I haven’t succeeded in finding a transcript of the debate. There is a link to the first 28 minutes of the audio at keatingmedia. I can’t find a link at the National Press Club site.

Both the Murdoch Press and Fairfax (the latter an acknowledged AAP feed) managed to report Burke’s answer to one particular question – why turning boats around is unworkable. When Labor came to Government the operational agencies set them straight, he said.

The Oz turns tries to turn it into a Burke blooper. Fairfax/AAP give credence to Morrison’s lame response that if he doesn’t know about it the advice may not exist.

Here’s Fairfax’s own report which is not much better. It has two sentences about the policy content of the debate towards the end.

The Oz’s media diary says “they were were in dull agreement: the number of people migrating to Australia must be savagely reduced, and soon”. That’s simply untrue. Burke didn’t commit to anything but rational planning.

The Business Spectator had a bit of a go, but the best report I’ve found by far was by Leo Shanahan in the Gold Coast Bulletin who also had an article in The Punch He points out the cynical nature of Morrison’s approach ending his opening statement with:

“Immigration is about deciding who comes to this country, the circumstances under which they come and I would argue the purposes for which they come.”

Morrison ended his summing up with:

“The Coalition stands to repay Labor’s debt, to end Labor’s waste, stop Labor’s new taxes and, most significantly, to stop the boats.”

You see, Morrison reckons that Labor’s inability to stop the boats goes to their incompetence as a government, along with “over-priced school halls, pink batts and mountains of debt”.

Burke says that to understand the population issue you need to look at the principle of regionalism. The needs of the Pilbara are not the same as the needs of Penrith. The issue in the end was planning for quality of life. He rejected the notion of a single number. Any global number reflecting total immigration in the country will be wrong, he says.

Burke pointed out that if extra asylum seekers turned up in boats, as per Morrison’s obsession, this would add not a single person to Australia’s population, because the numbers in the humanitarian program remain the same.

He also pointed out that many of the categories were simply not under government control. You can’t control how many Australians go overseas or how many come home. He might have added that you can’t control the Kiwis either.

I thought it was rationality versus hysterics. The Coalition has certainly put the wind up the education industry, a story that rocketed around the world. In all likelihood few people realise that education is our biggest export industry, after iron and coal and bigger than tourism. The private education sector also came out swinging.

Concerns about tourism also popped up and I didn’t even google for that.

In The Australian Financial Review of 26 July demographer Peter McDonald said that the problem is that there is no official labour market forecasting in Australia. Without it we will always chase our tail on infrastructure. He said migrants are made scape-goats for a failure in government planning.

To be fair, Morrison does have an answer for the issues that Burke is trying to come to terms with by establishing three expert panels. Just hand it over to the rejigged Productivity and Sustainability Commission, says Morrison. Meanwhile make promises about specific numbers that you have no control over and scare the bejesus out of everyone about those sinister people in boats.

BTW, Burke said that the Labor Government has doubled spending on roads and increased spending on rail by a factor of ten. I did hear Albo getting pinged the other day by the meeja because he announced funding a study on a very fast train, implying that we need action rather than talk. Imagine what they’d say if he built the project without planning it. Media reporting is becoming very silly.

That may be why the Coalition’s response to Burke’s appointment yesterday was a repeated effort to ignore the entire issue of population policy in favour of claiming too many boat people were coming.

On the other side, Labor has read the tea leaves on population and quickly and professionally put together a decent facsimile of action. The Prime Minister can now say that he has appointed the first Population Minister. A review is under way, giving Rudd an excuse to duck the issue between now and the election, but also providing the basis for a response to the Little Australianists like Dick Smith whenever they demand action to curb the plague of people coming here and eating our food.

Bear in mind Labor’s own heritage on immigration is mixed. The Parliamentary party has long been a “big Australia” supporter, from the days of Calwell through to its recent and occasionally continuing history of ethnic branch-stacking. But trade unions have been traditional opponents of high immigration, for exactly the reason business supports it, and the urban Left fringes of the party will lean to the environmentalist view that there’s very much such a thing as too many people.

As Robert noted, the Liberals are in conflict with their own business constituency, and the Coalition’s “broad church” encompasses some fairly wild extremes of nativism and racism. It’s worth underlining that these sentiments are more profound than electoral dog-whistling; they both reflect community attitudes deeply held in some sectors, and genuinely disturbing sentiments and reflexive prejudices on the part of those who articulate them. Kevin Andrews is a good example.

So, taking into account the argument Keane also makes about Labor’s heritage, what we have is a debate that doesn’t break neatly along partisan lines, and is overwritten with conflicting but complementary scissions around race, history and culture.

Julia Gillard’s interview on Lateline last night was interesting. She made what I thought were some insightful and incisive points about a Lowy Institute survey released today on population issues. Gillard showed a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of an apparently inconsistent and contradictory public opinion, and made the important point that projections (such as those in the Treasury’s 2010 Intergeneration Report) are just that, not immutable, shapeable into the future by political decisions we collectively take. At the same time, she deftly rubbished the Opposition’s opportunism on population and refugees.

Tony Jones’ questions appeared to presuppose a premise that politicians were wary of enabling a public debate on immigration, but also that such a debate could only be one which is highly partisan.

I think there’s a certain insularity (in both the literal and metaphorical senses of the word) to the trope that immigration is best left unspoken; that it should be a matter of consensus between the two major parties, lest public sentiment upset the apple cart. There’s a paranoia among elements of the political class – a disdain for public opinion – which results in a policing of the borders of population issues as pernicious as the fear some pollies are fond of inculcating about the policing of Australia’s borders. There’s something of the Nineteenth century fear of the mob about this attitude; a parochial concern that Australians are incapable of having a civic conversation if race is at issue.

We actually have everything to gain as a nation, I would argue, in conducting a mature and reasoned debate on population and immigration. Even if some unsightly ghosts are summoned up in the process.

Labor’s tendency, after the One Nation phenomenon, and Howard’s race-baiting in 2001, was to retreat behind a fence on immigration; to soften the border control rhetoric but to leave its underpinnings intact. Gillard’s own crafting of a consensus immigration policy was part of that move. That Rudd Labor is now prepared to facilitate a responsible debate on these very same issues, and to reframe them, seems to me to be something quite significant, and something that ought to be welcomed. A truly Big Australia would be one that could craft a collective conversation with a horizon longer than that of the next day’s papers, and the next election.

KERRY O’BRIEN…Does that suggest to you, when you think of all of the associated problems about trying to plan for that, in terms of urban … he talks about Sydney with a population of seven million, Melbourne a population of seven million, Brisbane four million. Is this going to be a time for national leader to come well and truly to the fore across the whole spectrum of problems thrown up by that?

KEVIN RUDD: Well first of all Kerry, let me just say: I actually believe in a big Australia. I make no apology for that. I actually think it’s good news that our population is growing.

Contrast that with many countries in Europe where in fact it’s heading in the reverse direction. I think it’s good for us, it’s good for our national security long term, it’s good in terms of what we can sustain as a nation.

Secondly, on the specific national leadership questions that you point to, I agree with you 110 per cent. Why do you think that we are now, for the first time in this country’s history taking national leadership for the roll-out of national infrastructure, and new national broadband network. For the first time the Australian Government investing directly in urban rail projects across Australia, for the first time the Australian Government taking a direct engagement with the planning of our cities, and also with, for example, the housing approval processes and land supply arrangements of the states and territories and local government. Why? National leadership is necessary to plan for the future of our population, a challenge which has left languished before.

An explicit population policy is something that Australian governments have ducked for decades. The Rudd government has been little different, taking the opportunity to duck the recommendation for such from the 2020 summit. If I had to guess, it’s because, like Rudd, they are collectively in favour of a “big Australia” but aren’t prepared to say so publicly for fear of voter backlash, and the immigration program is quietly delivering what they want anyway. At least Rudd and Henry have put their views out there for consideration.

Personally, I think both “camps”, such as they exist, have severely flawed arguments. Most flabbergasting of all, it seems Rudd still identifies with an echo of “populate or perish”. But, beyond that, the economic case for immigration is, as I understand it, rather more ambiguous than its boosters would have us believe, with much of the economic benefits from migration ending up with migrants themselves, with economic gains to the broader population fairly limited. On the other hand, the environmental issues surrounding migration often ignore the fact that an increased Australian population will probably in large part result in a change to net agricultural exports, rather than changing agricultural land use all that much.

Oh, and one last thing. Henry’s concerns about four overcrowded cities and endless pressure on the urban fringe assume that population growth will continue to concentrate almost exclusively in Sydney, Melbourne, south-east Queensland, and Perth. But why is this set in stone?