It’s easier for Tony Abbott to attack migration than admit his own policies are to blame
From employment to infrastructure to housing affordability, Abbott should take a hard look at his own policy before attacking those of others.
t says something about the level of political ineptness Tony Abbott has reached that he was not able to discuss immigration without being smacked down by senior members of his own conservative party – and we should all be glad that they did.
This week, in a fit of relevancy deprivation syndrome, Tony Abbott sought to argue that lowering our migration intake was the solution to all the economic and social ills of the country.
He was of course at great pains to let his audience know he was not anti-immigration. Oh perish the thought! He implored the audience at the Sydney Institute that “making immigrants feel unwelcome in their own country is the last thing we need”. Abbott, the lover of immigration, preached that “immigration has been overwhelmingly and unquestionably good for Australia; as well as good for the immigrants who have voted with their feet to live here”.
And with that hokum out of the way, he got down to business.
It wasn’t immigration he was against – it was the “the rate of immigration at a time of stagnant wages, clogged infrastructure, soaring house prices and, in Melbourne at least, ethnic gangs that are testing the resolve of police”.
Well at least he doesn’t want to make them feel unwelcome – they’re just the reason why people’s wages are flat, they’re stuck in traffic, they can’t afford to buy a home and are worried about being attacked at night.
Abbott suggested “it’s a basic law of economics that increasing the supply of labour depresses wages”. Well yes, but only if your understanding of economics is also very basic.
Yes, immigrants increase supply of labour, but the demand for labour is not static – it grows, and one reason it grows is because of the increased activity of migrants.
It is this lump of labour fallacy that underlies most complaints about migration – the belief that there is a set amount of jobs in the economy and a job taken by a migrant is one less to be gained by a domestic worker.
It is a seductive argument – because it feels true. I must admit, to my ongoing shame I once wrote an article where I noted favourably some fairly simplistic research that suggested most of the employment from 2011 to 2014 was from migrants.
Sometimes numbers can beguile because they seem to provide a straightforward solution – if employment for example has increased by 400,000 over three years and in that time 380,000 migrants have been employed, it seems obvious that most of the jobs must be going to migrants.
And before you know it you are proffering arguments that would have you arm in arm with any number of racists slowly walking past with a grudge to bear and a desire to blame anyone else.
Similarly spurious is the argument that we should first improve infrastructure before then increasing our migrant intake. What you find is those arguing this path never reach a point of thinking it is time to allow greater migration – even if things are good, they never wish to increase migration because they inherently view it as a negative that will clog up roads, reduce wages, increase crime ...
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Immigration – because there are many desperate to hate – must be treated with extreme care by politicians and journalists, and certainly with more care than Abbott seems capable. The inherently racist parties will seek to use any discussion and any seeming evidence of the negative impact of migrants as fuel to burn their fires of hate.
But the economy is not as straightforward as Abbott would have us believe – migrants increase economic activity and generally improve overall productivity. What they don’t do is lower wage growth. Research by the Australian National University has found that “immigration had no impact on the wages of incumbent workers”. Yes there were some workers who were negatively affected by migrant workers, but “positive effects outnumbered negative effects three-to-one, and the overwhelming impression is that immigration has no effect”.
As the Productivity Commission found when it looked at Australia’s migrant intake, one of the biggest issues for migrant workers is not that they increase unemployment or drive down wages, but that they are more susceptible to exploitation by their employers.
Wages growth over the past four years has been steadily falling until it has reached a state where 2% annual growth is viewed as an improvement. There are many factors at play that have led to this – and a large one is the run of policies by governments of which Tony Abbott was a member that sought to undermine the ability for workers to bargain for higher wages and which also made it easier for employers to pay workers less.
But talking immigration is a simple solution – it blames others and frees Abbott and his kind from admitting their own ideology has always had as its aim lower wage growth.
The same can be said of housing.
On this, given the supply side issues in play, Abbott might have a better case to make about the influx of migrants adding to the growth of house prices. But are we really going to take seriously a housing policy from anyone who was a member of a government that introduced a 50% discount on capital gains tax that set fire to the housing market and drove up household debt as occurred under John Howard in 1999?
Are we really going to listen for advice on housing affordability from a member of the current government which has a policy that ending negative gearing will destroy the housing market?
And are we really going to take seriously advice on infrastructure from a man who specifically ruled out providing federal funds for public transport in favour of roads – which evidence shows serves only to deliver more cars into the area and does little to reduce long-term congestion?
For Abbott, as so many of his ilk have found, it’s easier to attack migration than admit their own policies are much more to blame.
