Whilst I have written on this subject before, I believe it is worthwhile revisiting the topic again because the Federal Liberal Party is currently trying to formulate a policy on immigration to take to the next election.
They have just successfully compiled a policy on energy where they have (sensibly in my view) walked back from Labor’s Net Zero obsession to advance economic concerns about the future price of electricity and the reliability of the electricity system. Whilst I would have gone further and abandoned our commitment to the Paris Accord, at least they now have a policy that better serves Australia’s interest and gives them a point of difference with which to contest the next election.
When it comes to immigration policy I would urge the Liberals to be brave! Poll after poll has indicated the Australian community wants immigration to be curtailed. Yet in the face of this, under Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party a million new immigrants have arrived. Unfortunately many of those, especially those fleeing Gaza, have entered Australia with little scrutiny.
There seems some validity to the claim that Labor likes high levels of immigration because new immigrants are more likely to vote for Labor rather than the opposition. Senator Jacinta Price was recently excoriated for suggesting this was the case for Indian migrants, despite the fact that she was merely quoting data from a Labor aligned polling group!
The Minister for Home Affairs was conspicuous in being at the airport to greet the latest intake of Gazan refugees. He might not have been handing out “how to vote” cards but he was certainly reinforcing to these newcomers which political party they should thank for access into Australia!
But given Australians have consistently opined that our immigration numbers are too high, I would urge the Liberals in formulating their policy to go back to basics and build a policy on what is good for Australia and put aside such parochial political considerations. And to do that properly, as I will argue below, will take some courage!
Many of the arguments against high migration are mounted on the basis of the capacity of our infrastructure to cope with rapidly increasing numbers of residents.
There is little controversy about the fact that burgeoning immigration is stressing our housing, our roads, our schools and our hospitals and so on.
Housing, in particular, is a big political issue. With interest rates likely to rise again next year the problem will probably be exacerbated.
Whilst all these concerns regarding the increased stress on our infrastructure are legitimately raised in the context of mass immigration, and our politicians (reluctantly) seem prepared to discuss them, there is another important issue they are too frightened to publicly confront and that is our social cohesion and the maintenance of our traditional culture and values.
As I recently wrote:
In May 2017, bestselling author, Douglas Murray published a book titled The Strange Death of Europe. In this book he forecast the erosion of traditional European values and cultures by the unfettered mass migration of Muslims, mainly from Africa and the Middle East, into Europe.
Murray was indeed very prescient in the thesis of his book. We have seen great turmoil in Europe as a result of this unrestricted immigration which indeed has had a major impact on European culture. You would think the Australian government might have learnt from the European experience.
But it seems that immigration is a subject almost impossible to discuss with politicians for the fear that they might be termed racist! But if the goal is to successfully integrate immigrants into Australian society and not create cultural ghettoes where Western culture and ideals are despised, then surely we must pay attention not only to the numbers of immigrants we choose to allow in to Australia but also to the belief systems of those immigrants.
Again most politicians are reluctant to concede this, but the belief system most antithetical to Western values is radical Islam. Most of the terrorist activity around the world in recent decades can be laid at the feet of the radical Islamists. They are intolerant of other faiths and are so insecure about maintaining their own beliefs that they advocate among their own adherents death for apostasy.
Democracy is an anathema to them. For them there is no separation between church and state and their ideal for government is an international Caliphate where Sharia Law applies. They seek to return civilisation to the state which prevailed in the Arab world in the sixth century AD at the time of the Prophet.
In summary then, when contemplating migration policy there are two major considerations:
- The optimal size of our population, and
- The maintenance of our values and traditional way of life.
Unfortunately (as outlined above) our politicians are avoiding addressing the second consideration for fear of being branded racists. But surely it is just as important a consideration (indeed I would maintain, a more important consideration) to maintain our national culture as it is to get the numbers right!
In essence we need new immigrants to be motivated to assimilate into Australian culture. It is fine (and probably even desirable) that they should honour their own foundational cultures by the maintenance of traditions, the clothes they wear and their traditional cuisine and so on. These things have helped make Australia more cosmopolitan and interesting. But none of this should be allowed to weaken our liberal, democratic values. Any immigrant must accept as part of their citizenship to uphold Australian law.
Instead some of the migrants allowed entry into Australia have not signed up to this compact. They have often brought with them some of the less liberal practices of their homelands and have accordingly sought to modify our law and culture in a detrimental way and threatened the traditional tolerance Australia shows to people of all nationalities and beliefs.
As journalist James Morrow recently wrote:
Newcomers who were raised in collectivism or misogyny or intolerance do not magically become fierce individualists and champions of change at the baggage carousel!
As Morrow intimates many of these immigrants don’t want to be Australians, they just want to live in Australia encumbered with all their un-Australian traditional baggage.
The religious and racial tolerance that now largely pervades Australia has not been achieved easily. In our past we have a history of religious intolerance but that was largely about which branch of Christianity one adhered to – i.e. Catholic or Protestant. We also have history of racial intolerance. This arose largely, to begin with, as a result of the miners on our goldfields resenting the Chinese who competed with Australians on the newly discovered goldfields. Later on it was extended to become the “White Australia” policy. There has also been some history of denigration of indigenous Australians. But by the 1960’s most of these prejudices had been put aside and Australians were broadly tolerant of most people irrespective of their race or religion.
A pertinent example of this abandonment of traditional Australian tolerance has been the major rise of anti-Semitism in Australia since the 7 October 2023 atrocity carried out by Hamas on Israel. A report compiled for the Executive Council of Australian Jewry indicates that in the period 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025, 1654 anti-Semitic incidents occurred compared with an average annual figure for the previous 10 years of just 342 such incidents. It is unacceptable that Australia should tolerate such a racist response.
In another worrying development advocacy groups have been petitioning for the removal of religion from the definition of terror. The Albanese Government’s appointed Special Envoy to combat Islamophobia, Aftab Malik, told the parliament that he endorsed removing religion as a motivation for terrorist acts. This is an ideological stance that ignores the fact that, in recent decades, the majority of terrorist attacks have been carried out by radical Islamists. This is a truth that we shouldn’t allow Islamists to hide from!
It is a paradox that liberal democracy is being put under pressure by the very fact of its inclusiveness. All citizens in a democracy get to vote and thus influence government decision making even if they don’t believe in democracy! They also have the right to free speech which includes the right to protest. In this way anarchists and theocrats and others use democratic processes to challenge democracy! Mostly their ambitions are to recreate in Australia the way of life of their homelands which seldom allows such rights and privileges.
Now I truly have sympathy for those suffering under the privations of the world’s trouble spots and believe we should provide refuge for those fleeing from the horrors that many have been compelled to endure. But we should not accept such immigrants if they in turn pose a threat to our society.
A government’s first concern should be, rightly, a concern for the safety and the security of its own citizens. Now many on the left will label an attempt to more closely scrutinise such potential immigrants as “racist’ and the Liberals seem unprepared and ill-equipped to prosecute such a policy. They should perhaps listen to the Liberal Elder Statesman and former Prime Minister, John Howard, who once famously said about migration;
……we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.
So in formulating an immigration policy to take to the next election I would urge the Liberals to not only greatly curtail the numbers of immigrants but to also put in place filters, that as far as practically possible, prevent those who are antithetical to our values from threatening our democracy and our traditional values and culture. If not, to paraphrase Douglas Murray we will be forced to witness “The Strange Death of Australia”.
For any potential immigrant Australian citizenship must be perceived as a great prize. Not a prize to be won by wealth or fame or religion or nationality but a rightful prize for those who have beliefs and values compatible with our own!