Latest / The Morning Edition / How real is Australia's immigration problem?

Transcript

How real is Australia's immigration problem? · The Morning Edition

0:06
S1: So we're just pulling up at Ebenezer Church. It's a
0:09
S1: little known town north west of Sydney. It has a
0:12
S1: pretty extraordinary history. That church is the oldest in Australia
0:18
S1: and so is the school next door. They were actually
0:21
S1: built by the first group of free migrants to travel
0:25
S1: to Australia, not convicts or British redcoats, but a group
0:29
S1: of eight families from different religions who came on board
0:33
S1: the Coromandel in 1802. And that's the reason why we're here,
0:40
S1: because while Ebenezer was the first town settled by migrants,
0:45
S1: this little bend in the Hawkesbury now has almost no
0:49
S1: non-English speaking migrants at all. It's among the whitest towns
0:54
S1: in Australia.
0:57
S2: Hi, I'm Samantha Salinger Morris and this is The Morning
1:00
S2: Edition from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. The
1:03
S2: past five decades have witnessed immigration on a scale the
1:06
S2: globe has never seen before. Countries around the world are
1:11
S2: convulsing with anti-immigration sentiment.
1:13
S3: If we allow them to bring their migrants in in Portsmouth,
1:19
S3: I'll start doing it everywhere.
1:22
S4: All illegal entry will immediately be halted.
1:27
S2: Australia might be an island, but it's no different.
1:30
S5: They couldn't give a damn about the impact mass migration
1:34
S5: has had on everyday living standards of Australians.
1:37
S2: This is a dangerous moment. Investigative journalist Eric Bagshaw argues
1:42
S2: immigration has become a scapegoat because successive governments have lost
1:46
S2: control of policy levers and infrastructure has failed to keep up.
1:51
S2: And at the same time, whole swathes of the economy
1:54
S2: are dependent on temporary migrants. Bagshaw visited migrant communities, both old,
2:00
S2: like the first migrant town of Ebenezer and new to
2:03
S2: work out what has gone wrong and what Australia must
2:07
S2: get right. It's September the 28th. Welcome, Eric, back to
2:13
S2: the podcast.
2:14
S1: Great to be here, Sam.
2:15
S2: Okay. Well, let's start in the town of Ebenezer. What
2:18
S2: does this town look like today? Long after it welcomed
2:22
S2: the first free migrants in Australia?
2:24
S1: So it is a town basically now of a church
2:29
S1: and a school. It's got plots of farmland around it.
2:33
S1: It's a very bucolic place and and really quite beautiful.
2:37
S1: And it's just on the edge of the sort of
2:41
S1: Sydney metropolitan sprawl where development is really encroaching. But Ebenezer
2:48
S1: is really a kind of a bolthole that echoes a
2:53
S1: time long gone. Morning. We're here to meet Ted Brill,
3:03
S1: the secretary of the Ebenezer Church, and a local historian.
3:07
S1: How are you? Thank you very much for coming and
3:12
S1: meeting us out here bright and early. Much appreciated. Eric.
3:15
S1: Nice to meet you. This is my colleague, Janie. So
3:19
S1: Indigenous Australians have been there for tens of thousands of
3:22
S1: years before, but the first free migrants settled there. These
3:25
S1: people weren't convicts. They came out from mostly from Scotland
3:29
S1: and Britain, and they wanted to make a new home
3:32
S1: because Britain at the time was caught up in the
3:35
S1: Industrial Revolution. It was a pretty smoky, awful place. Food
3:38
S1: wasn't very good. And so Australia seemed attracted to them.
3:42
S1: And so they ended up coming out to Australia and
3:45
S1: settling essentially on the banks of the Hawkesbury. And they
3:51
S1: built a church there. And today it is the oldest
3:55
S1: continually running church in Australia. Has it? Has it changed
3:59
S1: much in that time?
4:02
S6: Oh, those first years were so. I'm a country boy.
4:06
S6: The country field was here. That sense of community was
4:09
S6: so strong and has a chance. There's that community side
4:15
S6: still here in floods and bushfires, but otherwise we don't
4:21
S6: sort of know one another as much as we did.
4:22
S6: And not many locals are involved in the church anymore.
4:25
S6: So much so.
4:28
S7: That like.
4:32
S1: Before we get to have a chat, we're wondering if
4:34
S1: we could take a quick photo because the light's really nice.
4:38
S8: What do you need a photo of me?
4:39
S1: Because you're the star of the show.
4:45
S2: Do you want to pause just for a second? Because
4:47
S2: I want to talk about the numbers and the policies
4:49
S2: and how we got here. You know why your piece
4:51
S2: is so timely, because one of the main arguments that
4:54
S2: we do hear from politicians, and you feature it in
4:56
S2: your reporting, is that while the number of permanent migrants
4:59
S2: in Australia has barely changed, it's the number of temporary
5:02
S2: migrants who are sort of in the spotlight, right? They're
5:04
S2: being targeted as being the problem. So tell us about this.
5:08
S1: A lot of the focus really in Australia in this
5:11
S1: debate has been on this net overseas migration figure. And,
5:15
S1: you know, people talk about 225,000 people. And that is
5:19
S1: the number of people who stay in Australia for longer
5:21
S1: than 12 months versus the number of people who leave.
5:24
S1: So effectively, the Bureau of Statistics calculates that our population
5:27
S1: grows by that amount over that period of time. Now,
5:32
S1: within that, the permanent migration intake for the last ten
5:37
S1: years has been remarkably stable. It's about 200,000 people a year.
5:41
S1: But what's changed is that the number of temporary migrants,
5:45
S1: that's people who businesses can sponsor to come out on
5:48
S1: skilled visas. University students, uh, backpackers has exploded. We're now
5:57
S1: in a situation where there's over a million temporary visas
6:00
S1: that were issued last year, and that really is driven
6:07
S1: by a thing called the demand driven system. And that's
6:11
S1: a byproduct of essentially the liberalization of migration in the 1990s,
6:17
S1: where the government said, if you have a business and
6:19
S1: you have a job that can't be filled by an Australian,
6:23
S1: you can bring in someone to fill it. That also
6:26
S1: was transferred to universities when Australian government said, we don't
6:31
S1: want to fund universities as much with taxpayer money anymore,
6:34
S1: universities said, okay, well, we'll bring in international students to
6:38
S1: subsidize it. And both those factors have coalesced into this
6:41
S1: situation where the government actually doesn't have control of the
6:46
S1: temporary migration system. But there was one key decision that
6:50
S1: really turbocharged this situation. And that was taken on July 1st, 2014.
6:59
S1: That day, then Immigration Minister Scott Morrison froze the temporary
7:05
S1: migrant income threshold.
7:07
S9: I call the honourable the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.
7:10
S10: Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I thank the member for
7:13
S10: Eden-Monaro for his question.
7:14
S1: And that is the level of income each temporary migrant
7:17
S1: needed to earn to become employed in Australia.
7:21
S10: It's not enough just to have laws. You have to
7:23
S10: be prepared to enforce those laws, madam Speaker.
7:26
S1: He froze it at just above $53,000. It would stay
7:31
S1: that way for a decade. By the end of 2023,
7:35
S1: when it was finally unfrozen, more than 90% of Australian
7:40
S1: jobs earned more than that threshold. And that means that
7:44
S1: over that ten year period, temporary migrants who were meant
7:48
S1: to come here on skilled visas, that is, people who
7:52
S1: are meant to earn more money and contribute to the
7:54
S1: economy were actually able to be paid well below average wages.
7:59
S1: And that is how we have effectively ended up with
8:02
S1: temporary migrants subsidising huge parts of the Australian workforce.
8:10
S2: Wow. So this dates back to the 1990s because I
8:12
S2: think a lot of people must be, you know, they're
8:14
S2: reading the news and like myself, you kind of think, gosh,
8:16
S2: when did this begin? But you're saying it stems all
8:18
S2: the way back then?
8:19
S1: Yeah. And and as Tony Burke, the home affairs minister, says,
8:22
S1: he's in control of the immigration program. If infrastructure keeps up,
8:26
S1: that's not a problem. If there are jobs that need
8:28
S1: to be filled and those jobs are filled, that's not
8:29
S1: a problem. If everyone has a house to live in,
8:32
S1: that's not a problem. What's happened is that effectively those
8:37
S1: things have not kept up. And so we have a
8:40
S1: situation where what fuelled economic growth For decades, Australia went
8:46
S1: through the longest unbeaten run of economic growth in the
8:49
S1: developed world, partly through migrant workers and international students. That
8:55
S1: was all fine, but the politics have changed and housing
9:01
S1: has changed. And in some areas that are seeing infrastructure strain.
9:05
S1: It's taking longer for people to get to work. It's
9:07
S1: taking longer for people to move around their suburbs, and
9:12
S1: those pressures are real. It's just that right now, with
9:16
S1: the way that politics has become increasingly focused on grievance
9:23
S1: and anger because of cost of living, because of perceived,
9:28
S1: you know, economic in opportunity, it means that migrants are
9:33
S1: a very easy target for all of those issues. Okay.
9:37
S2: Well, this is what I really wanted to ask you about,
9:39
S2: you know, and whether the number of temporary migrants really
9:41
S2: is a problem in the first place, because Home Affairs
9:44
S2: Minister Tony Burke said in his interview with you, that
9:47
S2: part of the problem is that the debate has been
9:48
S2: amplified through social media, right? But then you went into
9:52
S2: regional towns and some locals told you that they want
9:55
S2: to attract more people to their towns. So tell us
9:57
S2: about that.
9:58
S1: Yeah, there's this real contrast in terms of the economic
10:01
S1: pressures and the debate online. As Professor Alan Gamblin says,
10:06
S1: he's a professor at the Australian National University. This is
10:10
S1: a tale as old as time, when economic pressures and
10:13
S1: things like the cost of living are exacerbated. People blame
10:18
S1: the witches, the infidels, the locusts, the outsiders, because as
10:24
S1: far as they are concerned, their reality has been made
10:27
S1: by someone else. It's very difficult for people to blame globalisation, inflation.
10:35
S1: It's much easier for people to blame the other. And
10:38
S1: in this case, that's migrants. that is happening on social media,
10:43
S1: and people need a simple explanation as to why their
10:46
S1: life may not have panned out as they had hoped.
10:49
S1: At the same time, in regional areas, you have a
10:52
S1: situation where towns are desperate for people behind the sandstone curtain,
10:57
S1: as we call in New South Wales, which is effectively
10:59
S1: beyond the Great Dividing Range and the Blue Mountains, and
11:03
S1: likewise in Victoria. These areas are rapidly ageing. You know,
11:08
S1: the median age has gone from places like West Wyalong,
11:12
S1: um from, you know, 23 to to the mid 40s
11:17
S1: in the space of the last few decades.
11:18
S11: Do you want new people coming in. Do you want.
11:20
S11: Of course. Yeah. Of course. It's either. How do you
11:25
S11: put it populate or die. Look at Griffith. It's a
11:28
S11: really successful multicultural town. Uh, so we do we need people, uh, to,
11:34
S11: to support our, our towns.
11:36
S1: They really need new people to come out who are
11:39
S1: younger to buy products from their shops, to send their
11:43
S1: children to school, otherwise those families that are left behind.
11:49
S1: They start to leave their children look for opportunities elsewhere.
11:52
S1: So you are in this situation where people are scared
11:57
S1: of change and blaming outsiders, but at the same time saying,
12:01
S1: we would love to have new people into the town.
12:04
S1: And in that scenario, One Nation has harnessed some of
12:10
S1: that grievance to drive its popular vote, while at the
12:14
S1: same time, some people may actually be voting for something
12:18
S1: that could be bad for their communities.
12:21
S2: After the break.
12:22
S11: I want to label us as racist. They wanted to
12:25
S11: label as bigoted.
12:33
S2: Okay, well, let's get into this because you did. You
12:34
S2: spoke to a resident of West Wyalong. This is Betty Wu,
12:37
S2: and she's an interesting case, right? Because she migrated to
12:40
S2: Australia from southern China. And your conversation with her really
12:43
S2: touched on this dichotomy, right? Like she wants more people
12:45
S2: to come to the town. She's a migrant herself. But
12:48
S2: then she's also supportive of Pauline Hanson and One Nation.
12:51
S2: So I guess, yeah, just walk us through what she
12:53
S2: told you.
12:54
S1: She's angry. She has seen her restaurant go from a
12:57
S1: once relatively thriving Chinese restaurant on the main drag in
13:02
S1: West Wyalong. And now, you know, we walked in there
13:05
S1: lunchtime on a Thursday. She was sitting in this darkened room,
13:09
S1: the banquet tables all set up, but no one else
13:12
S1: in there.
13:13
S12: Everyone made money.
13:14
S13: So it's all mostly more about that now. No, I won't,
13:19
S13: I won't go cold. Okay. I'm on pronto. Oh, classic.
13:27
S13: Is the best.
13:29
S1: And that was not just that Thursday afternoon. This has
13:32
S1: been weeks and months and years of economic decline.
13:36
S13: Is there fewer people in in West Wyalong?
13:39
S12: No. Very quiet.
13:40
S13: Very quiet.
13:41
S12: Just one. People working.
13:43
S13: Yeah.
13:44
S12: There's not many. Everyone older left?
13:47
S13: Yeah. Everyone older? Left.
13:49
S12: Yeah. Because no one working in there. Not much stock there.
13:52
S13: Yeah.
13:53
S12: Because it's too quiet.
13:54
S13: Yeah.
13:54
S1: And so Betty Woo looks at her reality and says, well, look,
13:59
S1: labor hasn't fixed this. The coalition hasn't fixed this. I
14:03
S1: just need something different. And maybe even though she's a
14:08
S1: migrant herself, Pauline Hanson and One Nation, maybe they'll do
14:11
S1: something different. And for people in that kind of an
14:15
S1: economic bind, the protest vote, the anger at the two
14:20
S1: major parties is a very powerful motivator. As she said
14:24
S1: to me, something needs to change.
14:26
S2: You also spoke to a number of farmers, among them
14:29
S2: Keith Rowe. So tell us what he told you.
14:32
S1: He basically sounded a warning that if nothing is done,
14:36
S1: they won't be there. That these towns will just die.
14:41
S1: And you drive past some towns and areas of far
14:44
S1: western New South Wales, and they have, you know, the
14:47
S1: weatherboard homes are boarded up, the pubs are shut. And
14:50
S1: West Wyalong is sort of a medium sized town. But
14:53
S1: they can see it that if there aren't new people
14:57
S1: who come to these places and settle and start businesses
15:01
S1: and spend money, then all that these farmers have known
15:05
S1: might one day be gone. And they're terrified. And so
15:09
S1: part of that vote, which once really went to the
15:12
S1: nationals who were, you know, strong rural advocates for those regions,
15:18
S1: is now moving to one nation because, again, they are
15:23
S1: angry about their economic circumstances. But as Keith Rowe and
15:28
S1: his friend Rod Hardy made the point, they may be
15:31
S1: angry about their circumstances, but they desperately want people to come.
15:37
S11: Stop making pronouncements on high. Uh, with with, uh, trying
15:42
S11: to cast us as mindless, uh, rednecks, uh, that it's
15:49
S11: so very easy for them. Uh, they want to label
15:52
S11: us as racist. They want to label us as bigoted.
15:56
S11: They want to label us as, uh, Luddites. And it's.
16:02
S11: You only have to have a walk up any country
16:04
S11: town and talk to people and notice that people are
16:07
S11: so much deeper than that. But they would never know
16:10
S11: because they will not leave the confines of their safe, uh, electorates.
16:15
S1: And so this vote for one nation, it puts people
16:20
S1: in a very difficult position and it becomes a protest vote, um,
16:26
S1: against a whole range of policies and really migration in
16:31
S1: that mix is just one very small part.
16:35
S2: It's such an incredible insight into it, into really how
16:37
S2: people on the ground, and perhaps other Australians in other
16:40
S2: places are also feeling the same way. Like you say,
16:43
S2: are voting even if it's against their own interests perhaps.
16:46
S2: Or you know how perhaps non-ideological voters are, I guess. Right?
16:50
S2: And so do you think this concern about immigration, is
16:53
S2: it just to touch on something you said earlier, is
16:55
S2: it in part to do with just infrastructure not keeping up? Like,
16:57
S2: how much of that is this issue? Because this is
17:00
S2: definitely something that people many people you interviewed spoke about, right?
17:04
S2: Especially in residents of some of these big boom areas
17:07
S2: in the outer suburbs of our cities.
17:10
S1: Yeah. So our colleague Pat hatch went out to Tarneit,
17:12
S1: which is on the, the, the Melbourne fringe. Um, fastest
17:16
S1: growing suburb in Australia. You have a situation where houses
17:20
S1: are being built very rapidly, but the transport connections, the schools,
17:25
S1: the parks, all those things that make places Liverpool are not.
17:29
S1: And so those pressures are very real, particularly in those suburbs.
17:35
S1: And they're actually the places that really one nation is targeting.
17:39
S1: If it wants to be a kind of credible opposition
17:42
S1: or even government, it has to win some of those
17:45
S1: outer metropolitan seats. And the infrastructure message there is, is,
17:48
S1: is strong because as with all things, it takes time
17:53
S1: to build up some of those assets and it takes
17:56
S1: a lot better planning. Actually, we're probably facing a bit
17:59
S1: of a reckoning because you can't just build and build
18:03
S1: on the outer edges of cities and expect to get
18:06
S1: the same result. And that is a real challenge, not
18:10
S1: just for the federal government, but for the state governments.
18:13
S1: You know, they have to reckon with this idea that
18:17
S1: if people are going to be productive members of society,
18:21
S1: you actually need to make sure you have the infrastructure
18:24
S1: in place. And then hopefully from that the economics and
18:29
S1: the the sense of self will follow. And maybe one
18:35
S1: day when things are built in a manner that is um,
18:39
S1: is more equitable and more affordable, well, then people stop
18:43
S1: blaming migrants.
18:45
S2: It is so interesting though. I mean, especially looking to
18:47
S2: that point about, you know, when will people stop blaming migrants?
18:50
S2: Because you mentioned that, you know, we're due for a reckoning.
18:53
S2: But one of the reasons why you've done this reporting
18:55
S2: in this area is because there is this backlash against migration.
18:58
S2: You know, not that not just that we're seeing here,
19:00
S2: but of course, it's across the Western world, right? And
19:02
S2: it is often driven by right wing movements. And here
19:06
S2: we've got in Australia, obviously, we've got this resurgence of
19:08
S2: One Nation. So I'm just curious about your thoughts on that.
19:11
S2: Are you thinking like, well, we're due for this reckoning.
19:13
S2: But meanwhile, you know, this right wing anti-immigration sentiment is,
19:18
S2: if anything, it's growing.
19:20
S1: It's the echo chamber. So again, if you are looking
19:23
S1: at the algorithm and social media is telling you, you
19:27
S1: know what? You're right. Actually, the reason you don't feel
19:31
S1: good about your future is because migrants are taking it
19:34
S1: away from you. That echo chamber is something that has
19:38
S1: never existed on this scale before. It used to be
19:41
S1: the case that the mainstream media, for all of its faults,
19:45
S1: would try and balance out the arguments, but now you
19:48
S1: just have podcasters and far right figures who are broadcasting
19:52
S1: to audiences of hundreds of millions across the world and
19:56
S1: telling them that their prejudice is not inaccurate. And so
20:01
S1: what I would argue are genuine infrastructure pressures, but not
20:05
S1: crisis levels, is being blown up into a major political
20:12
S1: issue because so many more voters are finding justification in
20:18
S1: the messages of people made through social media.
20:21
S2: And Eric, just to wrap up. I mean, after all
20:23
S2: the research you've done, the communities you've visited, the people
20:26
S2: you've spoken to. I'm just wondering, like, how do you
20:28
S2: come away from this story, thinking and feeling about the
20:31
S2: number of migrants that we actually have in Australia?
20:34
S1: I think that the truth is that Australia doesn't actually
20:41
S1: have an immigration problem. I think we have an infrastructure problem,
20:46
S1: and we really need to be very careful in this
20:50
S1: debate about how we characterize the causes of this issue.
20:57
S1: The very difficult political reality of this is that if
21:03
S1: you take away anyone from any of these migrant classes,
21:09
S1: if you suddenly cut working holiday makers, then farmers are
21:15
S1: up in arms. If you cut international students, you're putting 30%
21:19
S1: of university revenue at risk. If you start to restrict
21:25
S1: temporary migrants who work in Australia's kitchens, then the price
21:28
S1: of your steak on a Friday goes up. We need
21:32
S1: to be honest about what migrants do and how they
21:36
S1: effectively subsidise the Australian economy. 16% of the working age
21:41
S1: population in Australia right now is a temporary migrant. It's
21:45
S1: an extraordinary number, and we have got there by basically
21:51
S1: sleepwalking into a situation that has not been controlled by government,
21:55
S1: where we have a guest worker economy, because Australians either
21:59
S1: don't want to do those jobs or those jobs don't
22:02
S1: pay enough. And the people who do those jobs are migrants.
22:06
S1: So if we want to start talking about taking away
22:10
S1: different parts of the migration program, then you know that
22:14
S1: that is a discussion that Australia should have. But you've
22:17
S1: got to be honest about the consequences. And I think
22:22
S1: at the end of the day, it's on the federal
22:25
S1: governments and the state governments to start reckoning with the
22:28
S1: idea that we cannot continue to be this sprawling suburbia model.
22:33
S1: Maybe have an open discussion with Australians about what kind
22:37
S1: of cities we want to build, and then we need
22:39
S1: to be much, much better at getting migrants to places
22:44
S1: like West Wyalong and building the services there to make
22:48
S1: sure that people want to live there. That's the other
22:50
S1: part of this debate is that we keep talking about,
22:52
S1: why aren't there any migrants out in some of these places? Well,
22:56
S1: because there's no jobs. And how do we put in
23:00
S1: the circumstances in which people want to live in these places?
23:04
S1: And Pat and Mustafa Rashwan, another one of our colleagues,
23:07
S1: did some really great work in places like Shepparton and Young,
23:12
S1: where they talked to vibrant communities that had attracted migrants.
23:16
S1: And it meant that those places not only survived, but
23:20
S1: actually thrived. And if we continue to just hold on
23:24
S1: to this idea of a monocultural past that some are
23:28
S1: nostalgic for, we will end up older, we will end
23:32
S1: up poorer, and we will end up dumber.
23:38
S2: Well, it's such an important issue. It's I think our
23:40
S2: mastheads were just ripe for digging into this. We're so
23:43
S2: lucky that you have led the way. So thank you
23:45
S2: so much for your time.
23:46
S1: Thanks so much, Sam.
23:50
S2: Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Tammy
23:53
S2: Mills and Kai Wong. Our podcasts are overseen by Lisa
23:57
S2: Muxworthy and Tom Mackendrick. If you like our show, follow
24:01
S2: The Morning Edition and leave a review for us on
24:03
S2: Apple or Spotify. Thanks for listening.