It’s day six of the Kristina Keneally news cycle, a story that sums up everything broken about the Australian Labor Party.
Tu Le, daughter of Vietnamese refugees and a self-described political outsider, looked set to win preselection in Fowler, one of Australia’s most diverse seats. Then an ambitious senator and former NSW premier — publicly fawned over by party insiders but far less popular among actual voters (who didn’t send her to Canberra in the first place) — is parachuted in so she can get more zingers in question time.
Everyone agrees Keneally is a sharp media performer, and a reliable Senate grenade-lobber. Everyone agrees Le is the kind of person Labor should be preselecting if it wants to actually reflect the communities that votes for it in droves. But everyone also agrees that nothing can be done. The arcane factional dispute which means Keneally must go to the lower house simply had to be resolved, and Le must take the fall.
“Hang in there,” was Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s advice to Le.
Insiders v outsiders
This whole Keneally-Fowler saga makes most sense when viewed as a tension between party insiders and outsiders, an instance of Labor’s cooked, blinkered internal politics spilling into the public arena.
To those outside the party, Keneally running in Fowler — a seat she has no connection with, and where she’d be hard-pressed to win a proper preselection vote — seems absurd. But insiders have performed very public mental gymnastics to explain why all this is good, actually. Albanese said Labor was still the party of multiculturalism because US-born Keneally was a migrant success story, and he was part-Italian.
Former PM Paul Keating made the same point. Chris Bowen, one of Labor’s most senior western Sydney-based MPs, said the move was good because it would mean Fowler was finally to be represented by (touch wood) a minister. Tellingly, the most pointed public criticism of Labor’s diversity challenge has come from two Egyptian-born backbenchers, Anne Aly and Peter Khalil, with the former labelling Keneally’s move “hypocrisy”.
Keneally has straddled the insider-outsider tensions from the start of her political career. Her preselection in 2003 for the east Sydney seat of Heffron, just three years after getting Australian citizenship, came after a bruising internal battle that saw her usurp long-term member Deirdre Grusovin, sister of former federal minister Laurie Brereton. Keneally’s husband, Ben, was meant to run; ironically, it was gender-based affirmative action that meant she took his place.
In 2009, Keneally became premier as MPs were hurrying to abandon the sinking ship that was NSW Labor, drafted in to inevitably soften the devastating electoral blow ahead. On his way out the door, predecessor Nathan Rees effectively labelled her a puppet of corrupt powerbrokers Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. Keneally responded by saying she was “nobody’s girl”. By that point, though, she was clearly an insider.
The factional applecart
But despite that status, there’s another tension here. If Keneally is such a star performer, and so crucial to Labor’s parliamentary team, why didn’t her own faction back her for top spot on the NSW Senate ticket?
The answer is that while Keneally might have public support from the leadership, she lacks the deeper institutional support among the union number-counters that keep faction and party running. All Labor appointments, from preselections to frontbench spots, are dictated by a delicate balancing act, where the factions and the unions that back them need to be kept happy. Keneally disturbed the applecart one time too many.
In 2018 she was drafted in to run in the Bennelong byelection and, when she lost, to fill Sam Dastyari’s vacant Senate seat. Both were captain’s calls by Kaila Murnain, the NSW general secretary and self-described “boss lady” of the party. The decision to give Keneally the Senate spot ahead of union-backed frontrunners, including the right-aligned Transport Workers Union’s Tony Sheldon, accelerated Murnain’s demise, finished off by an ICAC hearing and an Aldi shopping bag filled with cash.
The factional applecart explains why Keneally’s own faction passed her over for Deborah O’Neill, whose achievements in politics most punters would be hard-pressed to recall. O’Neill has firm backing from her union, the influential Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association. If Keneally could oust the Shoppies’ pick for top Senate pick, no future union spot would be safe, and the applecart would be derailed.
To those deepest within the party machine, preserving the natural order is far more important than getting the best parliamentary team or reflecting the Labor heartland. It explains why NSW Labor general secretary Bob Nanva urged the right faction to back Keneally’s lower house move.
For Keneally, the best case is a Labor election win, a safe lower house seat, and a plum ministerial job. If it loses, she’ll be stuck with three more years in opposition, and a reputation as a disrupter of the natural order even more entrenched. That’s tough to live with, even as a party insider.
It really does speak to the internal issues in the ALP. I consider myself fairly politically tuned in, yet I had never heard of the seat warmer Deborah O’Neil and that’s a problem. Too many factional heavy weights just eating up space and living off the public purse whilst adding nothing.
same here!
You’ve probably never heard of the SDA either who’s stooge O’Neil is
Another ALP preselection beatup. Must be an election on the way.
Yep.
I agree, surely Tu Le is very young to walk straight into a safe seat. I would think she needs more experience before she enters parliament. Keneally may have baggage, but surely featherweight compared to say Scott Morrison.
Oh but she comes from a diverse background; that’s all that matters to the twits
Hey, at least Keneally’s white, as are all the good ol’ boys supporting her… Not a great look for Labor. And you know the libs are going to use this come the election.
“Not a great look for Labor”. Labor, Labor & only Labor has to put up with exaggerated coverage of preselection issues. It’s a national sport amongst the press. One gets a bit sick of it.
“Exaggerated coverage of preselection issues”, just google “Nasty saga you almost missed” to get the lowdown on the granddaddy of preselection issues.
Morrison, a death wish held by those who voted for him
Real politik, and neither the first nor last time; diversity will come but slowly (both NSW and Vic do well at state level). I’d like to think in the background Tu Le is being supported in a political career by Labor while taking one for the team in the short term.
In the short term Labor needs all the talent it can get on the front bench in the lower house to defeat the LNP, IPA and especially legacy media, but this will require access to experienced operators vs. having a novice MP learning the arcane rules of Parliament.
Agreed.
No argument about the dearth (hi, grundle!) of front bench talent but KK will not fill that gap.
She may be fine as a photogenic, cardboard cut-out mouthing script hewn by apparatchiks from focus group symposia or a factional operator but SFA else.
The right to be exploited and remove wages and conditions equity in Australia, that’s what we’re talking about here. The diversity challenge.
The Fair Work Ombudsman released a damning report… exposing the super-exploitation of backpackers, young overseas workers and students staying in Australia on the 417 working holiday visa.
The inquiry showed that young workers employed in the agricultural and farming sector under the visa often received half the legally-mandated rate of pay, while some were forced into slave-like conditions with no compensation. Workers were routinely denied penalty rates and other basic rights, and were threatened by employers with the revocation of their visa.
The report noted that some businesses also forced employees to pay in advance for the “opportunity” of securing regional work. Others were blackmailed into paying their employers for an extension of their visa.
Based on a survey of 4,000 417 visa holders, the report gave a sense of the scale of the exploitation. Some 66 percent said that underpayment was common, while 28 percent did not receive any payment for some, or all, of the work that they performed. The majority stated that they would not make a complaint for fear of victimisation.
The report featured a number of case studies. In one instance, four mango orchards near Darwin in the Northern Territory underpaid 12 workers, 11 of them on 417 visas, a total of $35,630. Most were paid $2.74-$4.79 per hour. Some received nothing.
Another study examined the operations of subcontractors. In one case, 417 visa holders hired by a subcontractor for Thomas Foods, Big Mars Pty Ltd (Big Mars) did not receive overtime or penalty rates for working up to 50 hours per week. They were not paid superannuation, and were required to establish an Australian Business Number (ABN)—effectively changing their legal status from employees to independent contractors with few rights.
Backpackers often live in overcrowded accommodation provided by employers. In one case, workers at a meat-processing plant in the Upper Hunter Valley in New South Wales (NSW) were forced to live in garages. The report noted a series of house-fires in similar accommodation for 417 visa holders in the nearby town of Scone last year.
The report also documented cases where employers would promote jobs on advertising web sites such as Gumtree, offering work for a second-year visa. The employer would then request money for the job or accommodation on the pretext that the work was considered to be “voluntary,” in order to avoid paying wages.
One company in Northern Queensland that supplies herbs, lettuce and vegetables to supermarkets has actively hired backpackers for unpaid work since 2009. Over 600 417 visa workers have passed through the farm. They were provided with an induction package which stated:
“This is NOT a holiday farm—this is a business and you are here to work for your second year visa. If you are not prepared to work to the best of your ability then we will replace you with someone who will respect us and fulfil the requirements set by the Australian government.”
A supermarket supplier of cucumbers in northern NSW was identified as one of the top five businesses sourcing labour from the 417 visa program in NSW. The inquiry found that in April last year its workforce was comprised solely of 417 visa holders, all on unpaid arrangements. They were provided with minimal food, accommodation in caravans and limited transport in exchange for an EVF form.
Earlier this year, Fair Work found that the same business was giving workers payslips indicating they were paid $17.29 per hour. However, all their wages were withheld, supposedly to cover food and accommodation. According to the report, the director of the company asserted “without the benefit of unpaid labour, the business would not be able to grow and sell cucumbers profitably.”
Interesting Kristina says she’s going to fight for a working class neighbourhood. I am getting a little tired of middle class professionals bleating over Rudd/Gillard years. Oh what a brave woman Julia was making life tougher for those on welfare, not empowering Fair Work to do their job and presiding over rising rents and housing costs.
As a working class person things did not get better under the last Labor government. Welfare rules were tightened and JSP’s continued their unhinged work. Underpayment in minimum wage jobs was rife, good luck getting any help. Housing costs went up.
As if the working class are a priority to Labor. Sure, it’s better than LNP but not by much. I won’t hold my breath for the Albanese govt to do much for us. The belief is elections are won by the middle class so that is who Labor will cater to.
Can’t help but agree with the substance of this comment. Particularly about the Workchoices ‘lite’ reference and the reduction in sole parent pensions. Still the Rudd-Gillard govt did steer us through the GFC and avoided recession unlike every western country except Holland. I am a bit more glass half full and real wage and living standards did rise by 7-8%. That is a fact. The villain in the piece is Rudd who just didn’t know when his time was up and had outlived his usefulness.
You have to wonder at a Labor union driven government that did nothing for the lowest paid. We were still underpaid, we still struggled to convert to full time, we still were given rosters the night before, bullying was endemic, tips were stolen and much more.
Labor never even spoke about us. If you read the news back then you’d struggle to find a mention of waiters, cleaners, unskilled labourers, factory workers and warehouse workers. We just never rated a mention in policy. And then fast forward a few years to Covid and wow everyone realises we are essential?
Nothing changed until the media reported on wage scandals, and even then they mostly focused on illegally working migrants who were complicit in their situation. Sold out again.
Today there is still very little said from Labor or the Greens about minimum wage workers, despite supposedly those parties being our parties. Wage theft has had progress but what about things like getting your roster the night before for no reason? Not due to work flow, just because the boss hadn’t bothered to do it.
Many working class people, especially young people, struggle with a laughable situation where you’re not allowed to book time off for appointments but you’re also not given a roster in time to book ahead and nab those appointments. If you’re told Sunday your roster for the week it’s too late. And if you try to book time off ahead of time you’re told you’re not being available enough.
But you’d never hear about these issues from the parties meant to lead us. I do not like the LNP but I never thought they were for me. I do object to being told people like Kristina will fight for us when it’s been decades of silence for the lowest paid.
Oh don’t be used by the media. It’s all a con job begun by Howard for the benefit of business and the Coalition, farmers and growers. Even a rebadging hasn’t helped the diversity you so desperately think Labor are not ‘respecting’, bwhahaha.
Turnbull, with Dutton in attendance ,willfully exploited racism and hate as did children overboard Howard
“Good afternoon. Today we are announcing that we are abolishing the 457 visas. We are ensuring that Australian jobs and Australian values are first, placed first.”
Dutton followed up with attacks on migrants: “contributing and not leading a life on welfare” and the burden of proof on migrants that “they haven’t been perpetrators of domestic violence or whatever the case might be”.
Along with: “We would ask questions for example, as we’re seeing in Melbourne at the moment, if kids are roaming the street at night as part of gangs, in the Apex gangs or elsewhere, in cities like Melbourne, whether or not that is adopting an Australian value.”
“You decide in your application, when you want to become an Australian citizen, that you will adopt Australian values. And we are very clear about saying that today in the announcement, because we are making no apologies for the fact that we do want people to be able to integrate.”
And piling the hate on new arrivals: “There are some checks undertaken at the moment but they’re clearly insufficient.”
Turnbull added: “The points that Peter makes are absolutely correct.” And followed up with a truly Trumpesque delivery:
“a stronger Australia, stronger citizenship, stronger citizens”. … “I’m putting Australian jobs first, Australians for Australian jobs first.”
Shorten:
. “This isn’t a crackdown, it’s a con job,” he says. Turnbull “is tinkering at the edges for a headline so he can keep his job for another month. He’s scrapped one visa and created two new ones – not even one in 10 visa holders would be affected.”
Employer groups including the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Ai Group have welcomed the changes as a means to improve the credibility of the 457 visa system.
Hahaha, now for the permanent residency ponzi scheme of the foreign student lurk.
The visa scam introduced by Howard to facilitate the destruction of unions was curtailed somewhat by Labor and Gillard.
Everyone agrees Keneally is a sharp media performer, and a reliable Senate grenade-lobber. sums it up.
Policy wise and achievement wise – MIA. Not whom I would want to lead the country.
Previous associates are also of concern.
You mention the SDA in passing but from what I see, their continued influence in the Labor Party – from their opposition to marriage equality, abortion law reform to the right to die – has been even more damaging than their determination to control who gets elected to parliament.
Keneally’s strength is that she is a team player –which is why she has Albanese’s support, as well as that of many western Sydney MPs and party officials. I find it fascinating that the Catholic politician with a degree in theology is so strenuously opposed by the intellectual heirs of the Groupers.
The SDA holds the purse strings.
Historically from solidarity:
The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (SDA) … concluded a cosy deal with supermarket giant Coles that reduces weekend penalty rates and allows Coles to cut its wages bill by $20 million a year.
The SDA actually pays both Coles and Woolworths $5 million a year to help it collect membership fees, which are then used to maintain SDA influence inside the Labor Party.
These cooperative ideas also underpinned the Prices and Incomes Accords that the ACTU struck with the Hawke and Keating governments in the 1980s, which saw unions working with business to essentially restructure the economy along neo-liberal lines.
Within Labor circles the Prices and Incomes Accords are still seen as a success, even though real wages were cut and became tied to productivity trade-offs.
Union membership collapsed along with the union movement’s combativity.
Then in walked Howard with his massive immigration designed to provide the cheap labour to business and the undermining and destruction of unions with AWA’s IR laws ABCC etc etc finished off the relatively stable more equitable society that we enjoyed for a couple or more decades since WWII
REmember the 65cents an hour 7 Eleven scandal?
The union that covers the convenience store industry — Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) — has been accused of not doing enough to protect 7-Eleven workers.
But the SDA’s national secretary, Gerard Dwyer, said his union had tried to communicate with the workers for many years with little or no success.
“This whole visa, or abuse of the visa system, that appears to be taking place, has meant that employees inside 7-Eleven operated behind a veil of silence,” he said.
Unions have struggled to communicate with these groups because they are breaching their visas and should be deported.
Step One: Apply for visa to dodgy ‘college’
Step Two: Borrow money from a friend to put in your bank account to show you can meet the financial requirements. This is called ‘show money.’
Step Three: Arrive in Australia, show up to college 1 day a week, buy your assignments and work 50 hours mostly off the books for less.
Step Four: Reduce the working conditions and pay of locals, including many legal migrants of disadvantaged backgrounds
Step Five: Decide you want more money. Complain to Fair Work and the media who side with you even though you legally never even met the conditions to be here and locals are suffering for it.
Step Six: Be the victim despite planning knowing all along before you got here what you signed up for
Interesting opinions, but not true e.g. ‘because they are breaching their visas’? Have you any evidence for this and other points versus falling for media driven white nationalist agitprop?
Fact is many on temporary visas and/or restricted work rights are concentrated in sectors covered by multiple unions, e.g. tourism, hospitality, retail, seasonal agriculture, cleaning and logistics, often in casual positions, dependent upon the benign good will of managers/owners, while it is difficult for unions and/or reps to cover, let alone cater to these cohorts well.
Not just internationals, but local Australian employees too, who are diddled in hospitality, labouring etc. being (under) paid in cash and no super nor holiday pay….. never commented on in media…..
I am working class. I work alongside migrants and temporary visa holders. I know what goes on. I know what show money is. I know when someone is a ‘student’ but is working 40 hours a week because I see it. I speak to people on visas who describe how their dodgy college works as a front. People talk.
It has nothing to do with white nationalism. Many legal workers hurt by illegal work are themselves people of color and often migrants and visa holders too, just legit ones. And some of the illegal workers are white, including a huge amount from of working class people from Britain and Eastern Europe.
There is no functional union for many of these sectors. They exist but they are barely functioning for industries like cleaning and hospitality.
It is insulting to simply ask people play by the rules and then get shouted down as racist. These people are liars and cheats. They come here knowing they will cheat. They lied to get the visa. And when fellow working class people complain about this we are condescended to.
If you want just one specific example I have worked with people (white, from the UK) who falsify their sponsorships to say they are a manager. It is also illegal to pay for a sponsorship, but they pay all the fees in exchange for the restaurant doing the paperwork to say they are a manager and earning x salary.
In reality they are just a waiter and do not earn that salary.
This kind of stuff is rampant and when we locals or legal migrants complain we are told we are racist. Yep, well white working class Brits are an issue in my industry so go figure.
So good to read someone else’s posts that contain the truth of what is going on but of course those sanctimonious defenders against “racism” won’t hear of it
Good for you, but you are presenting personal anecdotes or your own observations of temp residents and/or new migrants as evidence, but not a sufficient ‘sample population’ for research analysis.
It’s not enough, let alone credible, to stereotype whole sectors or cohorts of the temporary resident population, then claim as evidence, as there are enough in media and politics who do the same to mislead the electorate…..
Australia’s ‘best demographer’ does similar to present (undefined) ‘immigrants’ in a negative light yet all Australians apart from full blood indigenous are ‘immigrants’.
This post is responding to Ms. Smith below.
I’ve worked and lived in working class jobs and neighbourhoods for 20 years. I think I know what is going on and what impact illegal workers have had. All we are asking is that everyone play by the same rules on the same level playing field. Not unreasonable to ask.
We are also asking that those who arrive on ‘skilled’ visas and then work unskilled jobs be marked as unskilled migrants for counting purposes, not hide how many people arrive here to work to drive Uber on skilled visas. If we really need unskilled migration (and in a few jobs we do) then why is it disguised?
And as for samples this is always a hilarious take from the professional class when we complain about illegal behaviour – it’s not peer reviewed!
Ok so do you honestly think illegal workers are going to answer a survey about whether they lied to get their visas? You won’t accept decades of experience but there can also never be a true estimate of the problem because people committing crimes are not exactly going to tell researchers about it are they.
Actually if you want evidence the pandemic was great irrefutable evidence of how many international students are cheats.
When Covid hit many first year international students said they had no money and lined up for food banks. This is curious given that legally first year students are required to have evidence of living funds. Covid hit what March? Students arrive in Feb. And within what 3 months they have no money and need charity? Could it be they used ‘show money’ perhaps?
No media outlet ever questioned why so many first year international students were broke so soon after arriving when they were legally required to be able to support themselves for the first year. And to have a return ticket home paid for. Maybe, just maybe many of these students lied on their visas and were really here to work. We wouldn’t know because no media would touch it.
And, strangely, when the scam tap was turned off, all those jobs aussies won’t do somehow managed to be filled – viz the U/E rate has DROPPED during the pandemic.
Odd, that.
Gina Rinehart will import more than 1,700 foreign workers on 457 visas for her latest project in Western Australia.
Time to look back and see why we have so much diversity and so much covid all in the one place, and how we got where we are now. For those who prefer to ignore what led up to our current situation you can just doze off now.
Rinehart said without the deal, plans to build the new Roy Hill mine might not go ahead.
ADAM BANDT: The Government has outsourced our immigration policy to big business at the expense of Australian workers and their families.
The Coalition’s only complaint is that even more projects won’t qualify to import extra foreign labour.
Make no mistake, the issue is the crushing of Australian wages and conditions for all working persons, not just 457 visa holders by the likes of the uber wealthy parasites of this world.
The country’s biggest beef producer, Australian Agricultural Company is a largely foreign owned company with IFFCO a major Malaysian shareholder.
AAco is chaired by Donald McGauchie who played a significant role in the Howard/Abbott/Reith balaclavas, dogs and Dubai trained strike force in the infamous national waterfront dispute in the late 1990s.
The foreign owned AAco beef producing company wants to import the WHOLE 260 strong workforce on 457 and 417 visas from India for the new Darwin meatworks.
To top it off, AACo was annoyed that the Labor government rejected his calls for assistance on the abattoir!
The 457 visa scheme, initially introduced by Howard in 1996 under the guise of meeting chronic skills shortages for IT and health professionals, has ballooned. Howard was adamant his 457 visa scheme only allowed in skilled workers.
But by 2006 nearly a quarter of all 457 visa holders were low- or semi-skilled workers such as travel agents, hairdressers, sales assistants, transport clerks, cooks and bakers: hardly jobs Australians cannot do or be trained to do.
Labor’s reforms have only weeded out some of the low-skilled workers allowed in via Howard’s loophole.
These workers still get 457 visas despite a new obligation on employers to seek governmental permission before engaging low-skilled migrants.
The closing of Howard’s loopholes by Labor was portrayed by the Coalition and their supporters as racist dog whistling, the rorting by employers of visa holders is being portrayed as a one off, the Coalition and business were desperate to have Howard’s loopholes retained to serve their exploitative purposes and IR agenda, to provide their voter base with slave labour.
Abbott immediately uncapped 457 visa numbers flooding the nation with cheap foreign labour.
Finally someone who knows what’s going on thank you for writing it up they don’t like it here
Didn’t Bob Hawke let the shoppies back in to the ALP? To shore up his vote inside the party of course. Something else to thank the little squirt for.
Yes that is Bob Hawke Bob Hawke and Paul Keating John Howard’s Little mates
Who knew at the time? A few, perhaps.
They sold the Commonwealth Bank, a Labor icon.Unforgiveable.
I remember one of the first CBA ‘reforms’ was to get rid of small account holders by introducing a charge to get teller access, a sure way to get pensioners etc to change banks. I was one eventually. I also remember what I replied to the teller’s question as to why I was doing so, so “We used to put our money in the bank to protect it from thieves, rogues and vagabonds but now it seems they all have seats on the Board”, collected my balance and walked out.
I will never forgive the SDA for the salary scam in supermarkets. Become a manager, work 65 hours a week for what then becomes an hourly rate lower than if you had stayed hourly. They knew. Everyone at my level of work knew you never go salary.
And then middle class left wing educated people start bleating on about why people don’t join unions and how we’re not helping. I don’t know, maybe because of issues like that? Maybe because underpayment went on in the worst jobs for decades and no union really did anything about it? Maybe because unions couldn’t even get us rosters on time? Unions are great in theory haven’t done much for me in practice. Salary scam!!!!
If there was a union like the CFMEU in my industry I’d join it in a heartbeat. Construction does well. The rest of us? We don’t get much out of it.
Thank you for your posts and for being prepared to cop the ignorant flak from those who see themselves a self righteous champions against racism
In terms of Melbourne and Sydney the people who suffer the most from illegal work are non-white legal migrants. Most ongoing min wage work (not uni students picking up bucks) in those cities is non-white. They are hurt by illegal workers, often people from their own cultures who don’t have legal rights or are working in excess of their legal rights. I’m actually an odd one out to have been a local in Melbourne doing long term min wage work.
There’s also plenty of white people who cheat the system. There’s a steady stream of Brits, Irish, Italians, Spaniards etc all willing to play fast and loose with things. It is better to be working class in Oz than in the UK or Ireland.
I am not against immigration, except from the fundamentalist people. I just want to hear an honest case for it. So far we are constantly told that migration is highly skilled but a quick study of what jobs people end up working shows that’s not true. Accept as a fact that a large flow of labor is going into unskilled jobs. Ok, please make the case government for why we are doing this. It is suspicious that they are hiding the case for why we are importing cleaners.
I don’t care what race people are or culture, so long as we say no to the fundies (of any group including white evangelicals). I do accept there are some jobs Aussies won’t do. I do question what the gain is when someone moves here to be a cleaner (a fact some naive Aussies deny is happening) because what is the gain? They drag down wages possible, they qualify for more in services and programs than they pay in tax and then the retire at a cost to us. It’s hard to see the business case.
Spot on, but the diehard feet of clay enthusiasts here like to sit back on their hind legs and bay racist, it makes them warm and fuzzy and hijacks any discussion of the subject, handy for the Coalition and business.
Hawke’s “accord” had unintended consequences. Labor was naive to say the least. Howard came along and exploited it to the detriment of civil society. Economic and social inequity is a blight that has undermined democracy. You are right to be outraged.
Sounds like ‘Australia’s best demographer’ (according to Bob Carr) who criticises (undefined) post ’70s immigration, Labor, unions etc. yet feels compelled to state ‘I’m not against immigrants, but………’, then launches into a critique masquerading as academic based research.
Doing the work for the LNP, legacy media, corporate sector and the IPA to create antipathy towards and even better, a non vote for, Labor.