The federal government’s new “migration plan”, announced by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on Thursday, is a spineless capitulation to One Nation’s constant attempts to blame migrants for Australia’s cost-of-living problems.
The primary targets in Labor’s plan are backpackers and international students. Who knew that these people, who pay thousands to be here—often for the privilege of doing crap, low-paid work—have been the problem all along.
Who isn’t the Labor Party targeting? Not the bankers squeezing billions from debt-laden workers. Not the supermarket duopoly with its fraudulent “sales” as it price fixes and gouges its way to multi-billion-dollar profits. Not the privatised aged care facilities that mint their owners untold millions every week while residents lie malnourished in their own excrement. Not the pokies venues and sports-betting companies making a killing from addicts.
Not the privatised utility companies taking a cut at every transmission point while pensioners freeze through winters and bake in summers to save power. Not the toll road operators given a license to print money off the back of commuters skipping meals so their kids can go on school excursions. Not the swarms of business owners who refuse to pay the legal minimum in wages and superannuation while their staff work two jobs.
Not the property developers and land bankers driving up housing prices. Not the bosses squeezing unpaid overtime from almost everyone in the labour force. Not the ever-expanding billionaire class that demands even lower taxes so that they can avoid contributing some of what they’ve stolen to help with hospitals and schools for their workers. Not the mining companies that help themselves by taking the country’s natural mineral endowments and selling them for private gain so Gina Rinehart can loan Pauline Hanson a private jet whenever she wants.
And certainly not the government itself, or the state governments, which refuse to build enough essential infrastructure and properly fund essential services.
No, Burke dedicated an entire National Press Club address to outline his plan to clamp down on post-adolescent Brits doing bonded labour on fruit farms (Burke will introduce a ballot for that privilege now) and students charged tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of listening to dull commerce lectures in which they’re told how the economy really works. (Hint: it’s not the exploitation of workers leading to the concentration of wealth at the top of society; it’s market efficiency delivering housing, electricity, food and other goods and services at the best prices.)
As with almost every major political issue in the 21st century—US-led wars, refugee rights, marriage equality, climate change and the environment, Indigenous rights, workers’ rights and so on—Labor politicians say nice things, responsible things ... until it looks like they might lose a few seats in parliament, or until the capitalists start campaigning against them. Then they melt like Mars bars under a hot sun.
In this case, it’s Pauline Hanson’s petty campaigning. Once again, the ALP has capitulated to avoid a fight. This characteristic is part of Labor’s DNA. Any serious fight against the right would mobilise tens of thousands in solidarity, and in a left-wing direction: against those at the top of society profiting from workers’ increasing hardships across the country. But because Labor governs for those at the top, it almost always tries to avoid upsetting them or their media mouthpieces, who invariably back the very right-wing forces that attack ALP governments.
In Labor’s quest to appease the right, to find anyone to blame—anyone except the capitalist class—it’s targeted a bunch of people that pretty much no one will leap to defend (except farmers and university administrators, on the basis that they want to keep exploiting them), so that it can seem to be doing something about the cost-of-living crisis caused by the capitalists.
This is not “smart politics” that will neutralise the rising far-right threat. This is centre-left politics accommodating the far right in real time and legitimising One Nation’s talking points.
It goes further. Ministerial Direction 110, which allows the Immigration minister to refuse or cancel visas, is to be amended to make it easier for the government to, in Burke’s words, “stamp out hatred”. Direction 110 already allows for visa cancellations based on someone’s involvement in a “public act that could incite hatred towards a group of people”.
We’re moving toward stamping out emotional states. Farmers who hate vegans, vegans who hate socialists, unionists who hate bosses, bosses who hate Labor politicians ... Who, in theory, couldn’t be targeted by “anti-hate” provisions? What power the minister is handing himself here. Perhaps he’ll empower Border Force to lobotomise anyone likely to be angered by politicians concentrating unaccountable power in their own hands.
The socialist position on the entire migration “debate” is simple: the problems working-class people face result from society being run in the interests of profit-oriented business owners who have accrued too much wealth and power. The division that ought to be emphasised is not migrant vs native born, but worker versus boss—the exploited versus the exploiter.
Only by recognising this fundamental class division can any genuine advance in living standards be made or any genuine unity be forged: the unity of workers and the oppressed against the capitalists and their political representatives.
