Open door lunatics

Open door, The Australian
May 17, 2008, Paul Kelly:

In an interview with Inquirer, Immigration Minister Chris Evans says Australia needs "a great national debate over the next few years" about the need to import not just skilled but semi-skilled and unskilled workers. "The system's creaking at the moment because it is unresponsive to new demands and new realities," he says.

Evans plans a series of cabinet submissions to recast the program. He wants a "serious overhaul" of the system. It is urgent because migration "is based on a model that is out of date", still anchored in the 1950s and '60s and not geared to the mobile internationalisation of labour in the 21st century.

"The demands of business are hitting us in the face," Evans says. His experiences as a West Australian aware of acute shortages and capacity constraints drives this urgency. Next month cabinet is expected to endorse a pilot program based on the New Zealand model for guest workers from Pacific nations. The Prime Minister wants this for foreign policy and economic reasons.

Evans says: "The debate about temporary migration, quite frankly, is over." His threshold point is that the immigration debate is no longer just about skills, though skills are vital, but has become a debate about labour. There is an unspoken agenda: aware that the abolition of Work Choices risks higher wage pressures, Rudd and Swan are using higher migration as a device to boost labour supply and limit wage inflation ...

Australian labour shortages are here to stay. They are driven by economics and demography. With the retirement of the baby boomers, limits to female workforce participation and the permanence of the China-India resources boom, immigration is returning to centre stage in dramatic fashion ...

At the same time, habits of native-born Australians are changing. "We can't get Australians to work in abattoirs in rural Queensland," Evans says. "We've got Brazilian meat workers here who want to convert to migration, and their employers want this, too." ...

These reformist plans will stimulate the race debate.

"There's always, frankly, the race issue," he says. "One of the challenges is that source countries are changing. We still get 25 per cent of the program from Britain but we are seeing an increase from India, China, the Philippines and South America off a small base." He agrees it will be tricky to persuade the unions and the public to accept unskilled labour. But this is a debate Australia cannot avoid ...

The "mobile internationalisation of labour in the 21st century". Well you can't have Europe and the USA getting too far ahead with bucket loads of legal and illegal mobile immigrants, can you? That would make us look like backward rednecks. Tear it down Paul Kelly, rip it up Kevin Rudd, finger the Australian people Chris Evans - kiss Australia goodbye.

Dear Paul Kelly, regarding "the permanence of the China-India resources boom". If that is the driving force behind the open door policy then why don't you consider closing the door on minerals to China and India, rather than opening both doors to them: minerals out, and migrants in. Shut one door, or open two? Do we really need the 'advantages' of globalisation this much? I don't think so. Life wasn't so bad before the globalisation thing. There has to be a better way than open door insanity.

Globalisation is now a cult. Beware the doorphobics like Paul Kelly: if they see a door they have to open it, if they pass through a gate they won't close it - they need to rush onto the next door and open it and then onto the next to relieve their fear of closed doors. They love that high rush of opening a door and running away to see what happens: that bliss of freedom from doors. Oh yeah, it's sooo good. Man, what a buzz. Woooo. One world, one people, oh yeah baby. Liberty, freedom, love, nirvana, homo economus.

Freakin lunatics.