The announcement of the formation of a Migration Council of Australia and its launch by the Governor General on August 1, confirmed by Department of Immigration and Citizenship official Gary Fleming at the Settlement Council of Australia conference in Adelaide in late June, marks a critical juncture in population and immigration policy.
The Council will operate as a non-government organisation, with its own board, and look more like the Settlement Council of Australia or the Australian Multicultural Foundation, than the government’s own and somewhat tame Australian Multicultural Council. Hopefully it will not be confused with the migration agents’ lobby, the Migration Institute of Australia. While it is independent of the Government, it is likely that the new body will fit snugly with the pro-migration wings of the both the major poltiical parties.
The MCA wants to find a new space to assert the importance of migration and effective settlement, and has brought together some heavy hitters to make this happen. Headed by Peter Scanlon (ex Patricks Chair) – and bringing together Business Council of Australia chair Tony Shepherd, Australia Post head Ahmed Fahour, Ethnic Communities Federation chair Pino Migliorino, Adult Migrant Education Victoria head Catherine Scarth and a number of others – the organisation seeks to build a bridge between those with an economic interest in a big Australia, and those with a social interest in a fair Australia.
Scanlon has been a key figure in building an information base about immigration and settlement through his Foundation’s financial support for the Monash study of social attitudes to immigration, diversity and levels of social cohesion. His leadership support, both political and financial, is seen to be critical for the effectiveness of the MCA. Scanlon has history as a strong advocate for his causes: in the Elders IXL struggle for BHP in the 1980s, with Patricks, and now with the Garvin Institute and the Scanlon Foundation. He is also a major real estate developer and will come under scrutiny for how this new lobby group might create benefits for his commercial interests.
The board has appointed Multicultural Minister Kate Lundy’s former advisor – the well connected and politically astute Carla Wilshire – to the CEO role, a challenging post which confronts the opportunities and pitfalls of the current immigration scene.
Immigration vs small Australia
There is growing community acceptance that a moderately bigger Australia is beneficial for the economy. Nevertheless, hostilities are also evident, and there is enormous distress over refugee and asylum seeker policy.
Meanwhile, the environmental sustainability debate has frozen over since the hysteria of 2010 gave way to the astonishment of 2011, with the immigration curve’s steep rise suddenly levelling out and then coasting down again.
Even so, the small Australia lobby(led by Foreign Minister Bob Carr and his mate Dick Smith) has not let up its push, and the Greens and the environmental lobby are still hammering away at reducing population growth. In the shadows behind them can be seen a collection of anti-immigrant and nativist activists.
Into the mix step Gina Rinehart and her Western Australian mining mates, whose deal with Immigration Minister Chris Bowen over 8,000 new jobs including nearly 2,000 457 visa recruits, hit a stumbling block with the unions. The unions, of course, are worried at the rapid destruction of industrial jobs in the east, and seem to have opted for a tried and true anti-immigration reaction.
Government challenges
The creation of the Council also highlights two key failures of the government:
1. There will clearly not be a statutory migration council, which would place migration and settlement planning at the heart of government, rather than palmed off to a civil society lobby group. The immigration councils of the post-war period did much to cement support for the immigration program among potentially conflicting interests; and
2. There will not be a government migration research institute (the Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research, abolished by John Howard, played a crucial role in providing research-based information for the policy debates of the 1980s and early 1990s, a major hole in current policy).
The decision to take the issue to the NGO sector provides an insight to the problem within government in handling migration issues.
Minister Bowen has very little purchase with Gillard, and seems unable or unwilling to communicate with her on wider issues, as the foreign workers issue in the mining industry reveals.
At the same time Lundy, who’s from a very different faction, seems to have limited purchase with Bowen. She has been unable to increase the funding of her settlement and multicultural responsibilities, one of the reasons the settlement sector fears the creation of the Migration Council (which is rumoured will be funded from money now allocated to the Settlement Council).
Meanwhile, Department of Immigration and Citizenship head Andrew Metcalfe (currently on leave but also prospectively on the board of the MCA), warned last year that the current immigration mess would produce major social unrest in Australia’s cities in coming years, a key problem for settlement. Governments have demonstrated their incapacity to resolve the many impasses that immigration highlights. At least two state governments, not consulted in the MCA development, remain wary about the potential impact of a new lobby.
On the sidelines, a joint federal parliamentary committee on migration will be reporting in August. It will be faced with reconciling the mass of public submissions (more than 500) that range from Anders Breivik-type White Power mania, to arguments from academics and others that the current policy environment is a logic- and information-free zone that requires major re-vitalisation, and a reassertion of social justice and human rights goals.
Migration Council’s first steps
The MCA has pulled some resources with it, but it will need a great deal of money and a fine feel for building community relations, if it’s not to alienate existing organisations or dry up its sources of meagre government support.
The Council will need to build a cross-party and community consensus on the need for continuing immigration and an expansion of its 457 component. But it needs to be wary that a rise in 457 visas sought by the mining lobby and other pro-growth advocates could increase already well-identified social problems of exploitation and isolation.
When you consider the inept and confused way the federal government has announced new immigration strategies, including the enterprise agreements with Rinehart, it seems that a broadly-based and responsive group concerned with ensuring rational, evidence-based policy, will have a critical role to play.
Even so, the MCA will have its work cut out to navigate the tensions and produce outcomes that work both for its economic and social backers.
Andrew Jakubowicz 
Andrew you’ve been sold a pup!
Teaming up with Scanlon and his money won’t give your multicultural arguments for higher migration credibility, it is more likely to discredit them. Scanlon is a property developer with a vested interest in high immigration; and would love to get the multiculturalists to promote big Australia for him, as the experienced immigration journalist John Masanauskas has hinted.
See http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/scanlon-backs-population-growth/story-e6frfh4f-1225806873049
Scanlon’s past troubles make it hard for him to take the high moral ground; but already you’re doing his work for him, closing your eyes to the huge costs of Australia’s rapid population growth — on which you should check Sobels, J, et. al., 2010, Long-term physical implications of Net Overseas Migration, Report for Dept. of Immigration,July 2010
–and sneering at Dick Smith, a man who has for decades generously given away much of his income to a great variety of good causes.
A few years ago I heard about the Australian Multicultural Foundation in the context of donations by the Scanlon Foundation (formerly the Brencorp Foundation) to the Australian Academy of Technical Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) for the production of the “Scanlon Report on “The technological implications of Australia at 30 million in 2030”. The AMF was also the recipient of Scanlon Foundation funding together with the Institute of Global Movements, at Monash University, run by Professor Nieuwenhuysen, who used to be with the Bureau of Immigration. What initially got my attention was the enormous amount of money and publicity the AMF and the IGF attracted. Then what absolutely arrested my attention was the membership of the Australian Multicultural Foundation – made up largely of prime ministers and almost-prime ministers of every political complexion. I then became interested in the history of the AMF and decided to try to track down its origins and early associations. To me the amount of money that immigration spruiking attracts and the levels at which its advocates are organised is a warning in itself of the presence of a commercial force in Australia and most ex-and current British colonies, including the US and Canada that undermines democracy and economic and scientific reason. You can read more background here http://candobetter.net/node/1928 and generally about this Growth Lobby and its widespread impact here: http://candobetter.net/GrowthLobby. Economically this lucrative movement for massively increasing Australia’s population is associated with crippling inflation of land, water and other vital resource costs, making the cost of manufacturing and most other business uncompetitive. Socially the pressure on the cost of living and wages is shameful. Ecologically, the same inflationary forces, are devastating soil, water and biodiversity, reducing green spaces, fragmenting habitat, and fragilising natural ammenity. Big population advocates have no answer to any of these things. Currently in Victoria we are looking at six new suburbs. The people have no say in this. It is just more colonialism and a source of great distress to many who love this land. To be frank I would be ashamed to be a part of the growth lobby. It seems to profit from destruction. I am glad that some government forces appear to want to dissociate from it, but then again, it really just looks as if they are happy to hide behind a commercial propaganda front like this NGO.
The MCA will need to build a cross-party and community “consensus on the need for continuing immigration and implicitly an expansion of its 457 component.”
Why? Why do you pre-empt the processes to arrive at a position on immigration and just to saying “…the need for continuing immigration…”?
What if such an NGO found that immigration was detrimental to Australia’s environment, our carbon commitments and even our productivity-per-person and thus decided not to lobby for continuing immigration?
The undemocratic way that we, the people of Australia, are being manipulated by those with vested interests in a big Australia (big profits, etc) is not merely a shame, it is deplorable.
We can bleat about the issue on blogs like this and that might make many of us feel we have had our say, but such is of little worth. We need to act in concert, with a leader group and well funded, so that the issue is raised high in people’s minds and Governments are forced to take notice. All Australians must be made aware of the well known detriments to society of a too large population; at least well known to those who care to study the issue.
And, there are many studies that show the Australian population is too large already. Read my papers about Population Growth in the Redlands at http://www.scribd.com/doc/16990287/Population-Growth-Paper-21-Jun-09-CRG, and Redland Biodiversity in Danger at http://www.scribd.com/doc/21395355/Redland-Biodiversity-in-Danger to see what I mean.
Cant the government and the progrowth lobby undersntad that the vat majority of the Australian people do not want a big Australia. Most of us feel we are already too big and we agree with Kelvin Thomson that we should reduce immigration down to a level that will stabilize the population.
Also it is high time that this failure called multiculturism was dropped and instead migrants were told to assimilalte or go home. They come here because it is better than where they came frome, well they should try to fit in, learn the language and our history and culture and traditions and respect our way of life and stop trying to impose their ideas onto us. I speak as one whose husband was frrom Holland, became Australian refused to speak Dutch any more and adopted the Australian way of life and thoughtt mutliculturism was the bigget mistake Australia could make.
So this new oganisation that has been set up is not in the best interests of Australia. Multicultursm divides, assimilation unites.
Good article and more interesting are the commentators whose motives are quite transparent, unfortunately anti immigration, anit multiculturalism, anti population growth, supposed environmental concern, have a whole portfolio of arguments which conversely (and quite coincidentally, support that phenomenon which hath no name in Australia becasue we have laws against it :)) To see examples of their care see The Conversation “New Migration Council to advocate for a bigger Australia” where this article has been posted and the comments that follow.