Which candidates and parties have seen their popularity with electors increase, as the two major parties’ primary votes continue to decline?
And which members of Parliament lined up to vote against the Albanese government’s latest refugee-bashing bill yesterday, as it was rammed through with the Coalition’s support?
That’d be the independents (including the “teals”) and the Greens — in the lower house, almost the whole crossbench. You know, the ones who will probably hold the balance of power after the next election.
The Migration Amendment (Removal and Other Measures) Bill was given to the opposition at 7.30am, and the crossbenchers at 8.45am. No negotiations were entered into, no opportunity for debating amendments.
The bill is the latest manifestation of the government’s panic over the mythical hordes of “hardened criminals” who the Coalition insists have been roaming the countryside since the High Court brought indefinite detention to an end in the NZYQ case. Nobody in Parliament — Pauline Hanson aside — really believes in this threat; the issue is that the High Court torpedoed the bipartisan practice of torturing refugees and asylum seekers forever to placate Australians’ dread fear of boat people.
Since we can’t detain them indefinitely without criminal guilt anymore, the idea is to make them criminally guilty. The first post-NZYQ move was to impose draconian conditions on them in the hope or expectation they’d trip up, so they could then be imprisoned for these fresh “crimes”. That hasn’t worked.
So we now have Plan B, the invention of new criminal holes designed specifically for recalcitrant asylum seekers to fall into. The major plank of this is a regime under which the minister for immigration will have the power to order “removal pathway non-citizens” to actively cooperate in the process of their own deportation. If they don’t, that failure will be a crime, carrying a mandatory minimum one year prison sentence (and up to five years).
This new class of non-citizens are people who under the migration regime are deemed subject to removal as soon as reasonably practicable; that is, those who have been refused a visa. Almost all of these will be people whose asylum claims have failed. However, it also includes individuals on certain classes of bridging visa, who are in Australia lawfully as a result; some of them will have been found to be refugees.
What all these people have in common is that they are not, by virtue of the definition under which they’ve been collected, criminals. Entering Australia is not a crime, valid visa or not; nor is seeking but failing to obtain asylum.
The minister’s direction powers are broad, including requiring individuals to sign passport or visa applications and other documents to facilitate their being sent to another country and received there. The idea is that they can no longer refuse to participate in their own deportation; the effect is to criminalise passive resistance to an outcome they do not want.
The minister’s new powers will not extend to forcing children to do anything, but extraordinarily they will be able to order parents to do these things on behalf of their own kids. Pause here for a second, and try to imagine yourself in a foreign country where you’d managed to get your children for refuge. The government tells you to sign documents that will result in your child’s removal from that safety, and that, if you don’t, you’ll be going to jail. That’s where we’re at now, in our national relationship with humanitarianism.
Individuals will have a defence of “reasonable excuse” for non-compliance, to avoid committing the offence. However, genuine fear of persecution in the destination country is deemed by the bill to not be a reasonable excuse, and it’s hard to see what else could be.
Making it a crime to act consistently with the basic human desire to live freely, in a way that does not hurt anyone else, is a travesty. It is bad law, in flagrant disregard of our international human rights obligations.
The bill has a second new trick, adding dramatically to what was already an eye-popping list of personally discretionary “God powers” the Migration Act gives to the minister. They will now be able, on their own initiative and with no avenue for appeal or review, to designate any other country as a “removal concern country”, with the effect that any visa application from a person who is a national of that country will automatically fail. The only requirement is that the minister considers the designation to be in the national interest, which is as fluid as it sounds.
This one is partly about enhancing the government’s ability to use asylum seekers as human pincushions for political expediency, but its evil is broader than that. It gives a politician power to peremptorily shut out, altogether, entire populations from ever entering Australia (even on a tourist visa), let alone aspiring to settle here. The point is the message: fuck off, we’re full.
Not only does Australia tell the rest of the world do NOT give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Now we’re saying, and by the way, if you come from Country X, Y or Z, don’t even bother asking the question. You could be Albert Einstein crossed with Nelson Mandela, the answer’s still no.
This is shameful stuff. If the government didn’t think so too, it wouldn’t be subverting the parliamentary process to sneak this fresh inhumanity into law before anyone has time to even read it, let alone raise the alarm.
And, in late news, they’ve failed to even achieve that, the Coalition ambushing them in the Senate and pushing the bill off to an inquiry. The government deserves the embarrassment richly.
Bring on minority government; in my opinion, it can’t come soon enough.
Do you want to see a minority government? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Oh, how naive. Bradley assumes the Coalition and Labor must oppose each other; then, if neither has a majority, it is possible for the cross bench to exercise some influence. In fact, Labor has worked so assiduously for decades to get as close as it can to the Coalition that there is far less difference between the major parties than there is between them and the cross bench. It is therefore natural for Coalition and Labor to work together than for either to concede an inch to the cross bench. Labor loathes the Greens far more than it loathes the Coalition. There is in effect a Grand Coalition of the major parties, with the purpose of excluding all the independents and minor parties. The major parties believe only they can govern legitimately, they recognise each other and nobody else, and they are very jealous of their power. They will not share it unless forced.
Do not put your hope in any minority government working with a cross bench. Nothing significant will change until the combined parliamentary votes of Labor and Coalition falls below 50%.
I agree SS Rat. I predicted a Lib / Lab coalition, in some form, quite some years ago. Once the Greens got rolling and embarrassed Labor into realizing who they themselves could have, should have been, Labor has gone backwards .. not being Green.
By their voting records we know the Duopoly are complicit – the gutted federal ICAC, almost any proposed environmental action/inaction/specifically deleterious action, religious protection, neolib voodoo economics, etc etc ad infinitum ad nauseam.
A much shorter list would be anything remotely Labor like from the present incumbents.
Nevertheless SSR, a minority government situation will at least stop some of the worst behaviours.
Majority government for Labor is proving to be a disaster for the country
On top of that, the Labor cabinet are war criminals, loyally supported by the rest of their MPs.
Will it, though? Only the Liberal or Labor party can actually form government, so what’s going to stop them continuing to use their traditional “opposition” to ram through the most socially destructive policies?
We could all work in that for the next election.
Indeed. Leave both Liberal and Labor off your ballot paper.
That’s a donkey vote – the filth changed the rules to prevent equal last on your ballot, ensuring every valid vote flows through to 2PP.
I work at a medical research institute. Some of the best researchers I know came as PhD students from Russia or Iran. It’s self -harming madness to ban all visas from such countries in order to keep out a few hundred over-stayers, and to desperately prove your party can be cruel enough to stay in the “tough club”
I was shocked at the “cutting off your nose to spite your face” basis of refusing all visa applications from countries who refuse to accept deported nationals. My local medical practice in a town 5 hours drive from Sydney is staffed entirely be Indians and Pakistanis. My prostate surgeon in Canberra is a Pakistani. I have a good friend who spent a lifetime as a manager in the hotel industry in Australia – he and his wife are Sri Lankan, their children are Australian.
I also am looking for Labor in a minority govt, but, even better, as the minority partner making up the numbers in a Green and Teals Govt.
Understand, how have we come to this dramatic mismatch of attitudes e.g. regional people are welcoming and reliant on ‘immigrants’, but the RW MSM gaslights them and tells them we are overpopulated etc.; too easy and been happening since Howard, continuing on from old white Oz sentiments….
Do India and Pakistan refuse to accept deported nationals? I hadn’t heard that.
Unfortunately old white Australia ideas and fortress mentality have not left either party or too many above median age &/or low info voters.
One is in the bush often and too many rusted on (ageing) ALP voters have stronger views than many LNP types on refugees, immigration etc., based on influence of former ALP MPs and a US nativist Tanton Network linked entity, SPA that informs the ALP and RW MSM (counterparts in UK Tories/UKIP & US GOP/alt right)?
Demonstrably untrue. Regardless of what they might say, the bipartisan policy outcome of both major parties for nearly two decades is very high levels of immigration, mostly from countries that are… “not white”.
Well Dr. LOL, no bipartisan bigotry, and you misinterpreted my comment (unlikely), but distorted it to promote the ‘high immigration’ talking point.
Fact is, many related to your friends at SPA, MB and those informing RW MSM inc. ‘Australia’s best demographer’ have contributed to or are influenced by the RW nativist journal of dec. white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton who admired white Oz, visited and hosted by SPA.
The journal is TSCP according to SPLC:
‘routinely publishes race-baiting articles penned by white nationalists. The press is a program of U.S. Inc, the foundation created by John Tanton, the racist founder and principal ideologue of the modern nativist movement. TSCP puts an academic veneer of legitimacy over what are essentially racist arguments about the inferiority of today’s immigrants.’
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/social-contract-press
Fact is the policies supported and promoted by both major parties for the last twenty years are the opposite of “white Australia ideas and fortress mentality”.
What a coincidence, not? ON a Sunday News comes out in preparation for the post Easter news cycle to bag the ALP and ‘immigrants’; old John Tanton strategy for the GOP & white nativists, dog whistle immigrants and blame the centre.
‘‘Simply too high’: Australia nearing crucial immigration ‘peak. Aussies have been warned that a current crisis plaguing the country could become “permanent”. Leith van Onselen
Article defies basic principles of statistics 101 and ABS advice, while ignorant on the make up of our ERP estimated resident population, immigrants and working age.
Not surprising since the author is the protege of according to Tanton linked SPA ‘Australia’s best demographer’ to apply his TSCP* techniques, masquerading as demography, for promotion to RW MSM, social media influencers, the public and those attracted to such dross, for a big post white Oz dog whistle?
‘TSCP puts an academic veneer of legitimacy over what are essentially racist arguments about the inferiority of today’s immigrants.’ (SPLC) and as he said 1994-95 in the same journal:
‘”We are indebted to Jean Raspail [author of The Camp of the Saints] for his insights into the human condition, and for being 20 years ahead of his time. History will judge him more kindly than have some of his contemporaries.’
Steve Bannon’s inspiration as is Renaud Camus for his ‘Greta Replcement’…..
This ongoing game of who can be crueler to refugees is a national disgrace.
Perhaps we should just take them out and shoot them. It would be a mercy killing.
The refugees, or the majors?
Jeez, hard choices…
Eh? Easy choice.
Who benefits from demonizing migrants I wonder? Migrants and refugees are people who have demonstrated the willingness and capacity to get off their bums and make things happen. Sounds like the sort of folk we actually need.
Stop making it hard for them.
Someone has to take the fall for our cities groaning under 20% too many people for the infrastructure, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be those responsible.
Infrastructure is neither constant nor steady state, but dynamic requiring ongoing investment in maintenance, supply and personnel e.g. schools and hospitals under pressure in regions not due to immigration or ‘population growth’, but ‘population ageing and decline’; counter intuitive?
Unless you have some clear evidence of supposed infrastructure stress showing clear links, apart from obvious e.g. urban Australians and their motor vehicles creating traffic congestion due to laziness, PS and govt. incompetence, but hey, let’s blame students and undefined ‘immigrants’?
You would refuse to accept said evidence if was given to you. You’d rather spout conspiracy theories instead (I have a bingo card ready of all the tired old tropes you’re going to trot out)
Meanwhile supporters of LNP and IPA policies, like below offer nothing, but quick to try ‘shoot messengers’ and shit down narratives; too easy, glib and lazy.
So you have nothing constructive to offer except abuse, outcome of someone well trained by our RW MSM exercising its ‘freedom of speech’?
Abuse? For what? For pointing out that you routinely spout conspiracy theories? Your own comments are evidence of that.
Drsmithy has engaged with you repeatedly with evidence and demonstrated where you are mistaken. Yet you choose to ignore evidence and continue with the same disproved arguments. That’s not constructive, engaged debate. That’s conspiracy theories.
Pointing this out is hardly abuse.
Dr Smithy like you does not understand the data and will not offer any credible analysis for critique; hardly surprising if linked to SPA, MB etc. 🙂
There you go again with the ad-hominems. What does “linked to” even mean? How does that affect the ability to understand data? It is you that can’t understand data and instead uses ad-hominem attacks to distract from your own inadequacies.
No, what you and Dr Smithy is not evidence but RW nativist talking points masquerading as analysis which is neither compelling nor credible because you avoid data and shoot messengers; too glib and easy.
Linking to SPA which uses exactly the same talking points, as explained via their links or proxies in the US, Tanton Network’s TSCP:
‘The Social Contract Press (TSCP) routinely publishes race-baiting articles penned by white nationalists. The press is a program of U.S. Inc, the foundation created by John Tanton, the racist founder and principal ideologue of the modern nativist movement. TSCP puts an academic veneer of legitimacy over what are essentially racist arguments about the inferiority of today’s immigrants‘
Simply dumb, racist, nasty and offensive, while your react to any dissent or criticism with shooting messengers and avoiding analysis; bit like RWNJs? 🙂
The only person who ever brings “race” into these discussions is you.
“The growing prevalence of sub-1% vacancy rates across Australia’s capital city and regional areas is extremely concerning and points to a severe undersupply of homes relative to tenant demand,” Flaherty said in her analysis.
https://www.brokernews.com.au/news/breaking-news/australias-rental-market-tightens-as-vacancy-rates-hit-record-low-284047.aspx
Unless of course you don’t consider housing infrastructure, Drew?
Please note it isn’t the fault of immigrants or overseas students coming here to study- it’s wholly and solely down to domestic politicians choosing to make housing a wealth making asset rather than a vital roof over one’s head from Howard on.
I personally wonder how long it will before we introduce laws criminalising homelessness as they have in the UK and some US states.
They would if there was room in the prisons!
Drew does not believe immigrants consume infrastructure or housing.
And while immigrants who have arrived following the rules of current immigration policy are not “to blame”, the simply fact is that more people require more housing and infrastructure, and fewer people require less.
The current catastrophically low rental vacancy rates are unquestionably the product of the last ~18 months – coming up two years – of unprecedented immigration (ca. 500k/yr net). This is just maths.
Immigration policy should not permit such a high intake in the face of housing shortages and infrastructure pressure. But it is ridiculous to suggest the number of people does not impact vacancy rates.
Our broken immigration policy was also deliberately engineered by the business lobby groups to weaken wages and boost profits.
Not true, ‘unprecedented immigration ‘ since when? What is your definition of ‘immigration’ and what factors drive ‘population growth’?
Like techniques used by climate science deniers, you don’t formulate a clear question or position, never give a definition of ‘immigration’, avoid highlighting all population growth factors (censorship by omission), while housing supply/types is still a mystery and then you claim a correlation (not causation?), to bang on about ‘immigration’. Too easy… but dumbed down.
Ever.
Anyone arriving and remaining permanently, or long-term. Ie: counted in NOM.
Additional people.
Both glib and wrong, while both Treasury and ABS recent public statement is confusing and contradictory:
‘Centre for Population analysis of the National, state and territory population publication from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Reference period: July 2023 – September 2023
22 March 2024 Australia’s population was 26.8 million at 30 September 2023. This was 2.5 per cent higher than a year earlier, the highest level of growth since the 1950s.’
Contradicts previous advice from ABS on interpreting immigration and population data, i.e. ‘statistics 101’
ABS ‘It has been used in calculating Australia’s official ERP (est resident population) since September quarter 2006….Estimates of NOM based on the previous methods and those based on the ‘12/16 month rule’ methodology are not comparable.’
Our data, analysis and interpretation has the ‘integrity of custard’, matches low info but high opinion Australia, any feedback?
What makes this particularly funny is you seem to be serious that this pedantic nitpicking actually refutes the larger point (500k-odd people in one year – and shaping up to be even more this year – is an incredibly large amount in a short period of time).
If you believe the ABS is wrong and/or lying, then I’d propose the burden of proof is on you to support that – with actual evidence.
That NOM figures worked by different methods are not directly statistically comparable due to different methods, that does not make either of them wrong. They’re both calculating the net migration intake.
One way to cross-check the NOM figures are reasonable is by subtracting natural growth (births-deaths) from known population growth (from the Census) – whatever is left must come from immigration. Do this and you get numbers are are consistent with NOM (either method), thus demonstrating it as a perfectly reasonable way to estimate immigration intake.
So unless you think there’s been some enormous migration intake hiding somewhere in the methodology that has managed to evade every census and other population estimation since, or a systemic misreporting of births and/or deaths (and again, I’d propose the burden of proof lies with you for that), then it stands that the ~500k in 2022-23 is indeed the current record high (at least until the end of 2023-24, which has so far been higher again in every quarterly estimate).
No, still wrong avoiding ABS clear advice on using data i.e. you use a lot of words to say offer nothing exxcept current RW MSMN headlines.
Like what US fossil fuel Koch Network entities do to climate science/data, focus on short term weather and ignore long term warming?
Tanton Network, shares donors with Koch in US, does the same in misrepresenting/ignoring long term demographic dynamics by focus on short term noise; locally that’s refugees/borders, NOM/temp churn over, international ed/students and ERP/population growth, but ignoring future trends while trying to inform MSM, influencers and govt. for nativist outcomes on migration policy.
From TNR in US:
‘In the last few decades, it has become amply evident that immigration restrictionists have succeeded in this sleight of hand, garnering support for their central premise across the political spectrum. They have distorted mainstream discussions of what an alternative system might look like because they have convinced the public there is no alternative at all.’
https://newrepublic.com/article/163891/immigrant-refugee-ceilings
Like I said. If you believe the ABS is misreporting or fabricating population numbers, then that is an extraordinary claim and the burden of proof lies with you.
It’s impossible to have any discussion when you won’t even agree on the data.
What an word salad of meaningless drivel.
Drawing a long bow, first can you present or show student behaviour, what types of housing and how many units do they occupy vs locals or other temporaries?
On definition of infrastructure* beyond what is normally accepted and then to claim direct causal linkage with low vacancies/high NOM via a link to an investment media outlet, but no analysis nor support for vague claims?
Nonetheless, we could define social/public housing as infrastructure, and build much more inc regions, but no seems too keen on this?
*Infrastructure is to support housing and households, not inclusive ‘Infrastructure is composed of public and private physical structures such as roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewers, electrical grids….’
Geraldton WA had a 60-bed hospital built some years ago to replace the 120-bed old one. So now we are to get a new, bigger hospital. One day. The current overflow goes to the Catholic private hospital or is flown to Perth. The population has increased by 25% in the meantime.
I might add that vacant rentals are 0.6%, another government stuff-up. And geriatric care, join the conga-line queue; while the so-called government blames the people for getting old!
Good example, often strict zoning precluding high density accommodation vs. houses, while same regional centres and towns often have growing population (and from smaller local places), not due to migration or births, but due to ageing; local authorities have to juggle minimal resources and locals have to travel distances (ditto essential workers), while people in urban centres bleat about traffic congestion….
People not dying do not cause population growth, any more than not spending causes savings growth.
What was that mash? Wrong, or ignorant of maths?
People are removed from the data when dead, but nowadays we are living longer and staying in the data longer, hence, population growth in permanent cohort evidenced by more three and now four generational families; see Prof. Hans Rosling/Gapminder explanation of this dynamic, symptom of earlier high fertility in boomer ‘bomb’.
LOL.
I repeat, not removing people does not produce growth. Only adding people produces growth. And particularly in Australia, a substantial fraction of the number being added, is completely by choice.
You and others claim to offer evidence when all you do is cite RW MSM headlines, claim expertise (or others’), dog whistle, complain and shoot messengers, in order to avoid offering anything and showing your feigned ignorance on immigration and population data dynamics.
Here’s a test of your expertise, plus Dr. Smithy, SPA, MB etc., statement from Treasury, what’s wrong with this statement, should be obvious to those claiming expertise?
‘Australia’s population was 26.8 million at 30 September 2023. This was 2.5 per cent higher than a year earlier, the highest level of growth since the 1950s.’
https://population.gov.au/data-and-forecasts/key-data-releases/national-state-and-territory-population-september-2023
Much like I’ve never “cited a RW MSM headline”, I don’t believe I’ve ever claimed expertise in, well, anything.
This part:
“The historically large inflow of overseas migrants continues to reflect a catch-up following pandemic-era border restrictions.”
Since there is no immigration target (or, at least, no published one), there’s obviously nothing to “catch-up” to.
There you go, you missed the central issue on methodology and then public utterances that defy statistics 101.
ABS: ‘Estimates of NOM based on the previous methods and those based on the ‘12/16 month rule’ methodology are not comparable.’
Meaning, you can only compare or use post 2006 NOM/immigration and population data……
But the statement being made is not talking about NOM, it’s talking about population growth.
Or are you seriously trying to say ABS population estimates prior to 2005 cannot be compared to population estimates since 2005 ?
You know this is the same reasoning certain people use about BOM temperature data, right ?
Yes, I am ‘you seriously trying to say ABS population estimates prior to 2005 cannot be compared to population estimates since 2005′ because that is what ABS advises to comply with principles of Statistics 101.
Happy to inform you that the headline ERP estimated resident population is derived from both births/deaths + NOM.
Further, research credibility and data validity comes from data collected for purpose, not proxies to then guess or claim negative outcomes eg. headline NOM then link with neither correlation nor causation to ‘immigration’ causing a housing crisis etc. etc.; too easy.
What has BOM temperature data got to do with ABS population data?
Only similarity is analogous PR/comms strategy of distortion and misrepresentation of climate/weather data by Koch entities and immigration/population data by Tanton entities, to misinform media and in turn voters.
Well, if you want to claim the ABS is wrong or lying about the population, then the burden of proof is upon you to demonstrate that.
Because all the ABS methods for estimating and calculating population are consistent with each other (ie: ERPs line up with Census results). This only leaves the possibility that data is being deliberately fabricated.
Which is pretty much the same thing climate change denialists say about the BOM’s temperature data.
LOL. Your arguments are a combination of climate denialist (“the data is wrong !”) and creationism (“you can’t point to the exact instant of evolution!”).
Now it’s Dr ‘Gaslight’ Tanton using an Orwellian twist to claim the ABS advice is the opposite of what it says or they don’t know what they are talking about, compared to whom?
Like SPA, MB, RW MSM, white nativists, IPA, climate science denialists etc. creating Australia’s own little data fantasy to promote borders and nativism, but requires one to step outside reality?
Easy to understand:
‘‘ABS Explanatory Notes: 23. Estimates of NOM based on the previous methods and those based on the ‘12/16 month rule’ methodology are not comparable.’
Let’s ask another way.
Do you believe there was a year before 2005 that had a higher immigration intake than the 500k-odd of the last year ? If so, based on what evidence ?
I mean, it’s a pretty big increase. Should stand out in the data.
FKN LOL.
Let’s not forget you started this thread stating the ABS is lying about population growth.
Exactly, Kimmo. My 78 year old mother occasionally mouths the line about refugees being handed houses while Australians go without like that’s THE cause of the housing crisis.
Now, my mother is seriously left wing economically, but this line has been force fed to her by so many for so long she parrots it every now and then and we have another little talk about John Howard and capital gains tax concessions, the dismantling and sell off of the Housing Commission etc.
It’s stuck, taken root in people’s minds- especially older people, because they’ve been told it for so long. Not just my mother’s generation, but Boomers and Xer’s as well. Bread and circuses without the bread. Smoke and mirrors. Deceit.
Quelle surprise, not according to NewsCorp, SPA and MB, Sunday headline:
‘‘‘Simply too high’: Australia nearing crucial immigration ‘peak. Aussies have been warned that a current crisis plaguing the country could become “permanent”. Leith van Onselen
Makes one ashamed to be Australian that we have a government that is prepared to behave in such a shabby lowdown way. And it’s Labor not Liberal. What sort of people are they that they could think for even a minute about such an inhumanity. .