will exist for some time yet regarding large numbers of arrivals – but mostly we’ve been fortunate that our political leaders, for all their faults, have chosen not to deliberately inflame such (mis)apprehensions and antagonisms towards ‘outsiders’, but when they have (be it Howard/Hanson or Hughes) it has been very destructive.
I think Chris Evans is taking a calculated decision that it is better to be up front and have an informed debate, rather than let it just continue to build and hope no one makes too much of a fuss.
As to the issue itself, I could write a book, but others here will no doubt be relieved to note that I shan’t do so just now. Just a few key points though:
- there are some risks for Labor in this. Some of the Unions are getting more and more public in their narkiness about this, re-running the ‘migrants are taking our jobs and driving down our wages’ arguments that have been used for well over a century. Some of the environmentalists are also getting more vocal again, trying to tie migration to global warming (one of the weakest environmental arguments about local population growth, but of course its the biggest environmental issue at the moment). I’ve seen more references of late to migrants being blamed for the housing affordability crisis too. These separate things can build together to create some powerful resentments if they are allowed to simmer.
- one of the main differences in what Chris Evans is saying is acknowledging we have a labour shortage, not just a skills shortage. I agree very much Kim that much more should be done to remove structural causes of underemployment, like EMTRs, but it is not going to address all of it. The Howard govenrment was moving this way as well, but doing it in a much less overt or direct way (e.g. huge hikes in Working Holiday Visa numbers as a de facto labour market program)
- Arguing about whether or not immigration increase our per capita income is a somewhat limiting debate. I don’t think there’s much doubt it did in the past, and I also don’t think there’s much doubt that – as long as we have proper protection of basic conditions and settlement support – that this current surge will also have that affect. The above mentioned labour shortage is causing major capacity constraints in the economy, and relieving them should boost productivity and thus per capita income. But per capita gains doesn’t mean everyone benefits, which is why its a limiting debate.
- Also, just because it does now, doesn’t mean it always does as a matter of course. It depends on the surrounding economic environment (e.g. less of a good idea to have big numbers coming in during a recession, although its also less likely that big numbers will want to come at such times). The Productivity Commission report that Paul linked to purportedly show that immigration does not increase income actually said that “the overall economic effect of migration appears to be positive but small” – and that’s after acknowledging they haven’t measured some of the positive externalities.
- Whatever environmental issues there are from population growth (and they are certainly real), encouraging people to have more children is worse than increasing migrant numbers. But expecting people in other countries to stay poor because we’re too profligate is not an argument that will stand up well globally.
If we need more immigrants, well and good. But a ‘labour supply’ problem is not unproblemmatic. Just what exactly, is the nature of this supply problem? Price not right? Not enough people at any price? Not the right people at the price we are prepared to pay?
Andrew, you are being naive in the extreme if you think the anouncement had nothing to do with assuaging business concerns about increased bargaining power of domestic labour as a result of the modest changes to be made to the industrial laws. Once again, at the risk of overemphasising the point-no-one I know is opposed to immigration, no-one. But the scheme announced by Evans is not just immigration at all, is it? It is a ‘guest worker’ scheme quite as much as it is increased immigration.
How absolutely connvenient. Just at the momennt that the domestic workforce might begin to shift output shares back to wages and salaries from the historic high share enjoyed by profits and dividends, the ALP gallops to the rescue, with a scheme to end world poverty! Give me a break, and don’t take people for fools. It is a big mistake to think people aren’t watching and listening, evern if they aren’t all blogging and writing to their local MP, and I have no doubt at all that the conservatives will soon be dog whistliing again, starting with the dregs on talk back radio, as employers call for more ‘flexibiliity’ on the one hand, and then call for a ‘more cohesive society’ on the other.
How absolutelly typical of the hapless ALP. Give business everything they want, when they want it, on the terms they want, and then watch as they put their hands out to ask for more, and turn on the government the minute the political going gets tough.
wbb said:
Although if there are no 457 visas at all, these same people are stuck at home often with much worse pay and conditions or no job or welfare to support them at all. I think there is a need for stronger regulation and changing the visas – perhaps they should be time limited without a restriction to a specific employer for example.
Guest worker programs to have the big advantage in that they transfer wealth from richer to poorer countries which is not just in the form of “aid” which we’re pretty stingy with. It can give these people the opportunity to earn enough capital to start up their own businesses when they return home.
Senator Bartlett: the same PC report also argued that most of the per-capita gains in income end up in the hands of the immigrants themselves, rather than those who are already here.
Yes, we could do with a serious examination of who gains and who loses, and the magnitude of such gains or losses. You might take the view, for instance, that if the economic impact to the nation is relatively small one way or the other, maybe we should take a greater proportion of family reunions, refugees, or economic migrants from less well-off countries.
Presumably they pay tax? Is this taken into account?
Kim: if I’m remembering my brief perusal right, the modelling done by the PC (not to suggest for one minute that they’re the be-all and end-all) compared scenarios with greater or lesser immigration. Their conclusion was that the average per-capita incomes of existing residents stayed pretty much the same in either scenario. There was an overall increase in per-capita income under the higher immigration, but that was the result of the immigrants having a higher-than-average income.
I would imagine that the PC took transfer payments into account when they did their modelling, but I’m not sure.
Furthermore, this hides a whole lot of complexities of the effects on individuals. Maybe high-income existing residents do well because of lower costs for labor intensive services, and the low-income existing residents get their salaries pushed down and their rents pushed up. Maybe it works the other way round. Maybe it’s different depending on what kind of work you do, what part of the country you’re in, and so on. I don’t know.
Of course, this ignores lots of other issues, a lot of them not particularly amenable to economic analysis.
But they’re important questions, and I’d like a more substantive answer on the pros and cons of changes to our immigration program beyond the “we’re short of labour, let’s bring in more migrants” approach. So, after all that, I suppose I agree with Chris Evans!
Sure, Rob, but I’m wondering what started off the debate about increases to GDP per capita – was it some sort of justification against the line that “migrants steal our jobs and impoverish us”? That’s sorta my recollection – that it was first raised to counter that perception.
Amused said: “Andrew, you are being naive in the extreme if you think the anouncement had nothing to do with assuaging business concerns about increased bargaining power of domestic labour as a result of the modest changes to be made to the industrial laws. Once again, at the risk of overemphasising the point-no-one I know is opposed to immigration, no-one. But the scheme announced by Evans is not just immigration at all, is it? It is a ‘guest worker’ scheme quite as much as it is increased immigration.”
Evans hasn’t actually announced anything yet other than a further increase in the immigration intake for next year. He has flagged what he is looking to do in the longer term, including (hopefully) a trial of a Pacific Island guest worker scheme, probably modelled on what has been done in Canada or New Zealand. This is a significant move, but it is (a) a trial, and (b) will involve small numbers of temporary workers, which will be a very small proportion of the total number of people coming here each year with work rights.
Our migration program has changed enormously in the last 5 years or so not just in the sie of the annual permanent intake, but even more so in temporary migrants with work rights (many of who then transfer to premanent residency down the track). Some of this has been deliberate choice on the part of the government, but a lot of it has reflected the changing nature of labour mobility, where people are much more likely to move from country to country than in the past. In lots of respects, migration is now a competitive market, rather than the more static one directional nation building it was in the past. Guest workers is a tiny part of this phenomenon, and I would argue much more coherent a labour market program than Working Holiday Visas.
The nature of the labour supply problem is such that in some regions and industries workers cannot be found at current rates – in many cases well above minimum wage and industry wage rates. It is not confined to Australia. I am well aware that there is a mantra being pushed by some in business and regularly repeated in The Australian that try to assert that the mild changes to Workchoices risk leading to a wages breakout – as far as I’m concered this is utter garbage which they are happy will become received ‘truth’ if they repeat it often enough, not least because in most respects there will still be more flexibility for employers under Labor’s new laws than under Howard’s pre-2004 laws and there was little whinging about it then. But that little ideological point scoring stoush doesn’t negate the fact that there is a labour and skills shortage. (not that this is the only reason to have a guest worker program or to increase our overall migration intake for that matter)
It is misleading to suggest that “no one is opposed to migration.” Plenty of people are strongly opposed to the current numbers of migrant intake, or the current composition of the migration intake. I have read repeated concerns by some trade unions in recent times. Some environmentalists are again proposing the notion of zero net migration – a ludicrous idea in my view, but concerns about climate change seem to have provided a new cloak within which to run this line. They of course have a right to put their view, but I’m not going to let the reverse political correctness that grew up in the Howard era prevent from pointing out factual, logical or ethical flaws in their arguments. That’s why Chris Evans’ call for a strong and open debate is refreshing, albeit a bit risky.
Unless people are arguing for open borders, which no one is at present (AFAIK), the debate is about how many, what for and how best to assist people when they first arrive – as well as having the laws which govern all this being fair, efficient, user-friendly and non-discriminatory.
Whilst I agree in sprit with the principle of people being able to go and work wherever I have to bring up certain unpleasant non-economic realities associated with imported workforces.
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Anecdote: I saw this wirey looking guy, shirtless, cheap tattoos, dirty Nikes, speaking a certain gutteral ‘Strine; threatening an (Indian) chap cleaning Flinders St station. The threats were along the line of: you’re stealing our jobs.
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Now this is and isn’t true. The Indian chap does add to the competition and considering that he’s well presented, not on drugs, disinclined to solve problems by violence (even when threatened), speaks English better than this particular native anyway – the wirey guy was right. In the job market he loses. His fault in my opinion (shithouse socio-economic environs notwithstanding) but anyway.
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Naturally increased immigration does boost the economy creating more jobs.
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However if you have an emergent large ‘underclass’ of people who’re virtually unemployable you will inevitably get racially based tension which can spill over if the economic thumbscrews are on too tight. There’s also the question of what happens when the economy goes south. I hate to bring this up cause it’s usually the province of covertly-bigoted uberConservatives but anyway…
In my view, most of the economic studies of this stuff undervalue or ignore some of the wider social positives, as well as some of the potential long-term economic positives, that can come from family reunion and refugees (because it can’t be measured directly in dollar terms), but I don’t think there’s much doubt that there is a better outcome in straight up short-term economic impact with migrants who are work-ready – one of the reasons our migration system discriminates on the basis of age.
That’s why it’s not just the “we’re short of labour, let’s bring in more migrants” argument – that would basically be open door, which I don’t think we’re ready for on a regional scale (although it is what we have had with New Zealanders for some time). Most of the European Union is now broadly free internal movement with work rights (although not welfare entitlements), which is producing some interesting results worthy of more study. There may be other reasons for bringing in migrants (such as family reunion or humanitarian – and many of those people can work (indeed quite a few are highly skilled) or be brought up to work capacity, but if they’re not work reading or even work seeking, you don’t bring them in to fill labour shortages.)
Its also one of the reasons why a lot of the increase has been in temporary skilled and semi-skilled workers (and the guest worker model is now being considered) – on the basis that shortages can be filled short-term while the local workforce is brought up to speed. But it does seem there’s only so much spare capacity to be gained through better training and work-readiness stuff (which we should keep at of course, as well removing disincentives like high EMTRs), so I think high intakes will be with us for a while yet unless we hit a recession.
But hopefully the more debate there is about the reasons for this, the more chance there is of retaining high levels of public support for the migration program. ALong with better settlement support for new arrivals, maintaining support for multicultural programs to ensure better integration, etc.
Evans seems to assume that there has been no debate on this issue, that such a debate can only be instigated by a minister such as himself, and that at some point a debate will be closed and decisions made on the basis of that. Wrong on all counts, which augurs poorly for policy in this area.
Immigration is an excuse to talk about class. If that guy at Flinders Street Station had been expressing those sentiments at a hedge fund analyst – assuming said persons are instantly identifiable – it would cut across the whole classless Aussie society paradigm. Too hard! Pauline Hanson gave those of us who disagree with her politics a kind of permission to label her as a kind of Bogan Queen, a label Jackie Kelly escaped until her leaflets helped cost John Howard his job. When you hear a hotted-up car hooning along, do you see a noisy Leb or a workin’ class Aussie rejoicing? When you talk immigration, are you talking about thousands of unskilled oafs being idle and making mischief and not respecting Our Way Of Life – or are you talking about $300k p.a. software developers jetting in and depressing incentives for Australians to work toward such jobs, who keep to themselves and don’t engage in Our Way Of Life?
It also brings up the question of what work has to be done in Australia, and how much we’re prepared to pay for it. It’s unbelieveably silly to have people from third-world countries emigrate here to do certain work (e.g. piecework on textiles/clothing/footwear) which pays too little to sustain a person in Australia but which might be perfectly adequate if that job were exported. On the other hand, breaking down rackets where foreigners are imported in near-slavery to do certain work (e.g. unskilled building or sex work) removes elements that depress the price of labour in certain areas for those jobs that can’t be exported. The labour movement shows no evidence of having touched those issues, to their collective discredit.
That, right there, is your alternative paradigm to multiculturalism. A bugger to codify and evaluate grant applications against, let alone choreograph for one of said grants, but one which might be sustained by buying something from a street stall on Eid-ul-Fitr or whatever.
Kim: why I raised “GDP per capita” is that the argument “migrants increase economic growth” is even more simplistic, and is often used to justify the immigration program.
Yes, I agree, Rob, which is why I don’t think they’re particularly helpful in deciding on the size and composition of our migration intake.
Andrew Bartlett is well known to me and I am well know to him. I believe that he has in general paid a very positive role in Australian politics and have said so on many past occasions, for example Australian Democrat Leader Reaffirms Opposition to Telstra Sale. I also note that in the past Andrew Bartlett has been targeted by the Murdoch press just as Doug Cameron is being targeted now.
I phoned Andrew Bartlett’s office to point out to him that although I have an Honours Degree, my paid work for the past four years has been in unskilled occupations. I did not talk to Andrew, but left a message with his personal assistant and am awaiting a response. I think, before Andrew Bartlett continues add to has voice to the clamour for further skilled immigration, he should contemplate what happened as a result of the beat-up about a supposed computer skills shortage in 1999.
I recommend that people view this Youtube broadcast from the US programmers guild of a seminar about how US immigration attorneys are being instructed on how to disqualify US job applicants so that jobs could be given to people from overseas.
There is an enormous amount of anecdotal evidence that Australian IT employers have a similar attitude to Australian programmers.
In most cases you really don’t need to be in Australia to compete against Australian programmers though. Its one industry where keeping the competitors out of the country is going to make very little difference. The jobs will just move overseas to where the people are.
A few comments on the recent immigration surge. It would be nice if such a debate was able to be had without the cheap ‘racist’ taunts, oft used in place of reasoned argument.
WE do not need immigration to stop our population from falling. Births exceeded deaths last year by about 139,000.
It all seems to be predicated on the necessity of continuous growth. The rationale seems to be that we must keep growing until forced to stop, presumably by collapsing ecosystems. Why can’t we stop growing before we reach such a dire state? Be very clear about this; there is no such thing as sustainable growth in a finite system.
The poorer the lifestyle that an immigrant is leaving behind, the greater the increase in environmental impact caused by adopting an Australian living standard. The suggestion that a Sudanese, say, would eventually have a first world living standard is rather bizarre given the massive environmental problems besetting the third world particularly and the peaking of so many natural resources that would otherwise have provided the basis for such a double order of magnitude increase in living standard.
What right have we to poach trained workers from countries already critically short of such skills?
To admit some more migrants from impoverished countries because it will improve their lot does nothing for those left behind (3 to 4 billion to our north and west), so who decides just who the ‘lucky few’ are? I sometimes feel that advocates of such programmes do so because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy to see a few happy immigrant faces.
If we are short of skills in some areas, then why don’t we do something about the insidious ageism which pervades Australian industry? Take a look at the army of underemployed or prematurely retired folks who underpin our volunteer organisations, many of whom would gladly move back into the workforce.
By any measure, Australia is currently using natural resources unsustainably. It is about time that we recognised that the economy must accommodate the environment, not vice versa. For this reason, big business and other vested interests (driven by greed and self-interest) should be barred from the debate.
We have an enormous challenge ahead of us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the levels advocated by Stern, Garnaut and Gore, so why double the burden by adding to the emitters?
Australian is almost certainly becoming hotter and drier, as a long term trend, our main agricultural region is rapidly becoming less productive, our subsurface water resources are being extracted unsustainably, many of our inland rivers are in a desperate state, dryland salinity has ripped huge areas of farm land from productive use, our marine fisheries are under threat, we have an abominable record in species extinction, our record of land clearing is amongst the worst in the world and exacerbates loss of top soil by wind and water erosion, and our cities are progressively covering much of the most productive farmland in the country. Since many of the world’s small countries have the highest living standards, and there is a high positive correlation between high birth rates, high civil unrest and low standards of living, can someone explain the reason for this insane urge for continuous growth. Now add in the economic tsumani that will ravage the planet as global oil production starts on its increasingly rapid descent, being aware that our broad acre farming and fabulous mining boom will turn to dust in a petroleum-depleted world, and then tell me why growth is better than a sustainable steady state existence.
It would also be nice if the reverse political correctness which the Hanson/Howard era ushered in was put to an end. It is amazing how often this sort of plaintive cry about alleged racist taunts is put up even when no one has made any such ‘taunts’ at all. And why is it always ‘cheap’ to label something as racist? Racism is a serious and destructive problem and has been very detrimental to many migrants and to an informed debate about migration over many decades. It derails reasoned argument when a very relevant factor is prevented from being uttered in the debate.
Not that anyone is talking about making Sudanese a high proportion of our migration program anyway, but it’s strange how some environmentalists talk about ‘thinking globally, acting globally’, except when it comes to migration, when it suddently becomes ‘us versus them’. This comment also simultaneously suggests it creates an increased environmental impact bringing a Sudanese person here, while also saying there are massive environmental problems there which will only get worse if people there get a better living standard.
People being better off and living longer can have an environmental impact, but rich countries arguing that this means poor countries should stay poor for the sake of the planet isn’t going to go down very well with them. We have to reduce our individual environmental footprint and look for ways to make global population growth continue to slow (and ideally to stop all together). It is not a coincidence that the countries and regions that have the highest birth rates are also amongst the poorest, and amongst those with the lowest per capita greenhouse emissions. But being poor and desperate – let alone inefficient technologies and economies – also play a key role in the above mentioned ‘massive environmental problems’.
This is not to suggest that it would reduce all environmental problems by bringing more people from poor countries to wealthy countries (although for those concerned about ‘continuous growth’, in general the more people move out of absolute poverty the more it would help reduce global population growth).
Of course there are environmental impacts from having more people in Australia, but we do need to remember than when it comes to the environment – especially greenhouse emissions, we’re all in this together.
Andrew, if we didn’t poach the most skilled people from poorer countries, their ascent from poverty would be faster. We don’t poach the most skilled from poorer countries for those countries benefit. We do it for a very explicitly defined reason. Australia’s national interest. And it’s wrong.
Enhancing skilled immigration is good for Australia. But bad for the world.
Let’s concentrate on humanitarian visas and family visas. Let’s learn to live within our means when it comes to skills.
An immigration news blackout in the Courier Mail?
I have looked and looked but I have not been able to find one story in the Courier Mail concerning immigration since last Friday 16 May, when an opinion price in favour of the Pacific Island Guest workers program by Steve Lewis was printed. I wrote a letter in response to that but it was not printed, nor was any other letter printed. The newsletter sub-editor on Sunday insisted that no-one else had sent in any letters concerning the Guest worker issue. Ny own letter can be found here. I can;t even find where Evans’ announcement of raising the immigration program to 300,000 was reported. Have I missed something? Can any other Brisbane resident tell me where they have seen any news about immigration reported in the Courier Mail.
This is in stark contrast to that other Murdoch-owned newspaper The Australian which has been full of reporting about immigration all week and biased reporting at that.
Daggett’s last comment is an example of why I think Andrew E’s comment @ 28 isn’t really accurate. I have long been surprised at how little real debate (or even awareness) there is about immigration issues as a whole, given how contentious it can be and how pivotal it is to our economy and our future as a nation.
I’m not suggesting something has to be on the front pages of the newspaper every day for there to be a debate – headline media coverage can be a killer of informed debate. But it amazing how even in political circles how little real attention the broad issue gets. We’ve had massive skirmishes over a tiny number of asylum seekers, as though the integrity of our nation’s soul was at stake, yet the size shape and complexity of our immigration intake changed dramatically with barely a blink, while the laws and administration in the area get ever more inefficient and often unjust.
That’s why we need more of a debate, or at least more of the facts being put out there so people who are interested can have an informed debate. The many who don’t want to know can continue to leave things to those who do.
[I've fixed a few typos, Andrew. Hopes it's OK. - Admin]
I have cross-posted this to my own blog with the title The fraudulent case for immigration and population growth. (I am not sure if it will all be rendered properly here, so please go there if it seems not to make sense here.).
Here’s some articles which show how the increase in population of recent years has measurably degraded the quality of life of most Australians (and also residents of some overseas countries) in recent years:
In regard to the supposed economic benefits of immigration, a House of Lords Committee recently demolished the economic case for immigration (see House of lords tells UK government to limit immigration). The British Optimum Population Trust, whilst welcoming the stance by the House of Lords committee, pointed out that the report understated the environmental damage caused by immigration-driven population growth (See House of Lords’ immigration report ‘forgets environment’).
In Australia in January 2006 the Productivity Commission found very little economic benefit from immigration. In fact, it actually showed that that GDP would rise slightly whilst average hours worked would rise proportionally even more. So, in most peoples’ understanding, even defined in extremely narrow economic terms, we would be worse off rather than marginally better off as a result of immigration. And then, let’s not forget that GDP is an utterly stupid way to measure our prosperity in the first place. As anyone, more economically literate than the Productivity Commission should know, and as John Coulter, National President of Sustainable Population Australiareminded us in a media release of 19 January 2006:
Incidentally, this Productivity Commission Report is the straw that the Australian deceptively seized upon in order to dismiss objections to the increase in immigration in its editorial More workers are a positive force of 19 May:
Does anyone here still seriously maintain that having millions more people here to help us dig up and export more of our non-renewable mineral resources in order to help China further pollute its own environment and melt the polar ice caps, will help make this country a better place to live, even in the short term?
In 1942 with a population of only 7 million, Australia was one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth as Andrew Ross showed in Armed and Ready – The Industrial Development and Defence of Australia 1900-1945, 1995, Turton and Armstrong (see The myth of the Howard Government’s defence competence). Increasing our population has directly correlated with this country losing its technological edge over other countries So, let’s, for once and for all bury the lie that population growth is necessary for economic prosperity.
Because we have surpassed what is this country’s optimum population size, increasing population actually results in dis-economies of scale rather than the economies of scale that pro-growth economists promised us. As the population density becomes greater it actually costs more per person to build all the necessary roads, footpaths, traffic lights, noise barriers, electricity substations, power lines, water pipes, hospitals, schools, etc., etc. That is one reason why our water rates, counil rates and electricity charges are exceeding the reason inflation. Has anyone contemplated that this may be one reason why it is so difficult for governments to fund road building these days without resort to tolls?
What population growth does―and what common sense and intuition should have long ago warned us in spite of the claptrap peddled by economists in the pay of land speculators and prpertydevelopers―is it decreases the amount of natural resources available to each of us. Consequently, the demands that each of us make on this largely arid and infertile land is increased. That is the principle driver of soil salinity, land erosion, and the threatened loss of the Murray Darling river system. To an increase the demands upon this continent that would be caused by adding more human inhabitants, before the existing problems are solved, is an act of environmental recklessness.
My last comment seemed to vanish after it had been posted. I have e-mailed the administrator to see if he/she has any idea what happened. In the meantime, in case anyone is interested, I cross-posted it to my own blog.
But we’re not kidnapping them and forcing them to come to Australia against their will. There are many skilled people who want to come to this country and we allow some of them to do so.
To tell those from poorer countries that they are not allowed to because they should instead stay in their own countries seems rather unreasonable and isolationist. Would you try to force people who come from disadvantaged communities in Australia to live there for the rest of their lives?
Peter Salonius, who works as a soil microbiologist for the Canadian Forestry Service in response to Andrew’s previous comment:
wrote
A useful articles written by Peter is A 10,000-year misunderstanding about how even agricultural society, let alone industrialised society, may be unsustainable in the longer term. The cycles of rises and subsequent collapses of ancient agricultural civilisations would tend to lend weight to that view. I personally hope he is wrong about both industrialised society and agricultural society, but I certainly won’t be betting on it.
One thing that is not sustainable is the mad growth economy of Queensland, where we are literally increasing population in order to be able to our construction industry going! If anyone doesn’t believe, me read the words of Premier Premier Anna Bligh herself:
So, to follow Bligh’s logic, we will need to import more people tomorrow in order provide work for those we imported today to provide work for those we imported yesterday. And then further along, we will be importing yet more people to keep employed those we have imported today …
How stupid are we going to look to our children and grandchildren when all those buildings which are now disfiguring South East Queensland’s skyline, and which are apparently built to last only thirty or forty years, start falling down?
But that is exactly what we do. Except in the exceptional case where we think the individual will increase the economic wealth of Australia.
The skilled migration program only allows the most skilled people to enter Australia. This is to the natural detriment of the country those people leave.
Australia’s skilled migration policy is explicit about this. We do not allow migration for the benefit of the immigrant. We seek it where it is in our direct benefit.
Do not confuse the very distinct categories of migration. Skilled, family reunion and humanitarian. Different beasts entirely, Chris.
“In 1942 with a population of only 7 million, Australia was one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth”
And so we went to WAR. Obviously not one of the smartest.
Nasking,
Whilst I wouldn’t go as far as to argue that Australia’s role in world politics has been 100% virtuous, either before or since the Second World War, Australia’s war against against Japan from 1941 until 1945 was clearly a defensive war and one this country did not seek. Australia’s leaders were absolutely justified in having prepared this country to defeat that threatened invasion since at least the start of twentieth century.
My purpose in raising this is to point out that we did not need a high population to become technologically advanced and able to defend this continent. It is a myth, BTW, that only the Battle of the Coral Sea saved Australia from certain invasion. This country’s proud record of industrial and scientific development, that made possible the defeat of the Japanese threat, has been largely buried. I believe that this has been done for political and ideological reasons, to suit the selfish purposes of Australia’s growth lobby in order to perpetuate the lie that only through continuous population growth can Australia become an advanced nation.
Oh, dear. No. I am not going to get into a debate about the non-invasion by the Japanese of Australia during WW2. It would be totally OT.
Paul Burns,
I suggest you read my posts again, and explain why the issues I raised are not relevant to the question of Australia’s population and, hence, immigration. Please try to understand the points being made before taking further cheap shots.
daggett @ 46
It wasn’t meant as a cheap shot, and no offence was meant. I’m sorry you read it that way. Rather it was an OT reference to the historical debate as to whether there was ever any danger of a Japaqnese invasion of Oz during WW2. I did get what you said in 44.
Paul Burns,
My apologies for being rude when it should have been obvious that there were some grounds for doubt.
In fact, the discussion had been somewhat side-tracked as you correctly pointed out.
To OT for a few words more, I had accepted the myth about Australia’s role in WW2 until about a year ago when I read “National Insecurity” by Mathews et al and, after that, the abovementioned “Armed and Ready”. I have written about it here, here and here.
SANDY: Is anyone else coming to stay?
JUDITH: Anyone else! You don’t know — you just don’t know. Give me my hat.
SANDY: You said it would be quite quiet, with nobody at all.
JUDITH: I was wrong. It’s going to be very noisy, with herds of angry people stamping about.
– Noel Coward, “Hay Fever” (act one)
I am sure Australian companies are using the same practices as US companies to hire foreign workers instead of qualified experienced locals.
On a visit to the US in 1996 I met some very articulate, educated mature, white panhandlers at San Francisco’s Pier 31. I noticed the workers in Silicon Valley were of Chinese descent and believe Microsoft favours Indians.
It would be nice if the universities published the emeployment rates of IT graduates. The federal government lumps IT graduates in with science, engineering or business graduates. In some years universities have had a very low number of graduates hired eg about 20% of IT graduates get to work in IT.
In 2004 Telstra hired 5 IT graduates from the whole of Australia, a decade earlier they would have hired 100 graduates per year.
In 2005 or 2006 Telstra was looking for 135 Cobol programmers to maintain CABA the programs that send out your telephone bill. The advertisement was placed with 5 agencies who scoured their lists of mature, experienced unemployed looking for part-time or full time work. The candidate had to state their hourly rate which most candidates did under advisement of the employment agent. The agencies presented about 1000 candidates, not one Australian was hired.
daggett @ 48.
IMHO you might like to read my book dealing with Oz home defence during WW2, which touches on this:
Paul Burns, The Brisbane Line Controversy:Political Opportunism versus National Security, 1942-45, St. Leonards, 1998.
Its out of print but you should be able to pick it up in a local or uni library, directly or by inter-library loan.
Billie @ 50.
What would be the rationale behind an Australian (or US) company to favour foreign candidates when there are domestic candidates who perfectly fit their published criteria?
Apologies for the grammatical error above. I should have written “To go OT for a few words more …” instead of “To OT for a few words more …”
Steve at the pub @ 52,
Don’t you think that is a rather tall order to ask Billie to explain the motivations of Australia’s IT employers?
Perhaps you should lay your own cards on the table and explain why you think, for example, as Billie pointed out, not a single Australian COBOL programmer was hired by Telstra to meet its claimed need for 135 COBOL programmers in 2005-2006.
Those of us who have missed out have, in the past, perhaps semi-consciously accept the implied justification, that is, that companies such as Telstra are perfectly within their rights not only to outsource to countries like India whatever IT work they chose to (which, last time I checked wast the Australian Democrats stance), but also to only hire, for whatever local IT workforce that remained, only the very best and most ‘competitive’ from a potential pool of applicants across the globe. In such a paradigm it would have been more than probable that anyone deemed to not be within the very elite of Australia’s pool of IT workers, that is, those who had resumes bulging with credentials and years of professional accomplishments, and who had never made any serious mistakes or suffered setbacks in their careers would miss out and end up working for the rest of their lives in unskilled occupations.
However, given the evidence supplied by Billie, it seems that the treatment of Australia’s IT workers has gone well beyond even that. I would suggest that this is evidence of an ideological and cultural disdain for Australia’s own workforce by the current elites who are now guiding this country’s destiny, the sort documented in “National Insecurity” (2007) by Mathews, Thurbon and Weiss, where Australian defence suppliers repeatedly faced shifting goalposts obviously designed so that the contracts would be awarded, instead, to US companies.
There is an enormous amount of anecdotal of the shabby treatment of native Australian workers on Online Opinion, which Billie (who I am assuming is the same person who has the OLO nom-de-plume of ‘Billie’) has contributed to. This cultural disdain was apparently shared by former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. To quote Billie:
And many are excellent at what they do. There are also a lot of postgraduate students from places like India and China at US universities. With large populations of people its not surprising that they would produce many talented people.
Stopping immigration will not stop the transfer of work. In most cases the jobs will simply move overseas. I can see why people would want protectionist policies but it won’t work.
Daggett @53.
No it is NOT a tall order to ask Billie for some expansion on his point.
It is however, very much out of order for you to ask ME to explain Billie’s point.
It is even more of a leap for you to assume I have ANY cards on any table re an employment tender for 15 Telstra jobs which was Three or Four years ago.
Chris @ 54 wrote:
Rubbish! If this Government had the political will, it could both reduce immigration and prevent the off-shoring of Australian jobs to slave-wage economies. Of course, the corporations and the finance sector will shriek in indignation, but around the world, there do exist leaders who have the backbone to stand up to the international and domestic elites who are leading us to the abyss. One such leader is President Evo Morales of Bolivia who is nationalising Bolivia’s Oil and gas, previously stolen from the Bolivian people with the help of shock doctor Jeffrey Sachs. (See Evo Morales re-nationalises energy and telecommunications companies, denounces biofuel-driven starvation)
Steve @ the pub, I assume that Australian management wants to lower costs. In India a salary of $13,000 allows you to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle, here a programmer earns about $70,000. Then of course there is that Ed Yourdon classic “the Decline and Fall of the American Programmer” published in 1995 which said that American programmers would lose their jobs because they were overpaid and produced poor quality code. Yes any one around in the 1990s will concede that salaries were very high and organisations paid lots of money for systems that weren’t delivered.
ANZ Bank have transferred their programming from Toorak Rd to their subsidiary Grindlays in Bangalore since 1991.
Coles Myer has been trying to migrate its IT functions to India since 1999.
I would not be surprised if the Australian Tax Office programmers weren’t in India, I bet there is nothing in the service level agreement stopping EDS from sending the work to India.
Salaries do not appear to have moved since those heady days of the 1990s. In fact Israeli programmers at Yellowpages still work 60+ per week for $60,000 and Indian project managers working for Telstra still earn $120,000.
Re the panhandlers on pier 31 in San Francisco, as they were cracking IT in-jokes I think they were the 1960s american programmers and IT personnel who had programmed the NASA computers and written the first operating systems who had been made redundant by corporations hiring chinese and indian programmers.
Why don’t Australian corporations feel compelled to hire Australian workers when they can import the product from overseas? Why buy Australian software code? why buy Australian built railway carriages? Australian built trams? Australian built cars? Why don’t employers feel obliged to offer full time work? train Australian apprentices?
The sad reality is that the Australian government carefully nurtured the Australian IT industry for 40+ years first with its Programmer in Training courses, then hiring computer science graduates. Heads of government departments used to pride themselves on how many computing graduates they hired each year. Then outsourcing became the fashion, which quickly became offshoring and the race to the bottom was on.
Slave-wage? Just because their wages may be much less than those in Australia does not make them slave-wage – often working for IT companies in those outsourced positions are very sought after positions and people live very well on them given the cost of living is much lower. And wages for IT people are going up quite fast in those countries as their quality of life improves.
There are some jobs that can be protected in Australia, but many of the companies will simply move operations and research to other countries if you make it too expensive for them. And remember Australia also benefits greatly from IT work outsourced from Europe/US. How hypocritical would we look if we started imposing trade barriers?
Chris, I think you have not been paying sufficient attention to the debate. As just one example, Billie already pointed out that in countries like India, people could live comparatively well on much less money than in Australia. Whilst in these circumstances, IT workers wages may be regarded as considerably better than slave wages, the same is not true for those at the bottom of the heap.
Steve at the Pub @ 53,
My apologies if I assumed wrongly.
However, I seem to recollect to have your own predetermined positions on rights of employers and what you asked Billie looked to me like a leading question. After all, what other possible answer were you expecting?
As I believe I recall from other forums that you have effectively argued that employers are always right, it looked to me that you were implying that if employers chose foreign IT workers over large numbers of IT workers who had previously been gainfully employed in the industry or, who, as graduates, could previously expected to have been gainfully employed, them it must have been a rational and morally justified in terms of their own business interests. In effect, this argument leads to a position that it is right for large numbers of people with skills in IT who have been out of work and forced to work in unskilled occupations for a few years, due to previous engineered gluts of supplies in IT professionals, should be left where they are, whilst the claimed IT vacancies are filled by new waves of applicants from overseas.
If I am wrong please correct me.
Being a little more general than just the plight of IT workers we can see that skilled migration is being used to import workers or products when there are Australians who are underemployed, unemployed or performing unskilled jobs while we are importing skilled workers with their skill level. I concentrate on IT professionals but the problem faces people in most areas.
In the case of seasonal agricultural work the Centrelink benefits need to be reviewed so they provide income balancing in the off season rather than punish people who move from seasonal work to unemployment benefits.
We need to have realistic counts of unemployment. The current unemployment rate of 4% is sheer fantasy, if you count all those in paid employment for less than 15 hours a week or on Centrelink employment type benefits the unemploymnet rate is probably 20%
dagget said:
And one of the best ways to help them raise their general wages is to not stop them from performing jobs like IT work which they are capable of doing. The wages that the IT workers get flow onto the rest of their economy. Eventually they’ll catch up and you can already see costs of IT workers rising in places like China and India.
Regarding immigration from places like that – well once they’re here they have the same cost of living as people born here.
Chris ( a different one) seems to think that if we restrict immigration of skilled workers the employers will move to cheaper economies. The worst offenders for offshoring skilled work to India and China are state and federal government departments. I imagine the electors should hold government departments accountable for their employment practices as well as their spending.
The Victorian Department of Human Services puts all their functions out to tender every 5 years so every secretary, programmer, clerk has to reapply for their job each time. Its a most inhumane way of operating.
You wonder if Victoria isn’t stuck in a Dickensian time warp.
Well I can see there being merit in retaining enough expertise in-house to be able to at least intelligently send out tenders and evaluate reponses for work to do – something which hasn’t been done in many departments from what I’ve heard. Also where it makes sense to do it in house and to do so (there are often valid reasons for this).
But I don’t think a blanket decision of no outsourcing or employment of skilled foreigners (whether temporary or immigration) is a good decision either. Yes we have very smart people in this country, but it doesn’t mean we have all of them in the world and we can’t learn a lot from working with people outside our country and/or save a bit of money. I wouldn’t think it a good idea for example that the govt should always have to buy computers made in australia if it means paying a lot more for them.
Yes, that seems an especially dumb thing to do unless you’re paying a premium. You’ll have all the good people move to places that offer permanent positions.
Chris – if there are no restrictions on importing skilled labour, unscrupulous or amoral employers will hire foreigners rather than train up locals. The western australian mining companies are as keen to hire skilled workers rather than take on apprentices. The current skilled migration program is making Australians poor white trash and the immigrants get the better paid jobs while young Australian graduates live in poverty working a number of part time jobs until they have enough experience to get a full time job.
Read Naomi Klein the Shock Doctrine to see the same thing is happening in the US where federal departments have so many contractors that contractors write the tenders and supervise contractors. That’s the way telstra’s head office works also.
But we don’t have the situation of no restrictions on immigration. We don’t have open borders. I agree that letting too many new people in at once can have significant problems, but I don’t think we’re at that point.
Incidentally IT is one of those industries where its possible to train yourself at quite low cost. And people in the industry at the moment should be making sure they are keeping up their training and not expecting their employer to always provide it – technology is moving very fast! Getting experience can be an issue, though at least there are many opportunities to be able to participate as volunteers in very large scale projects – I know of many people who have gained employment this way.
Well given that in the past I’ve been doing some of that outsourced work for US departments whilst living in Australia it would be a bit hypocritical for me to start criticising local companies and governments from doing the same thing wouldn’t it?
As my old sociology tutor said “when a few people can’t remain married then the fault is probably with the individuals but when 50% marriages end in divorce then there is probably an underlying social failure”
So when 80% IT graduates can’t get a professional job in IT this indicates a system failure, perhaps the universities don’t provide relevant training, there are no longer the number of places for new graduates that there used to be, large employers no longer see it as their social responsibility to hire Asutralians, to provide long term employment opportunities. Since when is $75000 for a degree affordable?
Just because american companies and government departments do something doesn’t make it moral, equitable or socially desirable.
Do you have a reference for those numbers? Or any breakdowns on what disciplines have the most problems? I’ve been to career fairs in the last couple of years and there have been a real lack of IT graduates showing up (lots of business/economic grads though!).
Dagget @ 60.
My question @52 to Billie was as written. The answer from Billie @57 doesn’t enlighten me much. I am unsure if Billie is referring to;
a) Selecting the lowest bidder (just happens to be located in India) for a contract, or
b) Blatant (racial?) job discrimination against Australian citizens.
Billie’s writing style confuses me, seemingly a wandering attempt at expressing dissatisfaction over a whole basked of gripes about employment and the IT industry. His issues are not explained for the complete layman to understand, so I have just nodded “uh-huh” & moved on to other threads.
Re your recollection that on other forums I have argued that the employer “is always right”. Perhaps I have, perhaps I have not. This has no bearing on a straighforward question to Billie.
My knowledge of the IT industry is limited. Hence the question to Billie.
DEST do not keep figures for IT graduate employment outcomes. IT graduates are included in Engineering, Science or Business figures. The very sloppy and inaccurate record keeping by government departmenst allow gross market distortions to go undetected.
Amused writes,
“And farmers w/ nouse who know how to grow from crappy soil…& turn it fertile…& stop/prevent/reverse soil erosion & salianation. Some farmers from areas like Burma, Bangladesh, China disaster areas should be brought in for their knowledge…& for compassionate reasons.”
This is a big problem; the ignorant idea that all soils and places are the same and that a person acculturated to a rich wet delta is going to know how to farm desert and range, or that Burma is like China is like Australia.
Always the same lack of ecological eye or knowledge. That is the problem in trying to run a country using a constant stream of neophytes. They just repeat the same mistakes. The devastation in this country is constantly being compounded and so is the ignorance. As we face oil depletion, soil depletion, water scarcity, climate change and coal-gas pollution etc, how stupid will this perceived ‘need’ for cheap labour to maintain capitalism seem?
Billie said:
So where do you get the 80% unable to work figure from? Kinda curious as I work in the IT industry but know of very few people who have had trouble getting work long term (getting fun, interesting work is a different matter).
Anyone who wants to seriously argue that we should not allow workers from overseas or any jobs for Australian companies to be performed by people offshore must also advocate that Australians should not be able to go overseas to work, or to tender for work for companies based offshore.
We might all want to live the same as we did when there was a quarter the number of people in the country (or the planet) but it is very inefficient if we try to. Fortunately there are ways to be more efficient, and that’s what we should focus on, rather than pretending we can seal ourselves off from the world (or even suggesting this would be a good thing).
Comments like those relayed at 41 are really quite extraordinary – if we relieve extreme overcrowding in poor countries, that just reduces the pressure and enables them to breed more! And if we bring people here, they still breed in the same number for at least ONE generation (gasp!) – of course they’d breed at that number for endless generations in their country of origin but presumably that doesn’t matter as much because they stay poor, consume less and die young. All OK apparently, as it allows us to stay rich, consume more and live longer. Not that anyone is arguing we should bring migrants here solely to reduce environmental pressure elsewhere anyway (except for climate change refugees, although I guess it would be better for the environment if they did their bit for the planet and drowned – they’d only add to environmental pressures if they came here, and they might even take ‘our’ jobs and drive down wages too)
The ‘any immigration is bad’ line is ludicrous on an economic, social, environmental, human rights, artistic and intellectual level. The debate needs to be about how many people, under what conditions, for what reasons and how best to plan for it socially and environmentally.
To suggest we simply cannot manage extra people is to just give up on reality. Of course people like the Qld state government are being ridiculous is suggesting we have to keep packing people in so we don’t lose construction jobs (esp given we have such a shortage of workers at present that costs are skyrocketing), but this is also the same government whose idea of dealing with greenhouse and peak oil (which they acknowledge as a genuine danger) is to spend billions and billions of doallrs building more tunnels, bridges and freeways. So much for the smart state!
But greater density does NOT automatically mean a bigger ecological footprint. Just because we are collectively too stupid to shift away from excessively wasteful resource usage, even on something as basic as transportation when even higher petrol prices are staring us in the face, does mean we have the right to telleveryone else on the planet to get stuffed.
Some very stupid debate above, I agree.
But Andrew, our skilled immigration policy is not framed in terms of helping people from poor countries. The policy is designed to increase Oz economic wealth. And, I would argue, to the complete neglect of any environmental concerns.
If we want to help people from poor countries – and we should – we would concentrate on the humanitarian and family reunion planks. (Not to mention foreign aid.)
No-one is arguing for a “blanket decision of no outsourcing or employment of skilled foreigners”.
What is under dispute is the claimed necessity of raising net annual immigration from levels historically well under 100,000 to 300,000.
It is clearly dishonest to maintain that we need those sorts of numbers to fill whatever gaps may actually exist in our skilled workforce, especially given that, as has already been pointed out, a good many who have previously been gainfully employed in skilled occupations could easily be brought back up to scratch if they were to be given the opportunity, instead of being made to continue in low-paid unskilled work.
In any case, if you had been paying attention to the news, you would know that the intake is intended to also include semi-skilled unskilled occupations.
Whilst annual intake of 300,000, I would concede is not exactly the same as not having any restrictions, I would have still thought that, given the problems we already face due to past population growth of which I have given just some examples above, we should very carefully consider what we hope to gain overall as a national community by increasing our numbers to such an extent.
It should be obvious that, as a national community, we will be considerably worse off and that the only possible motivation for raising immigration to this insane degree is to suit a small selfish minority within this society who stand to gain at everyone else’s expense, that is, land speculators, property developers,and employers who wish to exploit a larger pool of labor to drive down wage levels.
Andrew Bartlett: “The debate needs to be about how many people, under what conditions, for what reasons and how best to plan for it socially and environmentally.”
Yes indeed. But that debate is going to be a hollow farce if we work on the assumption that endless growth is a given. Much of what passes for media and ‘expert’ commentary on population issues today is straight-out business lobby group spin.
More than one real scientist (as opposed to housing industry ‘experts’)has calculated Australia’s sustainable population, given current technology, to be lower than the current population. But regardless of that, Australia is running record immigration levels.
Why? Because corporate Australia decrees that it’s good for profit. More consumers, reduced ‘wages pressure’ etc etc.
.
Where do I get the figure of 20% of IT graduates finding professional IT work? Unpublished surveys that vested interests demanded not be published so that their $12 million per annum funding stream which was predicated on there being an IT skills shortage continue unabated.
IT and engineering are the sort of fields that employers demand workers with current experience. there is a fear that technical developments will render people obsolete if they take more than 2 years off work. In many areas this is bunkum.
Remember it takes people 4 years to change career direction, 3 years to get a degree plus waiting to start and perhaps getting prerequisite training to get into the field.
Reasons why do Australian employers prefer to outsource or offshore may include
its fashionable – other companies are doing it
management journals encourage organisations to concentrate on core competencies
treasury may demand it as a condition of getting funding
costings show its cheaper
organisational culture of hating the over paid bastards in IT
everyone knows that only asians study IT
avoid dealing with Australian suppliers so your competition can’t hire the staff to get to know your business
The obvious dangers of outsourcing include
organisation no longer controls its information
organisation no longer controls the resources to process its data
outsourcing agreements formalise relationship between departments and the outsourced department is not as responsive as it used to be
the contractor isn’t interested in your business the contractor is interested in increasing their own business
Getting back to increased skilled migration. For our environment and water supply we don’t need to increase the numbers of people living in Australia. From a social equity point of view we don’t need to lay off Australians and hire foreigners like Telstra has been doing since 1992.
)(My earlier post was meant to be addressed to Chris @ 62, 64 and 66)
Paul Burns @ 51,
Thanks, I will definitely try to get hold of a copy one way or the other. (To go OT again for a minute) I had been persuaded, contrary to some populist historical views, that the Brisbane Line was a reasonable defensive strategy after all. It seems to me that if the Japanese had won the Battle of the Coral Sea and had over-run Port Moresby, that trying to defeat them in the north of Australia without having any fallback plans would have been ill-advised, but I am most interested to read what you have to say on the topic. I will track down a copy of your book one way or another.
Chris wrote:
I put it to you that you are trying to imply that just because something is thus that it will remain thus indefinitely. That is the same thinking that led to waves of gluts in the IT profession following the Millennium bug IT skills shortage beat up of 1999. How can you know for sure that the trend that you say you have observed will last indefinitely, especially with an annual immigration intake of 300,000?
Also, I think you may need to re-read my original post and consider that you may only be taking into consideration people whose skills have been kept ‘current’ with industrial experience, as opposed to those of us who have lost our jobs in previous gluts and have been out of the IT work force for some years, even if we have tried to keep ourselves current in our spare time by administering Linux webservers for the benefit of community groups, for example. I would be interested to know whether you believe it is fair and appropriate to leave on the scrap heap until retirement, people like myself, who have not been able to remain ‘current’ as many IT recruitment agencies seem to think.
If not, and you know of an employer who is absolutely desperate for IT professionals as they claim to be (whether the work is ‘interesting’ or not) then, please put me in touch.
Dealing as I do everyday with companies who access a whole range of employees under the 457 visa scheme, there’s at the very least a lot of misunderstanding about the importation of foriegn workers, shown above.
The vast majority of companies go through the considerable trouble and expense of this program because they have little choice. They are not hiring these people as an alternative to hiring Australians – in most cases there is no alteranative.
They are not getting ‘cheap labour’. The minimum base salary level from August is $43440, and for IT jobs it is $59480. Additionally the employer has substantial obligations under the scheme, with criminal penalties for serious non-compliance, and they have to show a commitment to the training of their Australian employees.
It’s good to have a debate about the wider issue of immigration, but it’s a pity when so much of it is based on ignorance.
And it’s not often I agree with SATP, but his inference is correct. There is no incentive to hire overseas workers for most employees if the equivalent worker is available from the Australian labour market.
Adrian @ 80,
It seems a bit much to expect us believe that Australian companies who have demonstrably so systematically discriminated against Australian IT workers in the past have only done so out of absolute necessity, or to expect us to now accept that even if you were to concede that that was the culture in the past that that has suddenly changed.
It is not altogether to understand the motivations of IT employers, if what you write is true. Possibly, these days it may have more to do with such factors as fashion and habit as Billie has suggested. However, I know for a fact that, in the past, the workforces of entire companies have been replaced wholesale on the basis that workers hired under the basis of 457 visas could do it more cheaply.
Also, I am not completely reassured that the laws you describe cannot be bypassed in some way and if they are that our Government has the political will to effectively police them.
Even if it were to be established that imported IT professionals were paid better than Australian counterparts, I don’t really see that should be considered the end of the discussion, if Australians, who could previously have expected to have been gainfully employed are now missing out.
Also, you have claimed that much of this debate is based upon ignorance. Could you please provide specific examples?
Are there any facts which, for example, Billie or myself have posted that you dispute?
If you don’t dispute any of those facts, would you care to comment, for example, on Telstra’s employment policies for example? Would you care to state whether it strikes you as odd that not one Austrlalian was hired to fill the 135 vacancies for COBOL programmers?
Have you viewed the YouTube broadcast of How US IT employers go out of their way to systematically discriminate against native born US IT workers? What guarantee can you provide that Australian IT employers and their recruitment agencies are any more ethical than their US counterparts appear to be?
Robert Merkel @ 1 asked if there was evidence that increased migration increased GDP per capita.
There are figures around that say that increased immigration will mean that Sydneysiders will have to work an additional 41 minutes per week to retain their buying power and their commute will take an additional 21 minutes.
On the basis of the evidence, it seems clear to me that the economic case for immigration is a lie conjured up to serve powerful vestged interests.
It would be helpful to this discussion if those in favour of immigration would either
a) acknowledge that the economic ‘case’ for immigration is the complete twaddle that it is, or
b) acknowledge the arguments put and attempt to refute them.
In regard to Andrew Bartlett’s points @ 73
Andrew Bartlett wrote:
Who is arguing that?
Even if immigration was reduced to zero net immigration, which I favour, that would still allow plenty of workers to come here and plenty of Australians to work in other countries. But we’re not even discussing zero net immigration. We’re discussing an increase in immigration to 300,000 per annum up fro historical levels of well under 100,000 (and the related, if slightly OT issue of almost unlimited rights of Australian companies to offshore their work to slave labour economies). It would be helpful if that were discussed and we could be spared the spectacle of straw men being erected then knocked down.
As I showed earlier, Australia did very well with only 7 million people back in the 1940’s when it was one of the most advanced industrialised nations on earth.
It seems to me that whilst post-war immigration may have been generally agreed to, the accelerated population growth since the the downfall of the Whiltam government (which, BTW, after the oil shock, cut back immigration, contrary to the popular myth) has been opposed by the Australian public. However they have never been consulted about that, because the major political parties have agreed to support high immigration bi-partisanly and not to debate this question.
To the contrary, I believe it is the democratic right of every nation on earth to decide for itself how many people from other nations to enter. I support it for Tibet, West Irian, Iceland, Canada and the US, and I support that right for Australia, also.
I think we would be better advised to assume that we will become less efficient rather than more efficient as the dis-economies of scale caused by greater population, which I referred to above compound the problems of reduced average availability of natural resources.
It is wishful thinking in the extreme to assume that somehow, from now on, we will be able to find all the efficiencies that will magically offset possibly massively larger numbers of people we will have to deal with, as well as the ongoing destruction of our agricultural and natural resources and reduction in the world’s supply of petroleum. This would certainly buck previous trends where, for example, increases in greenhouse gas emissions almost exactly correlated with increases in population in all the industrialised countries.
Andrew Bartlett wrote:
What Andrew appears to be saying (apart from more apparent straw men arguments) is that Australia is morally obligated to accept as many immigrants as is necessary to help third world countries solve their overpopulation problems. I think Andrew needs to think this through a little more carefully. Australia’s population is 21 million. The population of the Philippines is 80 million, largely thanks to the Roman Catholic Church and oppressive laws against the supply of contraception. The population of China is 1,400 million, including roughly 200 million internal immigrants, etc, etc. Even if we accept Andrew’s claims that accepting more immigrants will somehow reduce overpopulation in those countries, I think we need to be clear just how many we need to take to make a significant difference. Anything less than tens of millions would be a drop in the ocean. If Andrew believes that we should accept that order of immigrant numbers even before we have to deal with the problems of global warming, then I think he should come out and say so openly.
I did not cause global warming. I have been trying or years to stop it. In fact one of the principle influences to drive up global warming over past decades has been the same Murdoch newsmedia which now demands higher immigration into Australia. If the Murdoch newsmedia had, instead, used its influence to warn the world’s population about global warming, instead of denying the evidence, we would have the situation much more under control by now.
A NASA scientist recently wrote to the Australian Government asking it to reduce our exports of coal in order to help combat global warming. Andrew, will you use the voice that you have in your remaining weeks as Senator to support his request?
(More later)
My reply was in response to billie’s earlier comment about the current state of affairs (his assertion that 80% of IT graduates are unable to find work) as opposed to what might happen with an immigration level of 300,000.
As I mentioned later the 80% level doesn’t sound right to me, but I may well find out personally in the not so distant future….
I don’t have any specific employers (at least not in Australia) I can recommend, but if as you mention you have good Linux skills I would recommend trying the local linux user groups if you haven’t already done so. Even if they can’t find you employment straight away there are sometimes people who would be willing to provide important industrial work experience which will make it easier to get a permanent job.
Chris @ 84,
Thank you, but I was already well aware that there were such avenues that I could pursue and, indeed, have done precisely as you have suggested. I have gained ‘industrial experience’ from one potential employer by writing a web application, but it has not been used and I have yet to lead me to getting paid a single cent for it.
However, these things take time, determination and persistence — and, I might add, a great deal more than what used to be necessary — and this is not easy for someone like me, who has on his mind the appalling state of the world right now, and trying to do something about it in what little spare time he has (see for example candobetter.org). (Perhaps, if I could convince myself, as you seem to have been able to, that everything is peachy with the world, then I could focus my mind better.)
Also, it seems to me that you have avoided my essential point. If all the stories about employers being desperately short of IT staff are true then I would have thought that you as an IT worker would know of employers who would be interested in talking to me.
As you appear not to know of any such employer, then I think we are entitled be highly skeptical of these stories and question the claimed need to drastically increase Australia’s intake of skilled migrants.
Well without knowing your skillset its a bit tricky (saying IT worker is a bit like saying “engineer”) and I’m trying to stay unidentified on the site so don’t want to post my email address. Is the url link from your name here to your real identity? I haven’t been paying much attention to job ads, but I know of one place which last I heard was offering referral bonuses to their employees who find new hires – which is a sign they really want people – might have to move interstate though. I can email you the details if you’d like.
I don’t think everything is peachy just don’t think its as bad as has been described.
Chris,
Thanks, for the information. However, first of all, before I respond, the discussion is essentially about the state of the job market and whether or not a huge increase in immigration is justified, and it’s not about me, personally.
Whilst it seems that there is a current boom, which, to some extent, has worked for those who have kept their skills current, we still have to consider whether this is likely to endure (and I would add, is it sustainable in the ecological sense).
The justification for massively increasing our already high 457 visa intake, not to mention the planned intake of unskilled workers, seems to be a combination of:
1. An assumption that the boom is effectively permanent,
2. That it is necessary and desirable to use immigration to control ‘wages inflation’ even though immigration must necessarily cause other aspects of inflation to become worse — housing, water, petrol, council rates, electricity charges, tolls and transport expenses, food, etc.;
3. An assumption that it is not possible to largely fix the skills shortage, by re-employing all those still available for work, but with skills deemed not to be ‘current’ or by training other Australians
If the boom does not endure sufficiently, or worse still, if it goes bust, then we will have another huge glut of trained and untrained workers, as we have had on the past occasions. On top of that, we will end up with larger numbers of people drawing on diminishing natural resources in their country and even more dependent than before on imported manufactured goods and petroleum.
Alternatives to skilled imigration
If our political leaders were prepared to think outside the box, they could come up with plenty of other ways of filling the skills shortage than just simply importing skills from overseas. These could include:
1. Reducing our exports of minerals, which would be hugely beneficial to our environment, the world’s environment and to future generations who will find some of our mineral wealth left in the soil;
2. Breaking the idiotic cycle that Bligh, and before her, Beattie, have got us into in Queensland where we deliberately import more people in order to keep people previously imported employed in the housing construction industry;
3. Reducing the scale of tourism; or
4. Ending Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman’s insane plans to build a parallel transport infrastructure underground, to cater for the hundreds of millions more that he wants to move here in coming years and equivalent plans of interstate.
In regard to 3, it seems that Sunshine Coast business leaders have also had a gut full of Bligh’s and Beattie’s short-sighted policies. In the Sunshine Coast Daily story Coast told to grow up and diversify of 26 April 2008, Sunshine Coast Business Council chair Paul Pettigrew said
If we did any or all of the above, we would probably find that we would have easily enough skilled workers amongst the existing population and if we had any left over, they could be put to work towards something truly useful for current and future generations, namely saving the Murray Darling system, reclaiming damaged agricultural and forest land and building a proper national railway network.
Concerning myself:
Yes, that is my actual identity and my real mail address on my home page. If you know of anything please let me know. I am sure that I would be able to convince quite a few employers who are fair minded and willing to give me a hearing that I am at least as good as many who are currently employed, in spite of the fact that I have not done paid work since March 2004.
My last paid job was here. The people who continued with the project neglected to update that website until a few months ago, that is, for over three and a half years since July 2004 when ARC project DP0449670 commenced, so I, and I expect that potential employers would have formed the impression that the software I had tested on a cluster of 72 computers had turned into shelfware. Knowing that it had been used for the ongoing project would have made all the difference to my job prospects in the IT market then awash with imported professionals with the mandatory 2 years plus commercial experience in EJB and J2EE, but no-one bothered to tell me. On top of that no-one bothered to tell me that the package I had implemented had been successfully used by a Canadian student for her Masters project beginning in 2004.
The sudden ending of my involvement with that project almost totally destroyed my professional self-esteem. Apparently the ARC funding from the federal government was not sufficient anyway to fund my expected PhD scholarship, but what made it worse was to have been told near the very end without any adequate prior feedback that I was not considered good enough. Indeed, only about weeks before I had been told by my manager that I was considered an essential part of the project.
I am told that such treatment is commonplace in academia these days.
I wasn’t able to land on my feet and no doubt I have and will continue to be judged for that by many potential employers.
Other professional experience includes years of tutoring at a University and the effective management (I was technically the administrator) of a successful ISP, funded by a TAFE college in rural Queensland from 1996 until 1998 and mainframe programming from 1989 until 1994, when I was retrenched.
Although most did not expect the ISP to succeed, it flourished to the extent that a commercial provider, whom everyone expected would blow away the ISP I worked for, dishonoured commitments previously made, including to the local shire council to set up in town, seeing no prospect of being able to draw away sufficient numbers of customers.
Nevertheless, the ISP fell victim to a combination of internal TAFE politics and an ideologically driven policy of outsourcing Government functions. It was sold to a local consortium and I was shafted by people in that consortium whom I had thought were friends almost no sooner than I had saved the enterprise from collapse due to their incompetence. That locally based ISP has been since been swallowed by another ISP which in turn was swallowed buy another Victorian based ISP.
In spite of all that experience under the belt, I am not even considered good enough these days for a base grade clerical position in the Government agency I work for, having been twice unsuccessful in job applications.
Thus, hundreds of thousands of people, who I believe have a great deal to offer this society and who could be being used to fill the skills shortage are being ignored and being forced to subsist in low-paid and low-skilled occupations.
Why are being ignored, even by political figures who claim to stand outside the mainstream?
Whilst my previous long post is awaiting moderation, I might draw everyone’s attention to the article on our website by Sheila Newman French housing market collapses.
It shows how housing inflation is kept under control in France, because in France, land speculators and property developers cannot demand of the Government as they did of the Howard Government in 2004 to increase immigration in order to drive up the value of their investment.
In France, unlike Australia, the system tends to look after French citizens first (in spite of President Sarkozy’s best efforts to the contrary). For more information I urge people to download and print Sheila Newman’s excellent 2002 Master’s thesis:
… from candobetter.org/sheila
It will be truly great day in Australia when our politicians stand to the malignant growth lobby in our midst as they do in France.
Daggett @ 83 said
Damn, you’ve caught me out – all my arguments about taking a global perspective on the environment and human rights, as well as looking at the evidence on the economic and social pros and cons were really just a conjuring trick in the service of powerful vested interests.
I hate to break it to you, but that is effectively what you have been vociferously and repeatedly arguing for on this and many other forums for quite some time. To support zero net migration – as you and many others who run your line of argument do – is to support preventing huge numbers of people coming into Australia to work. Or are we supposed to that pretend that people who live here on temporary visas do not have an environmental impact, or we can ascribe their carbon footprint to their home country so we can breath easier about ours? To say zero net migration “would still allow plenty of workers to come here and plenty of Australians to work in other countries” is just wrong – even if we immediately stopped all humanitarian intake – and most of those who use enviromental arguments to advocate against migration single out refugees as the ones we should keep taking in, which would remove most of the already small intake of other workers, skilled or otherwise.
If you genuinely believe that’s what I “appear to be saying”, then its no wonder you can’t grasp the logical holes in your own argument. Just because I point out that the person you quote is talking nonsense (and callous nonsense at that), does not mean that I am adovcating a mirror image of their nonsense. It just means the whole basis of their statement is nonsense, so there’s no point trying to use it as a component in balancing the differing issues involved.
That’s getting rather off-topic, but my ‘voice’ doesn’t disappear when I stop being a Senator. I’ve been opposed for some time to any new coal fired power stations being built without adequate carbon capture technology, which was the key point in Dr Hansen’s letter. I will continue to be opposed.
Andrew Bartlett wrote:
I never said that your arguments about “taking a global perspective on the environment and human rights,” where “a conjuring trick in the service of powerful vested interests.”
What I said was that the economic case for high immigration was a lie to serve powerful vested interests.
If you have looked at “the evidence on the economic and social pros and cons” of immigration, I would be most interested to know where. Certainly there seems to be abundant evidence presented here that immigration is both socially and economically harmful to the current residents of this country.
Before we continue to argue the rights and wrongs of the humanitarian case for immigration, let’s be absolutely clear as to whether or not increasing the size of this country’s population is or is not in the interests of the current residents of this country. Most pro-immigration adavaocates insists that it is. To me, it seems clear that the overwhelming evidence shows that it is not.
You have yet to either acknowledge the abundant evidence presented here which shows that immigration is not beneficial to this country’s current inhabitants, let alone show us where it is wrong.
Also, you didn’t answer fully my question about coal exports. I wasn’t just talking about coal fired power stations.
I asked do you intend to support James Hansen’s call to end plans to expand coal exports? To his Credit Bob Brown did last year and got crucified by the Murdoch press for having done so. A group in Newcastle http://www.risingtide.org.au is trying to prevent the expansion of the coal industry in the Hunter Valley, which is destroying the environment of the Hunter Valley as well as helping to destroy the environment of China and fuel global warming. The same can be said also of Queensland’s coal export industry now undergoing rapid expansion.
If you are concerned about climate change refugees, it seems to me that you should be supporting those opposed to the expansion of the coal industry and, indeed, arguing that it be wound back.
Andrew,
On the zero net immigration issue, if we agree that Australia has a finite carrying capacity, then clearly we have to aim at some point to have zero net immigration. I happen to favour zero net immigration now, although I would concede that I don’t know if it could be achieved if we take into account economic practicalities, humanitarian considerations and pragmatic international political considerations. Certainly immigration should be well under 100,000 and nowhere near 300,000.
At least I have made my position as clear as it is possible to do. It would be helpful if you could also make your own position clear. Do you favour 300,000 or less? Perhaps you think 300,000 is not enough. Do you think it should be 400,000 or 500,000 or do you happen to agree with Philippe Legrain and believe that all borders should be abolished tomorrow in order to create an instant global village?
Andrew Bartlett wrote:
But it would be helpful if you made clear what you are advocating. If you believe that we should accept immigrants here in order to help ease overcrowding in third world countries, then I think we know whether or not you are advocating that we take enough to make a practical difference. It seems to me that if the numbers were to be any less than tens of millions it would no practical difference.
So what numbers do you favour?
I should have written “I think we need to know whether or not you are advocating that we take enough to make a practical difference” In the second last sentence of my last post.
The last sentence should have read “It seems to me that if the numbers were to be any less than tens of millions it would make no practical difference.”.
Racism and reverse political correctness
In regard to Andrew Bartlett’s concerns about reverse political correctness, I think it needs to be acknowledged that fear of being labelled ‘racist’ has been the major over-riding factor that has prevented the occurrence of a rational discussion of immigration, or even population, for decades. That has certainly been my own experience going back to the late 1970’s and I have written of them here This has been well documented in Paul Sheehan’s “Among the Barbarians” of 1998.
In truth, I believe that the attitude that the politically correct term ‘racist’ can be found in most members of almost every community on earth. Certainly Paul Sheehan has given evidence of stridently racist attitudes in many Chinese in Australia in “Amongst the Barbarians” and in Middle Eastern communities in “Girls like You”.
Whether or not ‘racism’ motivates some to oppose immigration is largely beside the point. The issue of immigration needs to be discussed on its own merits, regardless of what psychological factors may be thought to influence people to either oppose or support immigration.
For my own part, my opposition to high immigration has not prevented me from being concerned about the welfare of people in other countries, which I have demonstrated by, for example, attending protests against the Iraq war, and having letters against the Iraq War as well as the ongoing attempts to revise the history of the Vietnam War published in newspapers. I also express my strong views on these questions in online forums.
‘Racist’ is not a politically correct term. It is a straight-forward word with a very clear meaning. It may have been misused or overused at times, but that is no reason to discard it. Racism (whether in ’scare quotes’ or not) is rarely “beside the point.” It is a potentially dangerous and toxic attitude. The fact that it is present in most socities doesn’t make it a good thing, just a common thing. It is relevant in a much broader context than migration issues of course. I agree that migration issues should be debated on their merits – so should just about everything – but that does not mean pretending that racism doesn’t matter.
It is off-topic, but while Hansen’s letter is a bit ambiguous, it seems fairly clear he is talking about predominantly about power plants. As I said, I support his call not to build any further coal fired power plants without adequate CCS technology.
No, we’d need to have zero population growth – we’d need more than zero net to maintain a stablised population. Zero net migration would lead to a significant drop in population.
Setting a number in stone for carrying capacity is problematic because, (a) increased efficienices mean such a theoretical number will always be changing and (b) because large chunks of our most environmentally impacting actvities like agricultural and mining are to do with exports, rather than specifically to do with the number of people living here. This also applies to other export industries that bring many people here who are not normally categorised as migrants (such as tourism and education). This isn’t to say that we should ignore the impacts of high migration numbers, but rather to say that carrying capacity has far more to do with how we live than how many people are here.
In any case, population is a global issue. Even if for arguments sake one wants to suggest that Australia has reached its carrying capacity, it is nowhere near as ‘over-capacity’ as many other countries. To pick a couple of examples, Turkey has a land area slightly less than NSW but a population of over 70 million. Taiwan has a land area just over half that of Tasmania, but a population of over 22 million (slightly more than all of Australia). This is not to suggest that we should bring millions of them here to ease the pressure there, but simply to put it in perspective.
We should be seeking to reduce population growth globally. The rate of growth globally is slowing, which is a good sign, but it would be better certainly be better for the environment if that growth stopped all together.
Hear, hear!
But why does it always become so contentious and why do insinuations of racism pop up so routinely when the debaye is confined to Australia?
Daggett does him/herself no favours with some of the overblown and unsourced rhetoric about Telstra’s hiring policies etc etc – but I believe his/her starting point – the danger of human over-population – is valid.
Global over-population is one of our species’ three biggest problems and largely the cause of the other two anyway. Australian over-population is less dire – but we should address it. Even if only to show the way and walk the walk.
While we do that, we must increase humanitarian and family reunion immigration numbers because :
1. – it is the right thing to do in a very rich country
2. – counter any perception that our restricted population policy is crypto-racist.
It must be clear that our restricted popalution policy is environmentally based. 100%. Pure and simple. Motivated by the future welfare of our descendents who must live in said environment. Not motivated by some new age romance about the integrity of the Garden of Eden. The earth can look after itself. As most insensible very large objects can.
Andrew,
I’ve read your comments with interest, and I think I’m basically on your side of the argument, at least regarding the way Australia should deal with refugees, and immigration in general.
But there is one particular aspect of this I note you have not addressed (unless I’ve overlooked it on a long thread!)
How can Australia morally justify taking scarce professionals away from developing countries who need them far more than we do?
One example: according to the WHO website, Australia has 25 physicians per 10,000 population. India has 6 per 10,000.
Every Indian doctor who comes to work here is one less for that country’s health system, which is far more over-stretched and under-resourced than ours is. How can we possibly justify it?
Paulus:
This is a genuine issue, but it isn’t a one directional or dimensional one.
Concerns about ‘brain-drain’ have been flagged for many years in both richer and poorer countries. It has some validity but also needs to put in the context of a wider suite of issues, including things such as:
- it’s not like India used to have mountains of highly qualified locally trained doctors and lots of them have now left. Losing such skilled workers is a loss, but I understand it is – in most countries at least – from a base where the overall numbers are increasing. Also, the very fact that there is greater opportunity to make money provides a bigger incentive for more local people to seek to get medical training (combined with more educational choices through overseas training)
- it would be very difficult to say to doctors from India that they can’t work here, while doctors from the UK or USA can.
- many health and other professionals get training and experience in countries like Australia (e.g. Dr Haneef). This makes the previous point even more difficult if we let them pay to study here and do ‘temp’ work, while only letting those from other western countries being able to stay here permanently
- more and more migration these days is not about people leaving one country forever to settle somewhere else. Many people gain experience by working in another country and bring that experience back home.
- remittences from people working for higher pay in wealthier countries are a significant way for some poorer families and countries to boost their income, an opportunity they wouldn’t have if they were not able to work outside their home country. Without ignoring the loss of their skills not being deployed in their home country, this does provide an avenue for increasing wealth that would not exist under ‘closed door’ arrangments.
- expansion of development work by groups like Medecins Sans Frontieres can provide a reverse flow of expertise for some areas of severe need. Similarly, increased assistance from wealthier resources for training health workers can play a role.
In summary, I accept its an issue but I think trying to ’solve’ it by preventing doctors or others from poorer (or other underserviced) countries from being able to come here would make be likely to lead to worse outcome for that country.
wbb @ 94,
I suggest you read the discussion more carefully. It wasn’t myself who documented Telstra’s shameful employment policies.
If you are not aware that Telstra has been engaged in a ruthless campaign to eliminate jobs, working conditions and career and training opportunities in order to raise profitability for its shareholders and fatten the bloated wallets of Sol Trujillo and the Three Amigos, then I don’t know what planet you have been living on for the last 10 years.
Andrew Bartlett states a number of clichés that deserve challenge.
“Population is a global issue” Actually it is the sum total of 194 national issues. To say that is a global issue implies that it can only be addressed globally by presumably, a global government. De facto, then, there is nothing to be done, except of course to play the western guilt game of reducing our consumption. “It is not how many of us there are, it’s how we live.” So we can open the flood gates to third world immigration, double our population, but turn around and cut our per capita consumption in half to accommodate them. Makes sense. Like bailing water out of a leaky boat instead of plugging the hole.
The way you reduce global population is two-fold. You show leadership by stabilizing your own population. But if Australia and Canada won’t do that, why would Central Africa listen to us about family planning? Secondly, you make foreign aid conditional on birth control. Harper just gave over $300 million to Haiti without including a single condom in the package, and they merrily carry on with a TFR of 5.4.
“Because carrying capacity is subject to changing variables, it need not be taken seriously” Why must we feel obliged to fill the room to the max? How about establishing what population level allows for a comfortable quality of life? Instead of carrying capacity, explore the optimum population level for Australia, Queensland, Brisbane or Noosa?
“Zero net migration would lead to a significant drop in population” So what? Wouldn’t the apocalypse also do that? Senator, we are in overshoot beyond your wildest imaginings. Don’t worry about Peak Oil. Worry about Peak Soil. And don’t worry about the “economy”. Because we don’t live in one of those. We live in a biosphere of which the unsustainable economy is just a subset. We are going on a demographic crash diet. Our way or nature’s way. You’re in power, your choice.
“Carrying capacity is related to Population Density, so we’re relatively OK” Here Bartlett reveals his ecological illiteracy. To argue that Australia has nothing to worry about because 70 million Turks or 22 million Taiwanese are living in a relative phone booth is irrelevant to the precarious predicament that 21 million Australians are in. Carrying capacity has nothing to do with “people per square mile”. It has every thing to do with the ability of the land they occupy to provide them with a sustainable living . Theoretically Antarctica is a big place with lots of room for lots of people. But its carrying capacity is a fraction of some countries one percent of its size.
Canada and Australia are both victims of the “empty land” mythology which politicians and entrepreneurs still trumpet, and refugee advocates share. Our nations are not fragile ecosystems teetering on the edge of disaster but vast vacant treasure troves begging to be “opened up” by millions upon millions of more people. Despite persistent and growing evidence, the myth just won’t die, until we die I suppose, in our millions.
Bartlett says, not to worry, other countries are in worse shape. In other words, because they have dangerously over-booked their hotel, we should over-book ours and ignore what the fire-marshal, Tim Flannery, and others, say.
I am sorry, but Senator Bartlett’s logic escapes me. If he were to run for office in Canada using those arguments, he would be elected Prime Minister for sure.
Andrew Bartlett: “‘Racist’ is not a politically correct term. It is a straight-forward word with a very clear meaning”
Really? News to me. One looks forward to this ‘very clear,’ precise definition being published in the Lancet. Actually, it would be good if Andrew’s assertion were true. ‘Racism’ in my own mind is a word and a concept with a fairly clear (that is to say, limited) meaning, but I find it is not shared consistently and uniformly by others. The word is used very carelessly indeed, to the point of misuse where the elasticity may have altered its function in language (see the now-notorious “Crisis? What crisis?” thread). Among morally sloppy and intellectually lazy leftists, it’s become linguistic shorthand for “Smithers, release the hounds.” If Andrew can reverse this trend through simple fiat, we’ll give him a ticker tape parade.
A.B.: “it would be very difficult to say to doctors from India that they can’t work here, while doctors from the UK or USA can.”
Why? Other than as a potential diplomatic boo-boo to those on the other end. There’s no particular reason it would be terribly ‘difficult’, other than it might offend the sensibilities of those who simply wish otherwise. The operative principle here is not some zany universalistic leftist hobbyhorse whereby everybody has the right to go everywhere; it’s national sovereignty and the fact that under Western democratic principle, sovereignty resides in the people — not in some empty platitude cooked up by an EU bureaucrat. If the people say they only want migrants from X and not from Y, or they want no migrants at all, then what is the actual problem? That you, personally, wanted something else? That a bunch of foreigners wanted it otherwise, for their own foreign reasons that weren’t intended to benefit you?
Oh, which last point brings us to…
A.B.: “remittences from people working for higher pay in wealthier countries are a significant way for some poorer families and countries to boost their income, an opportunity they wouldn’t have if they were not able to work outside their home country”
Yes, and smoking crack is a way for me to feel better about myself for a little while, in the midst of an otherwise dreary day. Remittances infantilize an economy, encourage the continuation of corruption and imbecilic behavior, and lead to personal and policy decisions geared towards *maximizing further remittances*, not towards addressing fundamental structural problems. Exhibit A: Mexico. Exhibit B: Mexico. Exhibit C: Mexico. Exhibit D: Mexico.
A.B.: “The ‘any immigration is bad’ line is ludicrous on an economic, social, environmental, human rights, artistic and intellectual level.”
No it isn’t. (strictly speaking, that is.) Why do you say it is? Does ‘ludicrous’ now have a ‘very clear meaning’ as well? (To say nothing of these other rather capacious words you’re using.)
“The debate needs to be about how many people, under what conditions, for what reasons and how best to plan for it socially and environmentally.”
“Needs to be,” eh? As so often with leftists, “we must,” and “we need,” turn out to actually mean only “I want”, when scrutinized even minimally.
“As so often with leftists, “we must,” and “we need,” turn out to actually mean only “I want”, when scrutinized even minimally.”
You’re one of the good ones Zenger, but really, how does the right find room in the too hard basket for so many important things?
Tim fromm British Columbia has listed a range of what he calls cliches, and then ascribes a range of views and assertions to me which I have not made. He shows a formidaable capacity to misunderstand or misrepresent me, but unfortunately it also makes informed discussion virtually impossible
j_p_z: yes, I do think ‘ludicrous’ is a word with a fairly clear meaning. You’re sounding all post-modernist – assuming words are these vgue things with no clear meaning. As for racism, in my undestaanding it means discriminaing against or expressing negaative views about a person or group of people on the basis of their race. In a day to day sense it tends to overlap with discriminating on the basis of nationality and to some extent religion.
I have no doubt it is sometimes used wrongly or lazily – many words are – but given how serious a matter racism can be, I think its very dangerous to just discard the concept, even though it may be convenient for those who like to suck the meaning out of language.
Andrew Bartlett -
Having looked at this thread it seems no-one has addressed the issues I’ve raised above – http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/05/21/will-the-great-immigration-debate-take-place/#comment-469985
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Not surprising really. the Left and the Right both have issues they prefer to ignore. This is one of the Left’s.
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I personally don’t have a problem with mulitcultural society. And my retort to those on the Right who go on about ’social cohesion’ is that it’s much too late to make Australia an ethnically homogenous nation (of course it never really was). However I believe those on the Right who make these sorts of arguments have a point. Like it or not different groups of people will develop a mutual dislike and, in the context of ethnicity, that can be extremely unpleasant.
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Granted Hanson and Howard raised the issue whilst denying their true motivations – xenophobic resentiment and chauvanistic ethnocentricity respectively – and these nefarious attributes are to be strenuously objected to whenever they arise. But people have a right to criticize immigration policy even if they do so on this basis, or on the more practical basis of wishing to avoid a legacy of racial warfare. I won’t elaborate further, I’ve expressed myself elsewhere – http://adrienswords.wordpress.com/2007/02/05/the-new-white-australia-policy/
I think it’s important to note the difference between racism – a philisophical disposition that holds one race superior to others – and racialism which encompasses to all sorts of ethnic feeling; a broad spectrum that ranges from ‘Gee Jews are smart’ to ‘Scottish people are a bunch of barbarian swill’.
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I’m Scots btw.
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It does stifle free speech to shout down any discussion of ethnicity as ‘racist’. I’ve been subjectd to this myself and I’m most definitely not a racist, simply raising the issue causes many to block their ears and open their mouths wide to shout. In fact anyone’s ever tried to criticize Israeli policy will know the resultant frustration at being branded anti-semitic. Birdy I know you’re reading this –
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I don’t support Hanson at all and regard her as ‘disatisfied with [her] position and her place’ (doesn’t she understand it’s not our problem). But I did feel that she was marginalized by the media who, at the end, seemed to grant her only half a soundbyte. I’d prefer if those like herself felt they had a voice in this country and thus didn’t feel the need to go underground to their jackboots and truncheons.
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BTW Senator, there was a piece in the Financial Review Magazine this week-end re the Democrats. It’s a shame you’re going. The necessary sales pitch was made quite well in the article I thought. It’d be nice if you and Senator Stott-Despoja re-entered the arena at some point. Altho’ I must say I’m still a bit dark on her because of a speech she made at NUS years back.
Adrien @ 26 said
“However if you have an emergent large ‘underclass’ of people who’re virtually unemployable you will inevitably get racially based tension which can spill over if the economic thumbscrews are on too tight. ”
I am arguing that our employment policies are throwing workers on the scrapheap and comments like the above equate with a thought process like “he is umemployed” thus “he is unemployable”. This arguement fails to take into account the large proportion of the population in this circumstance. Its estimated that 2 million people are underemployed out of a workforce of 10 million. When 2 in 10 workers can’t get enough work the problem is most likely to be systemic rather than the fault of the individual. When someone says we have a skills shortage, ask who is saying this and what is their agenda. A university that claims there is a shortage of IT professionals is probably trying to entice students into their course. Job agencies like Hudsons, EDS and Julia Ross want to bring in workers on 457 visas and trust me from conversations I have heard on public transport I can assure you that Indian graduates are no more skilled than Australian graduates. So yes I am racist because I want to hire Australians instead of Indians.
When the Commonwealth Games were on there was a shortage of security personnel volunteering for service for the 6 weeks of the Commonwealth Games. In Victoria security personnel have to complete a TAFE course run by serving policemen before they can be accredited. Its a struggle for your average bouncer to mix with the coppers. The solution was to hire Indians with no obvious security experience. The Indians were not proficient in English, clearly too small to be a problem for a cranky Australian, and not very well versed in security protocols. I think this is fairly typical of the lack of skils, training and experience 457 visa holders for skilled migrants.
So Adrien don’t be smug when you look at the underemployed, the realistic response is “there but for the grace of G*d go I”.
I concur with Billie’s point about Adrien’s earlier post.
The fact is that as a result of the economic neo-liberal counter-revolution of the last three decades (similar to what has been described in other countries in Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”) a lot of public sector jobs paying decent wages and conditions and having careers paths and training opportunities have been eliminated. As a result of that and of the increase in immigration, many who could previously could have expected to obtain such jobs in Vic Rail can no longer do so longer so. Instead they face either unemployment or third-rate low paid casualised employment in the private market offering not future whatsoever. I could well understand how a few years in those circumstances could well turn many people who would previously been able to play a dignified role in this society into “the wirey looking guy, shirtless, cheap tattoos, dirty Nikes, speaking a certain gutteral ‘Strine” described by Adrienand how such a person would feel resentment towards the Indian Station assistant.
Having said that, I do think that Adrien has shown herself to be a little more thoughtful than most left wing politically correct types, but that earlier post indicates to me that her thinking has not gone anywhere near far enough.
Daggett – what matter is it which country someone working on the trains or trams comes from?
wbb, I am just trying to suggest why someone in the situation described by Adrien would feel resentment towards someone working at the station who was obviously from another country, whether that person was from India, New Zealand or the UK.
If large numbers of native Australians are no longer able to have access to those sorts of jobs, because:
a) many of the jobs have been eliminated through economic ‘reforms’, and
b) there is a lot more competition for the few remaining such jobs as there clearly is
… then how can you expect that a lot of people won’t feel resentment?
Andrew Bartlet wrote @ 101
I don’t consider that fair to Tim and not helpful to the discussion. The trouble is that Andrew hasn’t made clear what his policy on immigration is in spite of my having asked him to. All Tim has done is suggest what logically must follow from what Andrew has written so far. If Andrew doesn’t hold the views that Tim has suggested he might, then I think he should tell us precisely what his views are. When we know, then constructive discussion can proceed.
I would suggest to Andrew Bartlett that he has had plenty of time since he ditched the Australian Democrats previous policy against population growth to work out what he thinks Australia’s population, and hence, annual rate of immigration should be. Again I ask, should it be 100,000, 200,000, 300,000, 1,000,000, or should it simply be whatever the property lobby decides for us?
In South East Queensland the rights of communities have been trampled on for at least a decade. If you look at the Skyline of the Brisbane CBD and nearby suburbs, it is a horrific inhuman mess of high rise apartments. The already horrific disfigurement of South East Queensland’s skyline is being compounded as it is over-whelmed with a mad frenzy of infrastructure and building construction, all adding horrifically to Australia’s Greenhouse gas emissions and our depletion of non-renewable natural resources. It is so bad that the necessary restrictions on traffic flows regularly cause traffic chaos. This caused the Courier Mail to last week denounce (hypocritically in my view) the Queensland government for having caused this mess. The rights of local communities have been trampled over again and again. The latest of many examples is the West End Community Association which is fighting Lord Mayor Campbell Newman’s plans to build 30 storey residential apartments in their midst.
Why is this being done and where is it leading to?
On Fri 23 June 2006, in a Courier Mail article “Owning a slice of the action” reporter Patrick Lion revealed what the Real Estate Institute of Queensland, had planned for our future:
The reason that the REIQ expected that most workers would be working such long hours was no doubt to pay off the mortgages on the homes that they said in that article that they were expecting to cost $800,000 ten years from then. (BTW, with the cost of petroleum, upon which the manufacture of all plastic consumer goods depends, going up I doubt very much if many of us will be able to afford the home theatre systems that the REIQ deems to be an acceptable substitute for open spaces and fresh air.)
Other more recent articles Working man’s vegetable plot under attack again, Channel 7 markets unlivable Melbourne to a helpless audience concerning Victoria show that the above was not just a one-off indiscretion by people who imagine that the rest of society owes it to them to live whatever way they decide in order for us to be able to line their pockets.
Is that the future that Andrew Bartlett wants to see for South East Queensland?
If not, perhaps he can explain why he believes the REIQ are wrong. He needs to explain how we can possibly avoid this if annual immigration, which drives ever more people to come up to Queensland from the South, rises to 300,000.
I am glad that Andrew Bartlett has at least acknowledged the utter stupidity of Anna Bligh encouraging immigration in order to keep current residents of Queensland employed. If he believes, as I do, that the Emperor (or, rather Empress) has no clothes, then I think he would do a great service to Australian democracy if he were to use his currently profile to loudly point this out.
I don’t see how it will be politically possible to oppose overdevelopment in South East Queensland if we don’t raise our voices loudly against population growth and, hence, high immigration.
“If large numbers of native Australians are no longer able to have access to those sorts of jobs, because…”
Well, large numbers of ‘native’ Australians have been effectively excluded from a whole range of jobs for the past 200 years, and most people couldn’t care less.
Adrian @ 108,
Whom are accusing of not caring less about indigenous Australians?
I don’t see how the extremely poor treatment of Aboriginal Australians by some of our ancestors justifies treating many of today’s Australians as Aboriginal Australians were back then or how that treatment serves to in any way rectify past injustices to Aboriginal Australians.
Also, in case you had forgotten, there are some questions I put to you earlier, which you have not yet responded to.
Adrien said
I don’t disgaree with this. People have a right to criticise, no matter what their motivation/s. But my point is simply that when their criticism is clearly racist or recklessly risks validating racist attitudes, it should – as you suggest – be strenuously objected to on that basis, not ignored due to reverse political correctness. Misuse or oversue of the word is unhelpful, but that applies with many words. It should be a reason to try to counter or correct misuse of the word, not drop its usage all together. It is only in rare cicrucmstances where a word or term gets so thoroughly debased as to lose all meaning, and I think that is far from occurring on this occasion.
Daggett – I’ve written and spoken extensively on immigration or population issues in a multitude of places as you know. It is simply false to say I “haven’t made clear what my policy on immigration is” – I have made it quite clear, in a much more comprehensive fashion than the narrow aspects of it that you continually focus on. There’s nothing wrong with you wanting to higher one narrow aspect of the immigration issue of course, but I prefer to look at the bigger picture.
While this post is a fairly open topic, I use comments to respond or add to what the post or other comments have said, not to outline my own views/policies at length. I have my own blog for that (or I will once it finally is back up after a repair job on a hacker attack). If I responded to every mispresentation of what I’ve said, I’d be here all day.
However, to answer a couple of your comments – for reasons I stated above, I think setting a figure is too limiting by ignoring too many other variables. However, having some general goals and using it as part of assessing current intakes is worthwhile. I’ve said a number of times before I think a target for Australia of a stabilised population of around 40 million is reasonable. If we persist in our current intake over a prolonged period, we would go past that.
However, the changing nature of migration even makes this sort of figuring problematic. As I have said, people movements are much more fluid these days and are likely to become even more so. The huge increase in temporary entrants is rarely taken into account in assessing population figures or migration numbers – a problem which I think has flowed on to inadequate infrastructure planning in metropolitan areas and misdirected resources for settlement support for new arrivals.
However, there are many different ways to plan for population growth, some of which have much lower environmental impact than others. Greater density can mean lower per capita eco-footprint than lower density. If one is going to focus solely on carrying capacity, then it would be a good thing for backyards to be phased out – particularly lawns and (most types of) gardens. I don’t hear many environmentalists talking about this, rather than defending the ‘working man’s vegetable plot’ (let alone campaigning hard on the need to cut back on meat and dairy products if we are to meet greenhouse targets). Simply making it an issue of numbers ignores all these other variables and has the effect of encouraging us to think we have a right to continue living in the extraordinarily inefficent and wasteful way that we do, while everyone who lives elsewhere can fend for themselves.
A final point regarding numbers – When most people talk about migration, it is not clear if they are counting temporary residents, and if so, which ones – students? skilled workers? backpackers? The historic change through the Howard was the massive hike in numbers in this area, where people with temporary residency and work rights drmaticaly outstripped people getting permanent residency (who are what we would normally think of as migrants and settlers, although quite a number of these also don’t ’settle’, in the sense that they eventually move back to their home country or go work in a third.
To make it clear for you daggett, I am saying that the population of Australia couldn’t care less about the employment of the real native Australians, but your use of the term suggests a double standard. Why should relatively recent arrivals be privileged over the real ‘native’ Australians? Yet they appear to be in your eyes.
That is the problem with framing the immigration debate mainly in terms of nationality or native or non-native – you end up getting nowhere, except a myopic dead end.
As for your questions, I am no more compelled to answer them than you are to adopt a less strident tone. I said that much of this debate is based on ignorance – ignorance of the immigration laws and policies, and your statements in response to the effect that you are not convinced that the laws cannot be ‘bypassed’. You just don’t know, but don’t let that stop you commenting. For your information you might look up the Migration Act and the recent criminal penalties that are being imposed on ‘non-compliant’ employers. New civil penalties are soon to be legislated as well. Add to that additional resources to monitor all sponsoring employers and it is clear that the government is serious about this issue.
Adrian @ 111 wrote:
I think you should, but either way, I don’t mind. I will leave it to others to draw their own conclusions if you chose not to.
I actually think my tone is appropriate to the discussion. In general, I do make some effort to avoid being strident or engaging in personal attacks, but I won’t pretend that I don’t feel an enormous amount of emotion when I think about these issues, having been one whose welfare has been disregarded for quite a few years by our policy makers. Again, I will have to leave it to others to judge. If I am being unnecessarily strident, then I will make it harder to get my point across, won’t it?
I don’t think an intimate understanding of immigration laws is essential for one to be able to see how much it has harmed our society, our environment and our economy. If the laws are being enforced now, there is no guarantee that that wil always be the case, and with a planned annual rate of 300,000 and plans to introduce unskilled guest worker schemes they hardly need to sidestep the laws anyway, do they?
Billie -
Nonsense. I haven’t said anywhere that being unemployed makes you unemployable nor have I made any comment viz the underemployed. I was talking about the potentital social consequences of an open labour market whereby ‘native’ Australians who might be employed in unskilled or low skilled jobs are not so because ‘imported’ workers outcompete them. An economic policy: relatively open labour market leads to intensified competition and locals miss out to immigrants. The locals resent the immigrants with the inevitable racial backlash.
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That’s what I’m addressing. I have in no way made a judgement about open labour markets (save a statement of principled support for free trade) nor have I declared that unemployment is the fault of the jobless. However there is an inference. If someone is badly spoken, badly dressed, ill-disciplined and defaults to knee-jerk bad language it’s hardly surprising that they miss out to their clean cut, polite migrant competition.
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Is this their fault? Well the extent to which society is to blame and the extent to which it is the individual is a debatable point. I hesitate to make a blanket judgment. As usual I’d say both explanations have a certain veracity which permeate on a case by case basis. I’ve encountered some individuals who’ve been so poorly served by their upbringing that they can barely function.
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As the economy becomes increasingly hi-tech a person who is barely literate is going to find it harder to fit in. This problem is not really adequately addressed. What are we to do? Re-enter the days of protectionism? Well to do so would lead to a sharp decrease in our capacity to trade and hence we’d be in decline. To this extent the neo-liberals are correct.
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Australia has benefitted from it’s relatively open economy since the 1980s as a whole. However people have been left behind; rationalized out or to the margins. There’s a whole bunch of sociological questions that result. One of which is: do we have the potential for entrenched ethnic conflict?
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That is my question.
I actually have been unemployed. I know what it feels like. And I’m not being smug. Please try and refrain from reading into my commentary things that are not there.
Dagget -
Thanks for the comment re my thoughtfulness Dagget but I respectfully suggest that I wasn’t being thoughtless above. I was introducing one of those realities the Left like to ignore. The Right have their own pet fields of myopia (the use of death squads by resource companies in Congo comes to mind) but still…
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My retort to the above is that Australia used to be a protected province of the British Empire and sailed breezily most of the time in that favoured mercantilist bosom. Such as Pauline Hanson, whose home Oxley used to be a site of entrenched hostility between Anglo-Celts and Asians, do not understand that the easy life she led as a kid was economically artificial for reasons that Donald Horne elucidated well in his most famous book.
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The ALP recognized that this party could not go on and, first Whitlam, and then Hawkeating set about opening and rationalising the economy; gearing Australia toward a future as an open economy in global waters. Had we not done so we would not still be enjoying the post-war salad days we’d be in sharp decline.
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However there is a sub-culture of entitlement here that persists. Ms Hanson for example seems to believe that we Australians have a right to a lofty lifestyle irrespective of our skills, our nouse (or lack thereof) or the work we do. Just simply build a wall twixt us and the rest of the world, subsidize uncompetative industries, ride the sheep’s back and have everyone work for the public sector if they’re otherwise useless.
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That is unsustainable. Globalisation is an unstoppable force you can’t hold it back, defer it or ignore it. However it is true that this had lead to social pain. Viz:
So can I. It’s understandable that this comment of mine would have people believe that I’m some sort of vulgar snob from St Chinless College for Ruling Class Wankers, but that’s not really it. The gutteral ‘Strine of which I speak is a cause for social distinction on the street. The social type I describe is looked down upon by all and sundry. And yes it’s a result not just of lack of individual resolve but of social circumstance. It is also a reality.
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My original question was to the effect that open labour markets (which I tend to support) may lead to ethnic conflict if unchecked. Part of the causes of this are those severely excluded from a society they believe is their own. There is a perception, very strong amongst those so marginalized, that their country is being stolen from them. And fascist sabres are rattling.
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BTW – I’m a fella.
Adrien,
My apologies for getting your gender wrong. I know a woman with the name Adrienne. I asssuemd was a variation of that.
Just to be very brief. I think we will have to agree to disagree, for now. You accept the necessity and desirability of globalisation. I do not.
There may well have been a cost to have been borne if we had not embraced gobalisation, that cost being, foregoing the availability to a large extent of cheap imported consumer items.
I personally think that that would have been an acceptable price to pay in order to have remained self-reliant and in control our own destiny.
Andrew Bartlett @ 110 wrote:
I don’t think it is misreprentations of what you have said which you have failed to respond to, rather, it seems to me, that there are a number of substantial objections to Australia’s high rate of immigration that you have failed to respond to, as well as a number of straightforward questions.
It’s obvious that doubling Queensland’s population since 1972 has largely destroyed the quality of life we enjoyed back then and you have provided us with no reason, other than wishful thinking, to expect that cramming more than another million more residents into South East Queensland by 2026 will do anything other than compound the problem catastrophically.
At least you have stated that you support a population of 40 million. So some progress has been made. (BTW, If you expect that the current rate of immigration will cause even that number to be exceeded, when are you planning to raise your voice in objection?)
So, what is the basis for maintaining that an Australian population of 40 million is sustainable?
Tim Flannery and many other scientists who work for the CISRO believe we have already gone well beyond the carrying capacity of this continent. Tim Flannery believes that the figure is 7 million. Others incuding Michelle Graymore in her PhD thesis on the carrying capacity of South East Queensland believes it is much less. What makes you so certain that they are wrong and you are right? What makes you so sure that we can find the means to reduce our per capita footprint to a level that is sufficient to stop the terrible damage that is currently being done by 21 million inhabitants, as well as the additional 19 million that you favour?
If you think that the current Australian population are morally obliged to live a more frugal lifestyle in order to be able to accommodate all these extra people, could you perhaps quantify what the material level should be. If the current residetns object, do you think you have a right to disregard those objections? Also, do you think that, perhaps, you could raise your voice to ensure that land speculators, who plan to gain from population growth could be made to live as frugally as the rest of us.
Finally, given that it has been implied earlier that those opposed to high immigration are indifferent to the fate of those who are threatened with inundation with rising sea levels, when can we expect a clear answer on the question of of Australia’s export of coal and other energy resources? This is undeniably compounding the problem of global warming. Increasing the volume of Australia’s mineral exports (with the help of all the extra workers that the immigration lobby insists are necessary to do this) is one way to guarantee that the anticipated problem of climate change refugees will be worse.
In this light Bligh’s current expansion of Queensland’s coal loading infrastructure is nothing short of criminal. I can’t understand why you seem so indifferent to this question. I don’t understand why you aren’t shouting yourself hoarse on this as I hope I would do if I were in your shoes.
Dagget -
My thoughts on the bundle of phenomena collectively called globalization are morally conflicted. There is a lot of pain. There always is in these sorts of major mega-historical transitions. We can think here of the times in say, ancient Egypt where the apparatus of civilization co-opted the various tribal cultures and crushed their independence in furtherance of complex society (which is what I mean by ‘civilization’.) What happened then, what’s happening now well illustrates Nietszche’s accusation that all we call higher culture is based on cruelty.
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I sympathize with those in those movements described by one of the Media’s more nefarious oxymorons: ‘the anti-globalization movement’. You think globalization neither necessary or desirable. There we’d agree more often than you might think. We’d have to talk peacemeal about it; the good, the bad, the ugly et al.
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Ask yourself tho’ – is it inevitable?
Andrew B -
I’m not sure I agree. Perhaps my view is distorted by the number of times I’ve been labelled an anti-semite (never by the Jewish) when discussing Israel/Palestine. However I’ve seen many uses of ‘political correctness’ used to put words in word jail to the detriment (in my opinion) of inter-cultural understanding and affable relations. I put it to you that when one is mrally opposed to racists one might be a little disinclined to notice the more lucicrous postures in aid of fighting it.
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However my central point was not about fighting racism but curtailing its darker manifestations. I believe that there is a potential for inter-ethnic bitterness on a greater scale than we’ve seen before here. Howard’s strategy was to implictly encourage those ‘Aussies’ who’re ‘like that’ without explicitly endorsing a philsophically racist position. You’d remember better than us his comments on the Cronulla beach flag bearing crowd.
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I believe the liberal-left’s error in dealing with ethnic relations is to wear Rousseauian rose sunglasses. There’s an assumption that most people will see the light. That is not safe to assume. And amongst those whose liberty is impaired economically or institutionally it’s natural. Almost everyone in jail is a racist.
Adrien @ 117,
The illusion of progress
I don’t think that globalisation since the 1970’s was inevitable. Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” shows that it resulted from the subversion of democracy in many countries, beginning the military coup in Chile. In some countries such as Bolivia in 1985, it was done without resort to outright murder, but involved an elected leader going completely counter to election commitments. Shock doctor Jeffrey Sachs convinced the President to slash public spending and privatise large parts of the economy, whilst community and trade union leaders who might have been able to oppose this were kidnapped and sent to jungle detention camps. I consider the adoption of the neo-liberal program by the Hawke Keating Labor government in 1983 to have been equivalent to this.
Thatcher’s neo-liberal project was only saved by the Falklands War. If it was not for that she would have not been able to engage in large scale privatisations and her attacks on the union movement beginning with the miners’ strike in 1984, and Britain’s North Sea oil would not have been squandered so quickly.
I dispute whether the pain accompanying the development of capitalist industrialist society, or, indeed, any hierarchical society, was a good thing. In the case of Britain, viable rural communities were destroyed by the theft of their land and members of those communities were forced to work in appalling conditions in the mines and the Satanic mills in the cities.
The sustainable agricultural economies of the colonies seized by Britain and other European countries were turned into unsustainable monocultures to supply the needs of the industrialised nations and terrible ecological and social harm was wrought.
It is only the relatively recent and short-lived phenomenum of more widespread affluence largely based on finite petroleum that has allowed a facade, giving this process the illusion of progress, to have been erected.
Over longer past historical periods the replacement of autonomous communities with larger centralised hierarchical empires has resulted in the destruction of sustainable eco-systems (with the exceptions of Egypt and parts of China because of the peculaiarly resilant nature of these regions). Ancient history is largely consists of cycles of the rise of civilisations based upon available fertile soils and their subsequent collapses as a result of those soils being destroyed by poor agricultural practices. Centuries later after more agricultural soil had been created as a result of natural processes the whole cycle would repeat. This pattern is being repeated now, except our luck in having found tens of millions of years worth of captured solar energy in fossil fuels, unavailable to previous civilisation. This has prolonged this process somewhat more than in the past, but has not made it essentially any more sustainable.
To draw all of my previous post back to the issue at hand, namely the debate over whether or not to raise immigration to record high levels, past collapses of past civilisations could have been avoided if their political leaderships had understood that their natural environments had limited carrying capacities and had sought to keep the populations of those societies within those limits as well as, of course, adopting more sustainable farming practices.
Those who are advocating that we continue to cram ever more people onto this dry and largely infertile continent, in spite of the fact that we have obviously exceeded the carrying capacity of this continent (as the water crisis, as just one of many examples, should surely have proven conclusively) are, in my opinion, displaying no more wisdom, than those who ruled all those past failed societies.
I’m hard pressed to think of one past civilisation that ended because of ‘carrying capacity’. Most of the big empires ended because of military and economic over-extension or leadership disputes.
I’m hard pressed to think of one past civilisation that ended because of ‘carrying capacity’.
Easter Island?
Aztecs.
Sorry, make that Mayans.
Sumerians?
Also, in addition to the ancient Mayans, and ancient Sumerians, there were the North American Chaco Anasazi, Angkor Wat, Easter Island and quite a few others described in Jared Diamond’s Collapse which I can’t name right now. We should also include Ireland during the potato famine. Iceland came very close in the middle ages, but pulled back from the brink. Ancient Greece overshot its carrying capacity twice in ancient times and at least once again since the year zero. The collapse of the Roman empire is now widely understood to be a result of a combination of poor ecological and agricultural pracitces and overpopulation. According to David R. Montgomery’s Dirt – The Erosion of Civilisations (2007) civilisations in the North of Europe before the time of the Roman Empire underwent cycles of growth, population overshoot and collapse.
We are supposed to be smarter today than they were back then. Why, if we have all the knowledge now have of what they did wrong,are we making the same mistakes?
My apologies,
I seem to have messed up three out of three of my previous external anchored links. They are, again: past failed societies, ancient Mayans, and Chaco Anasazi.
Because we’re sufficiently confident/arrogant that we believe can compensate – eg better farming techniques, more effective use of water etc…. which may be true…
Never, ever exaggerate. It’s not ‘widely understood’ at all — at least, not if you’re talking about historians of the late Roman Empire. There have been a few books published by historians on the fall of Rome recently, and as far as I can tell none of them subscribe to an environmental theory. It’s just one idea out of many, and possibly one cause out of several.
Also, add that modern Spain. See New York Times article
In Spain, Water Is a New Battleground.
Let’s hope that the Spanish political leadership proves itself to be smarter, from now on, than it has been in the past and a lot smarter than their Australian counterparts are now showing themselves to be. Let’s hope they don’t attempt to increase their population in order to solve the problems faced by Spanish Land speculators as the Howard Government and this Government have done.
Daggett, the potato famine in Ireland was categorically *not* an example of extension past carrying capacity. It was an example of brutal political and economic repression, of land grabbing and dispossession.
Beat me to it Liam. Well put.
No, the comparison still makes me cross. Better argue the point out some more: if you’re going to list famine-era Ireland as an example of a society past “carrying capacity”, you might as well list modern-day Burma, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.
Hey, don’t let a ‘hear, hear’ from me interrupt your fulminatin’.
So the only examples of ‘carrying capacity’ contributing to the downfall of a civilisation are all preindustrial?
From which we can all take away the very strong message: Preindustrial societies should restrict their immigration intake.
Liam, the potato famine was a combination of the two.
“Between 1500 and 1846 Irish population increased tenfold to 8.5 million. As the population grew, the average land-holding dwindled to about 0.2 hectares (half an acre)” . That was enough to feed a family, if potatoes and nothing else were grown.
A million died in the famine and by 1900 the population was only half of what it had been due to emigration and the famine.(Montgomery page 108)
Whilst Britain’s colonial theft of much of Ireland’s produce was a factor, overpopulation contributed significantly to the problem, and it will here if we don’t act to stop population growth.
I think we could well include the countries you have listed. Obviously misgovernment, as well as overpopulation, compounds the problem.
Daggett, you’ve missed the point so hard that you’re off in the wilderness by yourself at the moment.
Misgovernment caused the problems in Burma, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, it didn’t compound it.
Well said Jobby.
Daggett, you’re only kidding yourself. By your logic, the British repression of Ireland—which drastically reduced the numbers of Irish living there—should have been beneficial to that island. Instead, the most economic benefit went in the nineteenth century to everywhere the Irish diaspora ended up: the United States, Australia, and most of all, the massively booming industrial cities of the UK, in which landholdings by Irish people were a lot less than 0.2ha. The average landholding of Irish migrants in the industrial UK would have been exactly zero, yet Britain thrived on immigration.
Perhaps raw numbers of population aren’t the determining factor? [He asks with brutal sarcasm]
“[He asks with brutal sarcasm]”
Moving on from the banal eh? Kudos.
Daggett – carrying capacity is the population your natural resources and technology are CAPABLE (hence ‘capacity’) of supporting. Not the population you are permitted to suppport on the leavings of a colonial power or ruling elite.
Doesn’t it tend to be a bit circular? The kind of things that you see in african countries where severe drought leads to disorganisation and poor/corrupt governments which leads to poor planning exacerbating the effect of natural disasters later on? And with infant mortaility really high, with no welfare of any kind for people, they pump out lots of kids.
You guys are clearly desperate to vindicate the left-cornucopian view, peddled since at least 1960’s that all we need to do to fix the world’s problems is to get rid of capitalist exploitation.
If we do that, it won’t mater if the world’s population is 6 billion, 9 billion or 100 billion. There will still be plenty left for everyone to live in even better material circumstances than we do now.
Let’s just pretend I didn’t list the Irish potato famine in my list of examples.
Can you demonstrate where I am wrong about the carrying capacity of Australia today and of past human civilizations?
There’s no argument that the whole kit and kaboodle is part of a complex system (hence the kind of feedback loop effect you’ve described). But in the case of Zimbabwe and Burma it’s entirely clear that ‘misgovernment’ (lovin’ that euphemism!) preceded starvation.
I’m not too hot on Ethiopian politics (apart from Haile Selassie) … and Easter Island is a complete mystery to me.
Jobby – one theory on Easter Island goes that they chopped down all the trees, thus destroying their only resource for land-based hunting, fuel and boat-building.
Daggett – your main argument is sound. Hence the fixation on your poor examples.
No worries. It’s what all of us want.
Industrial capitalism has *allowed* such wonderful things to exist as cities, mass production of food, and efficient (if unequal) distribution of resources according to the ability of an economy to buy and sell. Every example of a “civilisation” gone past its capacity that you’ve listed has *not* had the benefit of industrialisation and mass production, as Jobby has pointed out to you.
If the countries of the world we’re mentioning had as viable economies as does Australia, they’d be in a lot better condition. We’re thoroughly drought-stricken at the moment in Australia, yet unlike Zimbabwe our government isn’t kicking us off our land, bulldozing our slums, beating our unionists and dissidents and stealing our natural resources.
You are wrong about Australia’s “carrying capacity” because you assume that each immigrant takes something and brings nothing. To put it mildly, this is not how the economics of immigration works.
Actually, I was just pointing out that the ‘civilisations die because of carrying capacity’ argument looked really specious to me. As far as I’m aware I’m not part of some vast left-wing conspiracy (you do realise you sound like a real nutcase when you trot out that crap, right?)
I have no reason to believe that the current levels of immigration will destroy our civilisation because of the reduced ‘carrying capacity’ this implies. I have no doubt that there is some demographic point at which everything becomes very uncomfortable (probably not unlike Mega City One in the old Judge Dredd comics). But I fail to see why this would magically happen now.
At the moment we’re a net exporter of food and raw materials.
The Maya’s disappearance is a mystery. Eco-suicide is suggested but the data’s not conclusive. The Aztecs were outmanouevred by the Spanish and the Sumerians were conquered first by one of their own cities then by waves and waves of various people’s usually from the north-west.
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Their culture survives, in part to this day. It’s called the Old Testament. It is, I’ve heard, somewhat influential.
Jobby -
I don’t think Daggett’s alluding to a left-wing conspiracy so much as a way of seeing things. The view that the road to a better society lies in the elimination of capitalist expoitation, or capitalism itself, has been very much part of the Left’s agenda since at least the early 19th century.
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Dagget also has a point viz carrying capacity. This point is made often in Ecological politics. The Greens I believe entertained some argument about restricting immigration to save water. We might be currently a net exporter of food etc. But the AGW hypothesis predicts the desertification of our bread basket. And Nature is currently getting on with the fulfilment of prophecy.
Dagget -
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I have read The Shock Doctrine. It is the work of journalist and exists on the same level as 18th century pamphlets. That is not so say that it is worthless, 18th century pamphelts were highly influential and many great writers took part in their composition. However it is polemical. And does not tell the whole story.
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The Shock Doctrine explicates a certain development trail thru the processes of globalisation. A strategy and tactics where by persons of a certain mindset cluster including freemarket evangelists and American exceptionalists seek to graft their systems into the economies of foreign countries. Collusion between the US govt and various corporations and non-Goverment institutions really goes back further than the 70s. See for example what happened to this fellow. I think Klein refers to him.
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However The Shock Doctrine for example does not tell the story of the Soviet Union’s contributions to globalisation. Or how about the contribution of African-Americans?
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African-Americans?
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In this world, in the developed part of it: whose music do people mostly listen to? Rock music is a product of globalisation: East African folk music, slave work songs, African-American folk music, the Blues – Rock n’ Roll; export it to Britain, back comes the Beatles and the Stones: Presto! Rock music. I won’t mention Hip-Hop, Jazz etc. ‘Nuff said and OT.
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The Rolling Stones’ music is a feature of globalisation and so is you reading a book by a Canadian woman. Not to mention the forum by which we are conducting this discussion.
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I don’t advocate or dimiss The Shock Doctrine it excavates a strategy being used by groups aligned with or composing what we think of as neo-conservative. It catalogues iniquities and mistakes. Would Russia be a gangster-capitalist plutocracy if the reformers hadn’t been dipping their fingers in the money pot? (Probably: the KGB planned to take over from the minute the Sov fell apart. They succeeded. Would Castro have gone communist if the CIA had left Árbenz alone? Could we have stopped Dubya and Dumber spending American money on a resource war benefitting only their interests?
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Maybe. Maybe not. Can we learn from our mistakes and do it better next time. Yeah. Is this all that globalisation’s about? No. Globalisation is simply the sum of those ways by which the globe starts to act as an integrated whole. The expansion to large and larger (hence fewer) political and economic units is a process that began thousands of years ago. We have the technology to communicate instantaneously and travel anywhere on Earth within 24 hours. Hence globalisation.
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The way we globalize – that’s a debate.
Adrien @ 118
I generally agree with you in that assessment. Pushing happy-happy feelgood mantras about the cosmopolitan loveliness of a big cultural melting pot is not going to work and can be downright counter-productive if it ignores genuine concerns, fears and issues. It’s also why the many positives of migration should be more strongly defended on their own merits, to inform/remind people that while there are inevitably challenges involved, the net gains are significant. But I still think none of that should mean ignoring or not countering clear-cut manifestations of racism. It’s annoying being called an anti-semite when you’re not, but its better to wear that and point out why that’s crap, rather than have people never call something as anti-semitic when it is. The same applies with being called anti-American or anti-Muslim or whatever.
Daggett @ 116:
It’s obvious is it? So you genuinely think if you asked every Queenslander who lived here then if they would like to have the lifestyle they had in 1972 rather than the one they have now, they’d all say yes?
And even assuming your assertions are correct in regard to all the societies you claim collapsed due to the ecological impact of overpopulation, are you saying all of those places now have fewer people living there than they did at the time? If there’s more people living in those places now than there were then, then clearly ‘carrying capacity’ is not a permanently fixed number, but depends also on the economic, social and political situation, as well as things like efficiencies, planning and management, along with many other things.
As has been mentioned a number of times, large amounts of our water, energy and land usage are for agriculture and other resource extraction for export, not to feed and house ourselves. If we were to shrink our economy by closing it and only growing enough to feed ourselves, our ecological carrying capacity would be fine, (assuming our society didn’t collapse as a result of the social unrest).
I am not suggesting there are no problems with increased population growth, which is why we need better planning and management, as well as more honesty about ways we have to change our lifestyles to live more sustainably rather than assuming we can continue with the free ride while telling the rest of the world to go jump. We live in an interconnected world, which as Adrien says brings challenges and difficulties but I think also brings many positives. Trying to isolate one factor from everything else, or trying to isolate our country from everywhere else, is just delusional.
(and as for my position on Hansen’s concerns on coal exports, I’ve answered you twice. You might not like my reply, but don’t suggest I’m refusing to answer).
Carrying capacity is an emotive term. Some suspect that those deploying it view humans as akin to animals. The rattle of cattle cars is distantly heard.
The carrying capacity of the planet earth is entirely dependent upon technology. Of course it isn’t fixed. Cows can be grazed at higher stocking rates through the application of fertiliser.
But nobody is arguing that it is fixed. Let’s not get sidetracked by Easter Island.
What we should remind ourselves of is that the technology that has allowed our ‘carrying capacity’ to skyrocket in the last hundred years is now threatening to kill us off in large numbers.
That’s a result to be avoided when one can. Proponents of population reduction do not do so from misanthropic or racist motives – but from philanthropic concern for the welfare of future human generations.
This is not a stalking horse for Ein Volkists.
We need a population policy. Immigration policy plays into that but is not the same thing. There’s plenty we can do to manage our population growth and still allow for large numbers of immigrants to Australia.
Andrew,
Speaking for myself, I actually thought Brisbane was dull back in 1972, but if I had any idea what we were going to lose – affordable housing, access to open spaces, bushland and recreational amenities, uncongested roads, much less complexity of life and much more spare time on our hands – I would have fought ferociously to keep it the way it was.
You still haven’t commented on the Real Estate Institute of Queensland’s plans for our future, which is already the present for many. Is that a future you would like to see?
It’s not obvious to yo tht our quality of life hasn’t been destroyed since 1972. So preesumably yo don;’t think things like affordable housing, access to open spaces and recreational amenities are important. … or uncongested roads
(Firstly, apologies that I repeated myself in my previous post. Some words which were not meant to be included were posted.)
Has my question concerning coal exports been answered?
Andrew Bartlett wrote @ 149:
I don’t believe you have. In order that others can judged for themselves, I will include the exchange again:
daggett: A NASA scientist recently wrote to the Australian Government asking it to reduce our exports of coal in order to help combat global warming. Andrew, will you use the voice that you have in your remaining weeks as Senator to support his request?
Andrew Bartlett: That’s getting rather off-topic, but my ‘voice’ doesn’t disappear when I stop being a Senator. I’ve been opposed for some time to any new coal fired power stations being built without adequate carbon capture technology, which was the key point in Dr Hansen’s letter. I will continue to be opposed.
daggett:Also, you didn’t answer fully my question about coal exports. I wasn’t just talking about coal fired power stations.
I asked do you intend to support James Hansen’s call to end plans to expand coal exports? To his Credit Bob Brown did last year and got crucified by the Murdoch press for having done so. A group in Newcastle http://www.risingtide.org.au is trying to prevent the expansion of the coal industry in the Hunter Valley, which is destroying the environment of the Hunter Valley as well as helping to destroy the environment of China and fuel global warming. The same can be said also of Queensland’s coal export industry now undergoing rapid expansion.
If you are concerned about climate change refugees, it seems to me that you should be supporting those opposed to the expansion of the coal industry and, indeed, arguing that it be wound back.
Andrew Bartlett:It is off-topic, but while Hansen’s letter is a bit ambiguous, it seems fairly clear he is talking about predominantly about power plants. As I said, I support his call not to build any further coal fired power plants without adequate CCS technology.
If Hansen talked “predominantly about power plants” that doesn’t mean that we can’t consider the issue of coal mining, especially when Australian coal exports are contributing substantially to global warming. In any case, Hansen did indicate that coal exports are part of the problem when he wrote:
If you still insist that your above responses answer my question, then I can only assume that you are saying that you won’t be opposing the expansion of Australia’s coal exports. If I am wrong, then please correct me.
Why I don’t consider the issue of Australian coal exports to be off-topic
The reason that I don’t consider this matter is off-topic is that in earlier post it was implied that that those opposed to immigration do not care about those who are threatened with inundation as a result of global warming.
Andrew Bartlett @ 73 wrote:
Adrien it is wrong to allow inexperienced foreign gradutes into Australia on 457 visas when there are similarly qualified Australian graduates looking for work. Alongside the graduates are mature workers with experience and qualifications who are also unable to get these 3 month to 2 year contracts. This happens all the time in the ICT sector where the often high school educated user groups resent the salaries paid to ICT professional staff for delivering ICT systems to an undisciplined group who can’t decide what they want in a timely manner. Changing from Australian to Indians might be cheaper but it won’t deliver a better system faster. Also happens in civil engineering and geology as well.
Naomi Klein and The Shock Doctrine
Adrien @ 148
Some of your comments about The Shock Doctrine seem to be beside the point. For example, did we have to embrace the neo-liberal political program in order to be able to enjoy Rock and Roll music? I somehow don’t think so, but if the destructive neo-liberalism was the price to be paid in order for us to be able to enjoy the Rolling Stones and AC DC today, then I think that should have been discussed openly.
I found the book utterly riveting on almost very page. The first person I gave a copy to shortly after she began reading it e-mailed me, “Drop everything else and read it”, which I was doing anyway. I since gave away seven more copies as Birthday or Christmas presents to people who were all enormously grateful for the gift.
It told a story which has been concealed from our eyes by a clever PR campaign which the right wing think tanks were created to perform (see also How did we get into this messof 28 August 2007).
To a large extent these think tanks had succeeded in convincing much of the broader public, even those who opposed their policies, that
(a) They had not worked with the murderous military dictatorships that implemented their program beginning with Chile’s Augusto Pinochet in 1973, and
(b) In western industrialised nations they had acted using open and honest democratic means
The Shock Doctrine completely demolishes this myth and reveals the world’s leading neo-liberal ideologues, Milton Friedman included, as the vile despicable sociopaths that they were (or are).
Milton Friedman’s last public act was to urge corporations to take advantage of the calamity of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in order to achiever their goals of privatising Lousiana’s public education and public housing sectors. As I quoted elsewere:
It may be possible to find some fault with the book, but a perfect book might have taken another five years to write.
On the pre-1973 meddling of the US in World affairs, Klein herself draws the distinction when she discussed the 1965 coup Indonesia to our North. Back then government intervention in the economy as necessary. Since 1973, they were not (except to repress the populace and subsidise corporations with taxpayers’). Thanks for pointing out the example of Guatemala’s Árbenz.
A significant blemish in the book is its implied support for immigration, of which I have written about to Naomi Klein. Whilst this is a serious flaw, the book remains a brilliant, inspired and indispensable work in my opinion.
An ice free Arctic Ocean in 5 years!? So, why are we increasing our coal exports?
Further to my comments regarding coal exports @ 152, I have just Professor Tim Flannery explain on Radio National’s Science Show that he expects half of the rmaining ice in the arcitc Ocean to melt during this northern summer and for the Arctic Ocean to be ice free in five years time. Shortly after that it is expected that th Greenland Ice Shelf will start collapsing into the North Atlantic Ocean.
So, why are we tolerating plans to accelerate the rate of export of Australian coal?
Er… Dagget, dickheads like Flannery ain’t exactly the last word on anything. His record of accuracy isn’t any better than that of Greenpeace.
Er, Steve at the pub, and what exactly are your qualifications and expertise that make you qualified to question eminent environmental scientists?
FFS! Levels of coal exports have nothing to do with the environmental impact of immigration levels. The only tenuous link I could think of is that if we do manage to do better than countries like India & China in more quickly reducing our reliance on coal for power generation (as we should), its an argument to take lots of people from those countries that use coal more to reduce the demand for coal from those places – a fairly thin argument, but its the closest link I can see.
As for all the stuff about evil corporations profiteering on major disasters around the globe, it too has very little to do with the topic. However, your main source for running this line is Naomi Klein, who uses a framework based on human rights and equality – so its no great coincidence that she has an ‘implied support for immigration’, as it is consistent with the view of trying to prevent the exploiters from further increasing their already hugely unequal share of the wealth for themselves and keeping the exploited suitably downtrodden.
(Here’s my incomplete response to one of many obviously flawed arguments above. Will try to deal with the rest in time)
Andrew Bartlett,
It’s the nature of these discussions to go off on tangents from time to time. If you had carefully read my posts I think you would have found that they were all appropriate responses to other posts, including you own.
Andrew Bartlett @ 158 wrote:
I already explained at least twice, including @ 152, why I raised this issue. Should I explain it again?
Andrew Bartlett @73 wrote:
… which, as I said, appeared to me to be an attempt to imply that those who oppose immigration do not care for the fate of these people. I had hoped that from this, at least you would have grasped the necessity of taking an emphatic stance against the preparations now underway to expand Australia’s coal exports, which most scientists, concerned with the earth’s atmosphere, including James Hansen believe to be compounding the problem.
The Shock Doctrine has its truisms. But it’s somewhat reductionist. Handy at the time tho. Greedy corporations & the possibly diminishing pay packet…all very meaningful for the myopic voter. Those who lost their job as representatives of the people should realise that. But then, later, you have to expose it for what it is. Once its usefulness as a tool has run the course. I’m sure Andrew B. understands that…is working overtime, selflessly. Unlike some. Shame about the way things turned out, no accounting for the SLEEPINESS of the public in QLD sometimes. Still, gave Rudd an opportunity to be his good Christian Democrat self.
I reckon the Dems will be needed soon enuff. Or a similar Party.
Nigh on twelve years in the wilderness meant new approaches based on ancient, tried & tested strategies became necessary to counter the BS & propaganda from the side of politics that had lost much of its way due to a narrowing agenda of lobby groups, fatigue, myopic election by election focus, decisions that blew up in their face often due to the incompetent execution of plans by others across the sea, blackmail, profiteering, desperate tactics, support by old media & reliance on a Dear Leader & his ever-shrinking advice base. And time…the BOREDOM factor.
CEOs come & go. As do shareholders. And the sellers of some corporate/company/institution’s dreams. Corporations can play important roles in coordinating trade, delivering goods, providing innovative ideas & such. Some at the top echelons, driven by shareholder expectations and/or personal gain & such can collude, lean to the “uncompetitive practices” approach. And too much EATING…vertical & horizontal integration that makes the playing field unbalanced. Then again, what is “fair & balanced”…meanings can be capricious.
Justifiers of some corporations & critics of “disaster capitalism” sometimes have shares. Some are just trying to explain the complexity of the political economy and how it functions. Be wide-minded. Some in a high-minded way. I like the punk rock approach sometimes. In your face. But “fair-trade” coffee in an underground cafe w/ murals can be fun too. Radio stations do a good job of explaining & offering alternative perspectives if they don’t aim to SHOCK you into MORAL PANIC but rather INFORM in a shocking way. Cyber-space is growing exponentially…like the Universe? Almost as confusing sometimes as Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.
It’s also about SELLING the idea…getting OUT THERE…pumping hands, listening, showing interest, explaining to the hard of hearing…setting by example…starring in the local paper…getting hair cuts & styles created…smiling…not being afraid to show you care…& have a nice smile. Getting off the high chair. Getting down…
Rudd knows how to SELL on the ground. The places to go. That modern smile in a tightly wrapped costume…all modern & sleak…w/ the smile of the cheeky lad…w/ big ideas…the vision of a manga artist…tempered by the inner-moral guardian. I like THE RIDE.
Increased immigration can be SOLD if you look the people in the eyes & tell them why they need it. And what they LOSE if they don’t buy it. On the ground, in the air…it’s about SELLING everywhere. Do unto your opponents as they do unto you. Rudd knows his bible. As do some of his followers.
Funny how in a roundabout way U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA director Allen Dulles, having worked for Sullivan & Cromwell often comes up.
Interesting stuff daggett…sold well…but ADAPTATION to evolving events works too.
Moving on…
nasking @ 160,
Thank you for the response to my points about the The Shock Doctrine.
As to adaptation, could you explain how one adapts when confronted by outrages against democracy which happen every day of the week in Australia? Se as just a small amount of countless similar examples Bligh Government tramples on community rights to impose over-development. Bligh’s latest attacks upon the rights of South East Queensland Communities, I made add, is in large part the result of population growth suppported by Anna Bligh.
Cyberspace is, on the whole, wonderful, but it exists atop an edifice dependent upon finite non-renewable resources, such as petroleum and copper. So it would be extremely mistaken to assume that just because of the existence of cyberspace, we no longer need concern ourselves with old fashioned concepts like the material limits of the planet or with Klein’s principle focus, that being the distribution of those resources and political power.
My apologies for failing to properly end the ’strong’ tag at the end of
‘Cyberspace’ in the last paragraph of my previous post. I think I must have typed:
“<strong>Cyberspace<strong> …”
… instead of:
“<strong>Cyberspace</strong> …”
Like I said, many truisms daggett…but they catch on you see. The mainstream media & their enablers realise after awhile that your one step ahead of them. So they start posting the revelations in a distorted fashion…or turn on the DISPOSABLE…or the UNTOUCHABLES.
Knight of the long knives and such.
Adapting means making allies of compromise. Coming up w/ alternative strategies. Revealing TRUISM in multi-coloured ways.
Shoot too many arrows…march too far ahead & you will find yourself at Thermopylae. But the Persians have transformed into the Corporate media. And this time you don’t help foster Democracy…you FALL in a hail of smears, eaten by a viral thing.
Your ALLIES can come in many forms…they might seem like heavy footprint types…but they might be just doing the practical thing…making it affordable to feed education to the starving children…& healthcare to the masses (considering how devious the last lot were & their sleeper mates, it’s amazing any Laborite survived the Hospital sabotage…all Machiavellian stuff I reckon considering who were the Surgeon gatekeepers).
The Shock Doctrine is brill, it hooks into Global Warming, which is also brill…& ties together so many loose change ends & provides so much reality…it’s a top SELLER…but it’s also KNOWN w/ less than 5 mths to go. Reptiles in NY & their slimy, slithering toves have a voracious appetite…and know when certain parts of THE GAME are up…so they USE what they gobble…REGURGITATE it…make it DIGESTIBLE for the sleep walking.
Time to adapt…time for CHANGE…time to feed the maw in such a way it doesn’t know if it gets nutrients or something that will give it black BILE. Like the Saudi stuff.
In the end it’s an OPPORTUNIST…any headline to hook-in to the ads will do. Ads & reptile mates everywhere.
Dagget-
I didn’t say that. What I said was that Klein’s outline of certain aspects of the Right’s political programme – the drift back to laissez-faire capitalism called ‘neoliberalism’ is not the entire story of globalization. If we in Australia wanted to enjoy the music of the Rolling Stones then, yes, globalization via the apparatus of international distribution, recording, broadcasting and air travel was necessary. In order for the Beatles or the Stones or AC/DC to achieve what they have, they needed access to markets at a distance from those geographically handy. That’s what globalization means.
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If it weren’t for globalization none of those bands would exist. How would Lennon, McCartney, Richard and Jagger’ve ever have heard the music produced in Chess Studios, Chicago without globalization? In fact the cultural vectors that lead to rock music are entirely a product of globalization beginning maybe 400 years ago.
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My point simply addresses the myopia of ‘anti-globalization’ types. Characterizing ‘globalization’ entirely in terms of the nefarious activities of NastyCorp or free marketeers misses many points. One such is that this process by which commercial channels connecting every point in the globe to every other point are inevitable. Desirable.
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Yes. When Kissinger decides to wreck the Chilean economy in order to destabilize Allende that’s bad. After all the Chilean government is a matter for the Chilean people. But that’s not the whole globalization story. Think of the aid that pours in when there’s an earthquake on the other side of the planet? Or the fact that even if the local crop fails you’ll still be able to buy food in the marketplace.
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The thing is that setting yourself up against an inevitable process because you can point to unpalatable aspects of it makes no sense. One of the troubles with grass-roots type campaigns is that there’s almost always an absolute refusal to think strategically. There’s simply: what do we want? Something. When do we want it? Now. Rallies, marches, chants and blockheaded policy twaddle. Absolutist moral grandstanding accomplishes nothing.
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The inevitable result is burnout and loss. I’d suggest that the way to meaningfully engage the globalization debate is become a part of the process not simply beat drums in a predestinate generalized opposition.
There are a quite a few more points made above which do require a response. I will deal with a few more of them below:
Andrew Bartlett @ 149 wrote:
Assuming?!!
How can there be any doubt?
Of course, some stupid choices made by some of these civilisations clearly compounded the problem, but the stupidest choice of all was surely for them to assume that their environments could indefinitely handle the demands of ever greater numbers. The ancient Sumerian civilisation allowed its population to expand based on the assumption that the increased agricultural productivity made possible by irrigation came at no cost to the environment, when clearly it did. Australia in the twentieth and twenty first centuries has repeated the same stupid mistake, as a result of which vast areas of once productive farmlands have now become salt-encrusted wastelands.
The more usual folly of these civilisations, as referred to above, was of course, to farm further and further up the sides of hills, to support growing populations. Eventually the soil would be washed off the hill and the populations would collapse. After the soil had been built up again, by natural forces in ensuing centuries, the whole process would be repeated. Northern Europe, with its deeper and richer soils has gone through at least three cycles so far (Montgomery, p 86).
What other theories can explain how so many past civilisations have collapsed? I would suggest that reading Franz J. Broswimmer’s Ecocide (2002) Pluto Press, the core of which is only 105 pages, would be a very good investment of your time. If you have a little more time, then read Ronald Wright’s A short history of Progress (2004) or Jared Diamond’s Collapse or the abovementioned 's Dirt – The Erosion of Civilisations (2007) by David Montgomery.
Andrew Bartlett @ 149 continued:
No, but haven’t you are forgetting the role that fossil fuels have played in this?
Without fossil fuels, human populations would have been ultimately constrained as they have before the discovery of fossil fuels. With fossil-fuel-derived fertilisers and pesticides, the world’s agricultural productivity has expanded and human populations have been allowed to grow. Essentially, we have used sunlight captured over tens of millions of years to enable the unsustainable growth of human numbers.
After these are exhausted, we will be very lucky if we find ourselves able to support even the human numbers that existed before the Green Revolution of the 1960’s with our severely nutrient-depleted, sterilised, salinated and eroded soils.
No, it’s never ‘permanently fixed’, but, if we accept the laws of physics, then there have to be upper bounds beyond which it is impossible to sustainably increase populations. Given the immense and ongoing harm caused to the Australian environment thus far and our unsustainable dependence upon non-renewable fossil fuels and metals and bore water, it seems more than likely that Australia has exceeded those limits.
As Australian Aboriginal society is the only form know to have endured beyond a few hundred years, we may have to assume that the carrying capacity of this continent, without our resorting to fossil fuels may be best indicated by the Aboriginal population prior to European settlement. Even then, we need to remember that the carrying capacity may even less as a result of the harm done to this continent by European settlement. So, Tim Flannery’s estimated capacity of 7 million may turn out to be wildly optimistic.
Whatever, I consider it reckless and irresponsible for anyone to suggest that this Continent should increase its population, let alone increase it at the projected increased rate.
Andrew Bartlett @ 149 continued:
So, are you saying that you would be happy to see Australia cease exports of food to other countries? Where else do you imagine that the food that people from other countries are dependent upon will come from? (BTW, I am not in favour of large scale food exports in the longer term either, but I would like to see exports maintained, if at all possible, until other countries find the means to become self sufficient in food.)
What happens if we aren’t able to maintain our current agricultural productivity as a result of soil salinity, soil erosion, loss of soil nutrients, global warming, less water, increased urban sprawl, damming of agricultural land in the Mary Valley, the increasiong costs of fertiliser and pesticides, and diesel, etc, etc? What do we do if we can’t even feed our own increased population as a result? Shouldn’t we assume that we may well find it impossible to feed our current population of 21 million let alone 40 million?
Andrew Bartlett @ 149 continued:
Could you possibly indicate what you as the problems caused by population growth are, so that I can know where we at least agree?
Given the utter ongoing chaos in Brisbane, the above seems like an understatement. Have you tried to drive across the Story Bridge in peak hours lately? Have you noticed that every time there is an accident on any major arterial road, the flow-on effects turn all of Brisbane’s road traffic into grid-lock? Have you ever tried to catch a bus or a train in peak hours, or even just walk through the CBD lately? Have you tried to find rental accommodation lately? Do you think that this situation is likely to improve or get worse as a result of the increased rate of immigration?
Andrew Bartlett @ 149 continued:
… which happens to include elderly people injuring themselves as a result of being forced to water their gardens from buckets rather than from hoses, gardens in many parts of the country literally dying because of a lack of water, the residents of the Mary Valley and Wyaralong losing their homes.
Personally I am in favour of lifestyle changes, but let's first also be honest about one other point, that is the economic case for immigration. I would be interested to know whether you accept with the economic case for immigration or if you agree with me that it is garbage. I want to know whether you maintain, as economists would have us believe, that the current residents of this country will be better off if our populaiton increases to 40 million or worse off as I maintain. Let’s at least establish whether or not we agee on that point.
If we agree that immigration is likely to cause us to be worse off, given that everything else, including the standards of planning and management in this country remains the same, then I would have thought, that if we were truly a democracy, we should try to gain the informed consent of the current population, before we proceed any furhter down this path.
Please explain what you mean by ‘free ride’? Do you think people in Australia struggling under mortgage or rental stress to pay for past and ongoing windfall profits of land speculators have been given a ‘free ride’? Do you think people who have worked for years to gain tertiary qualifications only to lose my skilled job thanks to an engineered glut of imported skilled professionals have been given a ‘free ride’?
If anyone's been given a ‘free ride’ it is property developers and land speculators who shamelessly demand increased immigration in order to increase the value of their investments. I heard an economist working for the Real Estate Institute of Australia say this several times on an Australia Talks (then called Australia Talks Back) show in 2004.
Why should giving Australians a choice over what their population should be and over how many immigrants they allow to enter this country in order to achieve that population goal should isolate this country from the rest of the world any more than it does countries like Iceland or Japan?
Ask a hog what is happening.
Go on. Ask him.
– John Ashbery
wbb: “Daggett – what matter is it which country someone working on the trains or trams comes from?”
Quite so. Quite agree.
Indeed, what does it ever matter which country someone comes from? What does it matter which country someone comes from, who works at say the lumber yard. Or the dog pound. Or the dockyard. Or your cab driver. Or a cook. Or a housekeeper. Or, just go ahead and substitute the word “and” instead of “or” for all of the above. That’ll of course happen whether you asked for it or not, once you staked out your original position. Fluid dynamics and so forth. Look it up.
In fact, while we’re at it, what does it really matter what country someone comes from who is the prime minister of Australia? I mean, it’s just another job after all, why should it matter in the slightest if that person is originally French, or English, or even… American.
Yeah, let’s run with that last one. After all, what earthly difference would it make if Australia’s PM, and all members of parliament, and all state premiers, and all big-city mayors, and all the city councils, were composed of rootin’ tootin’ six-gun-shootin’ seppo asylum seekers fleeing from the oppressive Obama regime? What’s the problem? Are you a racist or something?
Wait, why stop there. Let’s not stop at just any old Uhmericans.
So… now your PM, your whole parliament, and all your state and city governments (plus the electorates that put ‘em there), are drawn from a sudden massive acute influx of 100% Southern Baptist white, redneck, patriarchal, Xian, heterobreeder, antichoice, antiObama, Hillary-votin’, pro-war, buck-toothed, cross-burnin’, Duke University-lacrosse-team-joinin’, good ole Southern cracka boys, yazzuh.
So… you got a problem with that? What are you, a racist or something? Some sort of restrictionist? How dare you make distinctions! This is their native culture, with the trailer parks and the Confederate bumper stickers and the Skynyrd covers and what-not, and you’ll just have to respect it. Under pain of law, need I remind you.
Besides, I’m sure all a’ them crackaz will learn to sing Advance Australia Fair just fine before too much longer, if you simply suggest it politely enough. But, you might also want to learn the Star Spangled Banner, plus Sweet Home Alabama and the guitar solo from Free Bird, just out of sheer multiculturalist pluralist whateveryoucallitism. Or else, you know, maybe you’ll land in one of them new re-education camps out on Xmas Island (call it Xmas, or we WILL prosecute) right next door to that Hanson chick, before you can even say Dukes of Hazzard.
Or not. After all, who can really tell, in our zany new tolerant world. But you’re cool with that, right? Right?
– j_p_z, finishing the paperwork as we speak.
YEEEHAAA…
hmmm….not sure about you but I’m not interested in headin’ to Deadwood.
Is it me or was that show tryin’ to inform us that you shouldn’t resist the oil, gold & land barons cause they be too strong & too smart & too vicious & too lucky? Now that’s odd…I.wonder how we ever got a parliament then?…a the bones & some flesh of a Democracy? I hate bummer endings. Go Democracy team!
I’m lookin’ forward to meeting some of our new migrants, now that old fashioned Dictation test, I mean Citizenship test, has been shown up for the discriminating piece of cr*p that it is & was meant to be…i reckon I might get to meet some wonderful people from overseas in restaurants & markets now who are keen to become an Aussie…regardless of the fact they don’t speak w/ a Queen’s plum in their mouth or have an amazing grasp of grammar & cricket (tho I reckon if our national team gets more multi-cultural they might start watching it…& me)
…might find some “luvin’ to be Aussie” individuals at the Brisbane Refugee Claimant’s Support Centre…a place that seems to have a heart & intelligent motivators to go w/ it. Now why can’t our governments be a bit more like that?
Well, at least Ruddy & co. are gettin’ on top of that detention centre business…now that was real ASYLUM & INSANITY stuff as far as i’m concerned. People shouldn’t be treated like chooks in cages…in fact, nor should chooks.
Thumbs up to the courageous Abebe Fekadu…Para Olympian (see QLD Stateline).
I think jpz was demonstrating that even slippery slopes come in supersize these days.
Ancient Sumerian civilization is the oldest complex of urbanity known to us. We may assume safely they hadn’t much of a precedent to go on. It’s also worth noting that this civilization was invaded and taken over many times.
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The points you make viz the need to take into account ecological impacts of immigration as well as the unsustainable nature of current water use on the world’s driest continent are apt. But the problem is global. Locking our borders isn’t going to be much of a solution. In fact if it gets to that stage then I’d wager we’ve entered the phase of resource war soon to be accompanied by other three fearsome riders.
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In that event we’ll have failed. (Again).
Adrien @ 169,
Thanks for expressing your agreement with me on the question of limits of the Australian continent.
In regard to the Ancient Sumerians and other ancient civilisations, I admit I was hard on them. It seems hard to see how they could have understood the ecological harm that their farming practices, including irrigation, were causing, that is, until after the damage had been done.
However, today we have no such excuse. If we don’t change our agricultural practices now, the damage already done will be further compounded and the future carrying capacity will be even less than it is now. That necessarily requires a reduction, as soon as possible, in our agricultural output and a corresponding stabilisation and eventual reduction of our population so that it (and some people overseas who, at the moment, seem to have no other food sources) can be sustainably fed.
Global solutions cannot replace local controls over population numbers
Adrien @ 169 wrote:
The human body could not function if cells did not have walls to control the movement of substances into and out of them. Those who are arguing here against any effective control of immigration into this country seemingly think that the human body, or, indeed, any organism, could function without cell walls.
We can’t hope to solve problems globally unless people first act locally to control population numbers and to preserve their own environments. If Australians in places like the Sunshine Coast, Redland City, Brisbane and the Goulburn Valley have no control over the numbers who move into their localities and/or their own natural resources, they cannot possibly hope to solve the problem locally. If no-one can solve their problems locally what chance have we of solving them globally?
The only possible plausible ‘global’ benefit from immigration is the hope that Andrew Bartlett (@ 53) implied that he has. That hope seems to be that the grave destruction to our environment caused by our increasing population is, somehow, going to be offset back in the countries from which the immigrants have originated due to population numbers being at least correspondingly less than they would otherwise have been if they had not come here. That is drawing a very long bow, and it doesn’t seem to me that Andrew Bartlett has thought about this very deeply at all. For example, what of the ecological footprint of those people simply moving here? It seems intuitively unlikely that alone would wipe out any possible gain from the implied likely decrease in the consumption of natural resources back in the country of origin.
This argument simply doesn’t appear to even stand up to even the most superficial scrutiny. I would certainly be interested to know what the hard evidence is that Andrew Bartlett bases his argument on.
I believe that I have demonstrated above and elsewhere that I am not indifferent to the plight of people in other countries. That is why I have advocated that we reduce our exports of coal, and that we should, if at all possible, continue to export food to other countries until such time as they have attained food self-sufficiency.
It would be gratifying to me if others were to also adopt these stances.
Correction
The last sentence in the fourth last paragraph @ 170 should have read:
My apologies
Dagget -
Except for Jacques Chester citing the LDP’s policies I don’t think anyone has argued for an open door policy on immigration. The cell wall argument is not an apt analogy or, if we indulge it, is easily countered by pointing out that altho’ organisms have cell walls these same walls are permeable by osmosis and that if they were not they would die. How else would they receive oxygen?
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Similarly it’s simply a pipe dream to think that every place in the world can become self-sufficient in food or anything else. Nations rely on trade, ours as much as anybody’s. Our self-sufficiency food-wise might also not be long for the chop.
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All that said I’m not entirely in disagreement with you viz the ecological impacts of immigration. There are finite resources on this planet – every part of it. Water scarcity and the resultant unsustainable use of underground reserves is most definitely an argument for keeping numbers down. However to keep numbers down in one place is not enough. For the world population to achieve zero growth it appears that development is a necessity. Agrarian economies foster social arrangments whereby it is standard to attempt to produce bigger and bigger subsequent generations. It is only in economies post-industrialization where this trend is reversed.
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There are two reasons for this. First, economically speaking, children are an asset in agrarian economies, the more kids, the more hands on the farm so to speak. In industrial economies they are a liability. (I apologize for the chilly economic rationalism but economics is necessarilly chilly.) The second reason is that one clear transcultural result of development is the emancipation of women. It is for this reason I’d argue that we bear witness to the rise of anti-modernity political movements throughout the world. In a modern economy women have access to education, contraception and economic independence. Given the option to pursue a life which does not consist solely of popping sprogs they tend to take it.
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I’m not saying you’re totally wrong. I’m simply asking you to dig a little deeper into these issues. Sustainability, many say, requires the eradication of globalization and industrialization. Many see this as obvious but it’s wrong. Whilst it’s true that unfettered and irresonsible exploitation of resources without regard for long-term consequences is ecologically destructive on an unprecendeted scale it is likewise true that the vicissitudes of modernity: science, planning, leisure, education and choice carry the potential to accomplish unprecendeted sustainability.
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This is my point viz globalization. Globalization is a collective noun demarking a bundle of phenomena. The ‘anti-globalization’ stance refuses to acknowledge that these are good, bad and indifferent. So instead of participating in the globalization process they stand on the sidelines with unsophisticated, blanket opposition to it. Such postures are easily vanquished by opposition. They are also pointless. I’m reminded of my first anti-nuclear protest which consisted of a quasi-tribal (literal) beating of drums at the arrival of an American warship. There were arrests, there was chanting, there was a feeling of collective solidarity. And there was a total absence of any change either to US policy viz the use of nuclear power/weaponry or Australia’s posture re same. What’s the point?
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If I were you I’d dig deeper. Act locally surely. But ask yourself what is the level of immigration that is sustainable. Also what changes do we need to make to ensure sustainability. It’s just not as simple as ‘ban coal’ and ’stop immigration’. Doing these things will sabotage the economy and people, newly impoverished will be placing sustainability very low on the list of priorities. Likewise the techniques available to accomplish this will be greatly reduced because the resources that support them will also diminish.
aargh – a thread that won’t die! One more time…..
Daggett wrote:
I don’t agree with you at all. I don’t think there’s much doubt that Australia’s economy is in a better state as a result of the current migrant intake, compared to what it would be if your views (and the official former policies of One Nation and the Democrats) had been followed for the last ten years. The same applies in most western countries at present.
However, migrants are people, as are people born here. The long-term benefit they bring to an economy depends on a wide range of things. Saying more people will always benefit an economy, regardless of all other factors, would be a silly argument – as would saying they will always harm an economy. If you genuinely believe this, you should be arguing for controls on the number of children people can have (along the lines of China) before you try to stop migration. Migrants are already alive, so they don’t add to global population numbers, where as newborn children do.
Daggett said
Just as well, seeing I didn’t actually make that argument. Suggesting I “implied” something, isn’t really a good enough excuse to then totally misrepresent me (again).
Nuance and complexity doesn’t seem to be something that you are capable of comprehending, at least in regard to this issue. so I’ll just say that there doesn’t seem to be much I disagree with amongst the balanced approach that Adrien is putting forward. Just assume I agree with him, unless I say otherwise.
Adrien @ 172,
Of course cell walls are permeable. If you had carefully read my post, you would already know that I understood that.
Have I ever said that we should not have any immigration? Or for that matter where have I ever said we should simply ‘ban coal’.
Just because Australia’s political leadership has not yet embraced Legrain’s utterly idiotic proposal of completely removing restrictions on immigration everywhere (i.e. the complete removal of cell walls) does not mean that we should not view current immigration levels as excessive. No healthy cell membrane would allow the entry of substances anywhere near to the extent that that is analogous to the numbers that this government is now encouraging to enter this country.
What you seem to be doing is attributing to me, without any basis, less sophisticated views than those which I actually hold.
What I have demonstrated is that it highly likely that the population of Australia has already exceeded its natural carrying capacity. If you agree with me, then you will accept the that we need a population policy which at the very least, seeks to stabilise it at the current 21 million and not seek to raise it to 40 million as Andrew Bartlett wants, or 50 million as former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, and presumably, also, Anna Bligh, wants. If it is not possible, at least that should be the goal.
Can you please make it clear whether or not we agree on that issue?
Ending population growth does not mean that it is not possible to allow both immigration into this country as long as it does not exceed population decline due to other factors. If you can’t see that then I think it is fair to say that it is you, rather than myself who has a simplistic understanding of these questions.
Andrew Bartlett @ 173,
The best way to bring discussions such as this to a more timely end is to properly address the arguments of your detractors and to make clear exactly what your own position is.
As one example you have not explicitly stated whether you support or oppose the increase in Australia’s coal exports, in spite of several attempts on my part to find this out. I have been left to deduce that you, in fact, support the increase in the rate of coal exports in spite of the fact that it is likely to make global warming worse and, consequently, increase the area of land likely to be inundated with rising sea levels.
I think in the circumstances it is just as reasonable for me to have drawn the other implication that I have from your assertion that immigration has no net ecological cost. If my deduction about your views are wrong, then I think you owe it to us to explain how, given the clear environmental costs entailed in immigration that I have given, why you still believe that the overall costs can still be negligible, if not zero.
Dagget -
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1st I don’t think the cell analogy is apt. 2nd the ‘natural carrying capacity’ of Australia depnds on the type of economy you have, technology, sustainable management etc. I’ve heard a range of figures about how many people you can stuff into the place. They all seemed to be based on some other agenda. A lot of the trouble with Australian sustainability is that per capita we’re the second most wasteful people on Earth.
In the current context (22 million people) The belief (Of Andrew) that population growth is good for the ‘economy’ is more severe and damaging than the conviction of a brain washed terrorist extremist. Destroying entire species, diluting fundamental wealth; ore, fisheries, state forests,.. by dividing them up and selling them to an ever increasing customer base, irresponsibly acquired through immigration, and baby bonuses.
With a hidden agenda, or perhaps shares in a construction company, or real-estate fund, a person may convince himself they are something other than monster, the enemy of Australia.
Buy a smaller house, stop using so much water, use less energy, pay more for land, food, parking space, roads, please help these people squeeze in more people so we can increase GDP and achieve,..well, nothing.
I haven’t been reading this thread for a very long time, but let me just point out that no one is under any obligation to further state or explain a position unless they choose to do so.
Kim @ 176,
I never said that anyone was under any obligation to properly explain themselves.
I made my comment in response to what appeared to be the unfair implication that could be drawn from the posts of another contributor that the cause of the seemingly overly long length of this thread was contributors other than himself:
I think if you had read the thread more completely you would appreciate why I consider these sorts comments unfair, inappropriate, and possibly intimidating to other contributors.
No-one is under any obligation to even read this thread, let alone to post to it, but if they choose to, perhaps they should appreciate that others may also feel exasperated at the length of this thread and the time they feel obliged to spend in order to deal with what they might see as unfair debating tactics of others.
A stable population doesn’t involve government intervention, or one-child policies,..it is the status quo, it is the norm in Australias’ modern society, where the fertility rate is less than 2.
Forcing the population up requires government tinkering.. active interference, via over-immigration, and financial incentives (baby bonus)
Many in current government… caught in a twisted nineteen fifties economic fantasy, post war period, a time before refrigeration, the internet and global warming,.. drive up population. Australia has one of the highest species extinction rate in the world, and the Higest per capita immigration intake in the world.
You are all sacrificing your priceless assets, exchanging them for a higher cost of living.
They call a fuel price rise a “Hike”, but a Housing cost increase a “Boom”.
What a sorry bunch people such as Andrew are..
I am sorely disappointed with Labours push for population increase, they are either insane , or harbour a deep hatred for this country, and its’ future.
Baron Richard you comments on economics are evident of thinking at least a micron deep. Putting the word economy in quotation marks is not an effective technique against the fairly plain fact that GDP will grow with population.
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The tension between economic growth and sustainability is of course also a fact the main political problem of our time. However resources flow in an increasingly global market place. The ecology operates on a global level. Whilst it is true that the thousands of Indians who moved to Melbourne last year probably have a bigger footprint here then they did back home in the long term it doesn’t matter because India is rapidly developing and we will not be able to stop them. The result will be the same.
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If we were to hault immigration right now, to stop coal exporting right now, to legislate to put natural resource exploration beyond the reach of development right now our economy would go deep South quick. There’s a school of thought that says if we don’t, we’re fucked. Okay fine. I don’t really know hence can’t really say. But you’re going to have to do better than that.
Andrew Reynolds‘ statement:
How is the argument that moral standards are falling covered by that line of reasoning Andrew? You’d rather have a lower standard of morality because more generally spread around? Don’t the decline of moral standards mean they are receding not spreading?
Adrien @ 180 wrote:
So what?
What does this astonishing revelation that gross GDP grows with population growth add to the discussion?
If fact, it is a well understood flaw of the GDP measure that disasters caused by human and natural disasters add to GDP.
The GDP (both gross and per-capita) has been discussed earlier by myself (@ 165) and others and I have argued earlier that the GDP (indeed even per capita GDP let alone gross GDP) should not be used as a basis upon which to decide whether or not certain policies, such as increasing immigration (or privatising electricity), should be adopted. No-one has attempted to dispute my argument about the GDP measure.
To simply raise the GDP as a justifiction for immigration without reference to what had been written earlier will only serve to turn what should be a progressive linear discussion into a circular discussion in which no progress is possible.
The second part of Adrien’s argument essentially asserts that nothing can or will be done to stop India from unsustainably growing and utterly trashing its own environment, so it logically follows that we should do the same here. (As Andrew Bartlett gave Adrien a blank cheque (@ 173) to speak on his behalf, presumably he agrees with this)
In regard to the third part of Adrien’s argument, clearly a substantial economic price has to be paid if we we are to turn our society back from the brink of disaster and save this planet for future generations.
However I never wrote that we should stop all exports immediately or completely. This is yet another example of the time-wasting use of ’straw man’ arguments.
Regarding India,
Had anyone here listened to Maude Barlow author of Blue Covenant interviewed on Monday on Radio National’s Breakfast Show on Monday (audio file available here for another weeks from Monday)?
Apparently in Southern India bore water pumps are operating 24×7 draining the water tables beneath the soil to sustain the water needs of the population above. Presumably it’s fine by Adrien that India continue to grow its population and per capita consumption of natural resources in these circumstances.
I have written about in Canadian author warns of looming global water supply catastrophe if anyone is interested.
Adrian,
Chinas GDP is greater than ours, however its average citizen has 1/10th the wealth.
No matter how hard they try, no matter how big their GDP gets, they will never enjoy the wealth; in land, housing, water, fresh air and food we enjoy.. it is a physical impossibility.
GDP per Capita should be our measure of economic success.
Do you see that, proudly announcing that BHP has ‘grown by 10%”, means nothing when the number of share holders has grown by 30% ?.. this means that all the share holders are now poorer.
I wonder how many people in government are just like you.
Still believing there is a conflict between the environment and economic growth, ..still thinking that GDP is the ultimate measure of success.
GDP-per-capita growth is driven by innovation, and the creation of new markets.
GDP however, can easily be obtained, simply by pumping people into a country.
Lets say, every 10 people, adds half a person worth of GDP increase.
Isn’t that great, wow isn’t the ‘economy’ growing splendidly,..
fool.
A very honest and perceptive description of your whole comment Dagget.
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I know you “never wrote that we should stop all exports immediately or completely”. And I never said you did. Nor did I raise GDP as a justification for anything. I simply said that trying to relegate arguments about economic prosperity in the context of sustainability debate to the irrelevancy box is nether a good idea nor effective. I wasn’t trying to reveal anything astonishing merely pointing out a significant fact.
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I also did not say that “nothing can or will be done to stop India from unsustainably growing and utterly trashing its own environment”. That is a fabrication. Do have the courtesy to substantiate these assertions or withdraw such remarks.
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This over-simplistic and careless resignation that “clearly a substantial economic price has to be paid if we we are to turn our society back from the brink of disaster and save this planet for future generations” is exactly the sort of simpleton nonsense that mars the Greens party and associated movement. Yes I believe that is probably true. The strategy is not to demonize the economy as if it’s some dastardly carbunkle on the human face of civilization. It is to think economically about sustainability. All else is swill.
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It’s very easy to talk about economic penalties in the abstract as if they are of little consequence. But down here on Earth a faltering economy means you don’t have a job, you don’t get to eat – y’know that sort of stuff. Whenever I hear some life-pampered nitwit from the leafy ghetto extolling the evils of Capitalism and romanticizing about life in an agrarian economy I’m not sure whether to buy the little shit a one way ticket to Karachi or buy a gun.
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It’s a dumbarse routine. At the very least may I please suggest that you actually read what people say and refrain from verballing them. I have not used GDP to justify untrammeled growth, I have not said that it’s impossible for India to develop sustainably and I am not building straw-men. Questions of ecologically sustainable development and growth are complex. You contribute nothing but some platitude viz Globalization is a Neocon Conspiracy or some such. And then you wonder why your rhetoric is ignored in hard policy circles.
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It’s ’cause they dannae take ye seriously. Why should they?
#184 BR -
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I’m well aware of the limits of GDP. Thanks for the lecture.
I wasn’t aware that there were any beatnik dropkicks in government at all.
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Is there something in the water where you and Dagget live Baron? There is a conflict between sustainability and economic growth at least as we know it presently. However I’ve never said that there is an inherent conflict. And I wouldn’t because there isn’t (I hope).
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I’ve also never said that GDP is the ultimate measure of success merely pointed out that there are reasons for linking the growth of population to that of economy and that putting inverted commas on the word is not an adequate retort.
Of course, Adrien (@ 185), how silly of me not to understand that the rapid development of India based on it’s non-renewable underground water supply, the burning of fossil fuels, etc., presumable with the goal of giving all Indians the same level of material affluence as in industrialised nations is not the same as “utterly trashing its own environment”.
That was a very good depiction of righteous moral indignation, BTW. I think you deserve an Oscar.
No, I must admit I hadn’t given much thought to the consequences of the economy failing.
I guess that means we have no choice but to go on digging up all our minerals as fast as we possibly can, and if we don’t have enough workers to allow us to meet the current demand, and build the North South Bypass Tunnel and the Hale Street Bridge and cover South East Queensland with concrete, asphalt and roof tiles, and pick all of our fruit, etc, etc, then our economy will falter, won’t it? This will, of course, mean that we won’t have jobs, we won’t get to eat – “y'know that sort of stuff.”
Stupid of me not to realise that. Of course, as any economist knows, we don’t need an environment in order to keep our economy running, so if we do all this, then we and all of our descendents can be assured of forerever more having jobs, being able to eat – “y'know that sort of stuff.”
Links which may be of interest
Anyhow, some links which may be of interest include: a review of Mark O’Connor’s Overloaded Australia, In The Beginning a poem by Mark O’Connor, Campaign Says U.S. Population Growth Devours Open Space, Destroys Wildlife Habitat, Paul Watson puts case against high immigration.
Paul Watson, as some may realise, is the leading inspiration of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The Steve Irwin of which he was Captain recently prevetn Japanes whalers from achieving half their planned quota of endangered Minke whales.
This thread seems to have become rather unpleasantly uncivil and overly combative. I think it’s time to end it.