The presumptuous Gittins

Back-scratching at a national level - Opinion - smh.com.au

I don't read Ross Gittins regularly, but in the SMH today he makes some very snide and questionable claims about Howard and immigration:

There's a saying among journalists that news is anything someone doesn't want you to know. So let me tell you all about John Howard's immigration program. It's a key part of the Government's economic policy, but one it rarely talks about.

Why? Because Howard wants his Battlers to think he shares their dislike and distrust of foreigners, especially boat people. And it wouldn't help his image for people to know he's running the biggest immigration program we've ever had.

Well, Howard has certainly made a repeated point about the size of the "official" refugee program. And after the Hanson fizzle, I just don't see that the Australian public has much interest in the level of Asian immigration, unless it has a strong Muslim flavour. (An understandable consequence of 9/11 and the West's increased interest in what that religion is about.) If anything, I suspect the concern about Muslim immigration has probably made most people see other Asian immigrants as benign.

In fact, Gittins provides another reason why "battlers" might not have the same concerns that they used to about immigration generally. He points out that:

The emphasis on skill means that permanent immigrants are a lot younger than the population they're joining. More than half are aged 15 to 34, compared with 28 per cent of our population. Only 2 per cent of permanent immigrants are 65 or older, compared with 13 per cent of our population.

Younger people from non-English speaking backgrounds are naturally going to assimilate faster than older, non-skilled migrants. Pauline Hanson used to complain about street signage in some areas being in foreign language only; skilled migrants who come here to work don't need that.

Gittins also claims this:

The Battlers' eternal objection to immigrants - which I believe was a big part of the strong public support for our shameful treatment of people on the Tampa - is that "these people will take our jobs".

I reckon the jobs issue had next to nothing to do with public attitudes about the Tampa. It was about the method by which a bunch of claimed refugees sought to get into Australia when they were in no danger at their last "staging post", and they were displacing other refugees who went through a long process of formal assessment.

Anyway, today, at current unemployment levels, even the "battlers" are unlikely to be concerned about that.

The fact is that the immigration issues have moved on from the 1980's and 1990's concerns, yet Gittins seems to think that the "battlers", having decided that they don't like immigrants of any kind, are still stuck on that position. I think this is treating people as unthinking dills.

As to whether Howard uses immigration cynically: I suppose it is easy to claim this if you don't live areas of Sydney where the question of Muslim attitude to women is not a matter of frequent real life concern. I don't agree with everything the government suggests about how to go about making sure all immigrants accept the social standards of their new country, but I don't feel that Howard's motives in wanting to deal with this should be seem as being purely cynical either.