After Scott Morrison last week spun a disgraceful web of lies about Australia’s immigration intake on Neil Mitchell’s 3AW Radio Program, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull tried to repeat the lies this morning only to be destroyed by Mitchell:
Malcolm Turnbull: “Permanent migration is a smaller percentage of the total movements in people…”
Neil Mitchell: “So what is it”?
Malcolm Turnbull: “This year, I’d have to think it will be somewhere between 170,000 and 180,000”.
Neil Mitchell: “That’s the figures we are talking about… I’m arguing that it is time for a pause and reassessment. And I am arguing on the basis of the infrastructure struggle, the roads being jammed, and people being socially uncertain…”
Malcolm Turnbull: “Neil, immigration is run solely in the national interest of Australia”.
Neil Mitchell: “And we don’t review it”.
Malcolm Turnbull: “[Angrily] Yes we do. It is constantly under review”.
Neil Mitchell: “By whom”?
Malcolm Turnbull: “By the government”.
Neil Mitchell: “Both sides are saying we are at the right level. What sort of review is that?”.
Malcolm Turnbull: “Well, Neil, we are constantly ensuring that we get the highest quality of migrants we can. You talk about numbers as if every person is exactly the same. This is a talent business. We are in a war for talent. We want to get through our skilled permanent migration program the smartest people that bring skills that are not available here. And by bringing their skills here, we ensure that Australian businesses grow and prosper”.
Neil Mitchell: “People are unsettled by it. There’s no question about that. And there has been a tradition to say that if you question migration you are racist… Why can we not have a debate now”.
Malcolm Turnbull: “Of course we can have a debate”…
Neil Mitchell: “But are you locked into the level? What level are you locked into? What do you want?”.
Malcolm Turnbull: “What we want to have is not one more person coming to Australia – not one – that we do not want or need. I am giving you this commitment: My government, and my government alone – the Australian government elected by the Australian people – determines who comes to Australia. Whether they are on the humanitarian program, whether they are on family reunion, whether they are skilled migration, whether they are a student… We determine who comes here and that’s the big difference between us and Labor… Because when Labor was in government, they outsourced our migration to people smugglers… And we’re not having that again, we decide who comes here…”
So according to Turnbull:
- Permanent migration “is a smaller percentage of the total movements in people”, and yet he admits that the non-humanitarian permanent migration intake this year “will be somewhere between 170,000 and 180,000” – i.e. the lion’s share of net overseas migration.
- The immigration intake is supposedly “constantly under review”, despite the permanent migrant intake being locked at roughly the same sky-high level for the last six years.
- “Immigration is run solely in the national interest of Australia”, despite it unambiguously destroying both housing affordability and living standards in both Sydney and Melbourne, which together takes around three quarters of migrants.
- “We are constantly ensuring that we get the highest quality of migrants we can”, despite the evidence overwhelmingly showing that the skilled migration system is one giant fraud and Australia’s is actually running a “de-facto low-skilled immigration system”.
To finish the interview off, Turnbull even had the gall to borrow John Howard’s bait-and-switch line that “we will decide who comes here”.
Clearly, Malcolm Turnbull has zero inclination to listen to the wishes of the Australian people and lower immigration back to sensible and sustainable levels. He is interested in one thing and one thing only: to feed the ‘growth lobby’ an ever growing consumer base to profit from.
This, yet again, shows why Australia desperately needs a plebiscite so that voters can determine Australia’s future population size and, by extension, the appropriate level of immigration.
