The political battle over Australian immigration is fundamentally a story about the kind of nation Australians want to be, according to Peter Lewis, non-executive chair of Essential.
Beyond the crude numerical projections is a more basic contest that is both economic and cultural, being played out around the globe. Daron Acemoglu, a 2024 Nobel prize-winning economist, frames this as liberal democracy's post-industrial crisis – a project that he argues has ceased to deliver on its core promise of sharing economic prosperity by vesting power in the people.
Public support for immigration remains despite debate
Through the Guardian Essential report, benchmarks on Australians' attitudes to immigration have been charted over more than a decade. They show that even as the immigration debate has raged over recent months, general support for immigration remains.
What has changed is the contours of this political debate with the rise of One Nation. Where those opposing immigration were once a minority inside two major parties that broadly supported an expansive program, now they have a political home base.
One Nation's blunt call to reduce immigration numbers resonates with voters concerned about their jobs, their access to housing, the safety of their community and the availability of services. Immigration becomes a simple explanation for a series of complex problems.
Political responses and the path forward
The most significant part of immigration minister Tony Burke's intervention a fortnight ago was his explicit concession that reducing immigration was, indeed, now government policy. Burke named the specific areas where the scheme operates and showed how these would be administered: constraints around student visas, ballots for working holidays, less flexibility on family reunion.
Now that the parties have staked out their positions, the real battle will commence, not one of numbers, but a story of nation. Acemoglu advocates what he calls a “working-class liberalism” that would recognise the inherent value in vesting authority in community, the constant testing of ideas and the bias towards freedom of thought and expression.
First, the government would do more to vest the economic benefits of immigration in local communities. Second, he argues liberal society owes an obligation to new arrivals to afford them not just the rights of the society but the responsibilities. Third, pathways to citizenship should be central to immigration. The proportion of non-citizens has almost doubled this century, from 11% in 2001 to 18% in 2022, with another increase expected in this year's census.
Finally, Acemoglu argues that immigration must be negotiated within a broader liberal democratic framework: good jobs, decent services, fair distribution of national wealth, mutual respect that starts to look like some sort of control on those who accumulated the power.
As the world seeks refuge in the nation-state, the challenge is not to convince people who want to slow down immigration that they are wrong, but to give them a real say in the nation we are building.
