Immigration Policy: Our Self-Inflicted Wounds

In The Howard Era (Quadrant Books, 2009) I assessed the Howard government’s record on immigration and citizenship policies. A slightly updated version appeared in the December 2009 edition of Quadrant as “The Origins of the Crisis in Immigration Policy”. I set out there my own attitudes towards immigration—broadly favourable, but with qualifications growing more serious over time. I shall not now re-till that ground.

My conclusion was that on both immigration and citizenship matters the Howard era record was mixed, but that: “Comprising as it did achievements, on the one hand, and failures (both of commission and omission), on the other, my ultimate verdict is that it essentially failed at the fence.”

Those Howard era deficiencies, however, have been as nothing to Labor’s. A Prime Minister bent on forging a name (and future career?) in the United Nations arena abandoned Australia’s right to “decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come”.[1] Labor lost…