View From The Hill: Let's Make The Argument For, Not Against, Migration: Malinauskas

(MENAFN- The Conversation) It's not very fashionable to be strongly pro-migration these days.

The Albanese government continues to agonise over how to rejig the program to meet its budget targets – including Net Overseas Migration (NOM) falling from about 300,000 at present to 225,000 by 2027–28.

The coming changes are being posited as major but after arguments among senior ministers, there is still no date for their unveiling.

The opposition has committed to a big cut in the intake, although it is yet to release the details and the final baseline figure won't be out this year.

Each side is reacting to strong public sentiment for a smaller intake, which is being fanned by One Nation.

Now South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has delivered a counter view, and warnings, declaring in a speech to the Sydney Institute this week:

Malinauskas warned against“the prospect of mainstream politics entering a political race to the bottom for who can cut migration numbers the most. This is not unfortunate – this is madness”.

Such a race would hurt every Australian economically, and that would further undermine democratic discourse.

Malinauskas said people in leadership positions must explain how unreasonably slashing immigration would not fix problems, but actually make them worse.

Read more: What is migration for? How national needs wrestle with a basic human desire

He highlighted how important migration was to deal with an ageing population, as well as helping federal and state budgets.

In the battle to lift productivity migration was“one very big lever” for governments, Malinauskas said.

The Treasury' Centre for Population had found migration boosted innovation.

Malinauskas warned cutting the number of international students – in the sights of both sides of politics – would be an automatic cut to Australian research funding, given their contribution to financing research in the higher education sector.

Malinauskas said there could be "no greater act of national economic self harm” than slashing migrant numbers for political purposes.

He acknowledged that anti-immigration sentiment has risen in Australia. But people should not react by claiming Australia was a racist country. Rather,“people are rightly worried about their economic future”.

The populists' anti-immigration campaign cut through because“it is simple and easy to remember”.

“For the majority of fair-minded Australians, just anxious about house prices and inflation, calling them racist – explicitly or implicitly – is just plain daft.”

Malinauskas criticised both the far-left and the far-right.

Malinauskas lamented that no one was arguing for the migration program that had served Australia so well after the second world war.

“The targeted, calibrated, balanced, skills-based, risk-managed system we've developed over eight decades.”

On Thursday, speaking on the ABC, Malinauskas captured the essence of the problem in the populist debate.

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