Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke laid into Liberal leader Angus Taylor on Wednesday, accusing him of being the first senior Australian politician to call migrants from democratic countries more worthy than others.
He claimed the Liberal leader was chasing memes and One Nation voters in his immigration speech on Tuesday and delivered a point-by-point rebuttal to three key planks of Taylor’s policy.
It was a rare move for the home affairs minister, whose sensitive portfolio means he tends to steer clear of the cameras. But Burke’s decision to call a press conference and take on Taylor on Wednesday signals what is at stake.
It’s not just the Liberals wanting to woo disaffected voters with a hardline stance; Labor needs to defend the society it believes in. Both parties have now planted their flags in a renewed debate over immigration.
Burke’s ultimate point – that “modern Australia and multicultural Australia are the same thing” – paints Taylor as its opponent and emphasises the fight is over our social fabric.
Taylor’s response – “It is clear that Tony Burke will not stand up for Australians. He’s standing in the way of Australian values” – positions Labor as the barrier to a more cohesive society.
It was the Coalition that drew the battlelines this week, when Taylor released the first stage of the Liberals’ immigration policy with a provocative speech that argued it was time to drop “politically correct preaching on immigration”.
“Past governments blindly repeated mantras about Australia being the world’s most successful multicultural society – and diversity being our strength,” the opposition leader said.
It was a stunning break from the Liberals’ last prime minister – Scott Morrison described Australia as “the most successful multicultural immigration country on the planet” – and it shows how times have changed.
Debate over immigration has been bubbling in Australia while reaching boiling point overseas. Angst about immigration numbers here has been fuelled by the record numbers of people who arrived after the pandemic, coinciding with increased concern about housing and the economy.
Social cohesion has been frayed by the war in Gaza and strained to breaking point by the terror attack on a Bondi Jewish celebration last December, and all of this has animated anxiety about the nature of migration.
Taylor’s speech this week legitimised those questions at the national level. Responding to a surge in support for One Nation, as well as backlash against migration observed across the Western world, he is making the case for Australia to have a discriminatory immigration system.
Burke’s response on Wednesday showed that will not go down without a fight. He took to the lectern to dismantle Taylor’s arguments like the second speaker in a debate team.
He started with Taylor’s plan to make the Australian Values Statement a binding visa condition. In principle, it’s not so controversial: new migrants must already sign it. Taylor’s complaint is that this has become a “tick-a-box exercise” – that’s why he wants it to be binding.
In practice, it’s less straightforward. How would it be determined a random visa holder in the community has contravened a belief in the “fair go”?
This earned Burke’s first rebuttal. “I still want them to provide the example of the person who we can’t currently cancel or a refuse a visa to, who they want us to be able to,” he said.
Burke’s second target was Taylor’s desire to make learning English an obligation for permanent visa holders. “English is necessary to live, work and integrate into Australian society,” Taylor argued. Again, many would agree.
Attacking this from one side, Burke said it underestimated how new arrivals often already attend language courses and seek to improve their English. From the other side, he said it was an insult to millions of Australians who would be “looking to their parents as people who don’t speak great English but who are great Australians”.
The third rebuttal was to Taylor’s most controversial assumption – that people from liberal democracies integrate better into Australian society than others (namely, those from countries run by fundamentalists, extremists and dictators).
“The evidence just doesn’t stack up on that,” Burke said. He name-checked migrants from China, Vietnam and the former USSR. He described cancelling the visas of neo-Nazis who fronted NSW Parliament last year, saying each came from liberal democracies.
“This concept that, somehow, you are more worthy if you come from a liberal democracy, is a view that I have not previously heard a senior Australian politician make,” Burke said.
“Effectively, that ‘liberal democracy line’ is wanting to take Australia in a different direction. And that is not who we are … Australia is – and should always be – a country where we judge you by who you are, not where you’re from.”
Taylor would argue he is saying the same thing. “[The policy] will discriminate based on values – not origin, race or religion,” he said earlier on Wednesday. “This is important.”
But the opposition leader is walking a fine line when he says migrants from some countries are better fits than others, and with his suggestion that post-war European migration is the gold standard. Both those comments infer there is another, inferior class of migrant.
It will be left to those at home to fill in the blanks. That might be what some parts of the country want to hear. In others, it could be electoral poison. Burke’s offensive on Wednesday suggests Labor wants it to land that way.
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Natassia Chrysanthosis Federal Political Correspondent. She has previously reported on immigration, health, social issues and the NDIS from Parliament House in Canberra.Connect viaXoremail.
