What his time in office shows

Tony Abbott’s recent immigration rhetoric overlaps uneasily with the policies and outcomes of his own premiership, writes Dr Abul Rizvi.

TONY ABBOTT to have Extensively written on immigration policy He is far ahead of the simple “stop the boats” slogans of his time as Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister in recent years.

As we all know, it is best to look at a politician’s actual actions, not just his words. So let’s look at his actions on immigration policy as Prime Minister and see if his current rhetoric makes any sense.

Abbott makes three important points in his writings (these are also made by his associates in the Murdoch press and Liberal leadership candidates). Andrew Hastie And Jacinta Price):

governments must be strong on illegal immigration;

the current level of immigration is very high; And

Too many people from non-Judeo-Christian backgrounds are migrating to Australia.

illegal immigration

Abbott praises his success stopping boats in much the same way Scott Morrison he did (and actually gave himself a reward for allegedly doing so).

Abbott says:

‘Australia is the only country in the world to stem the recent wave of illegal immigration by boat… Australia was successful because the government I led was convinced that a country that loses control of its borders will, in time, lose control of its destiny.’

The fact is that the actions performed by the second Rudd The government had effectively shut down the boats when Abbott took office, as it was due to reintroduce offshore processing. John Menadue and former Deputy Undersecretary of Immigration Peter Hughes to have Extensively documented effect of this action.

Menadue’s findings:

During Operation Sovereign Borders (OSBOn 19 December 2013, the number of boats preparing for their first boat return dropped from 48 in July 2013 to just seven in December 2013. OSB only resorted to the tail end of the boat drama. The “game changer” was Kevin Rudd’s announcement in July 2013 that those arriving by boat would no longer be resettled in Australia. Probably, without the decision in July 2013, the return of the boats would not have been successful at all.

What Abbott and Morrison were good at was manipulating the media into believing that their actions were what stopped the boats.

But immigration integrity isn’t just about irregular boat arrivals. By appointment Mike Pezzullo As head of Immigration and Border Protection, Abbott set in motion a chain of events that led to the largest labor trafficking scam in Australian history.

New Minister of Immigration Peter Dutton and Mike Pezzullo not only allowed this massive fraud to thrive, they also significantly cut off the immigration compliance resources that enabled traffickers to operate with immunity. Most Australians would be surprised to learn how desperate Dutton and Pezzullo are. protect immigration integrity.

While Abbott conveniently does not mention this massive scam, he happily talks about the mass deportation of people coming to Australia as part of this scam (as does the US President). Donald Trumpwith zero understanding of the issues and costs involved).

Legal passage levels

Abbott argues that immigration is currently too high, but does not say what level he would find acceptable. He complains that 30% of Australia’s population is foreign-born; is much higher than in other comparable countries. However, by the end of his Prime Ministership, 28% of Australia’s population was born overseas. Was he complaining then? Did he do anything about it?

During his two years as Prime Minister, the Abbott Government delivered a permanent migration program of 190,000 people in 2013-14; This was, at the time, the largest immigration program in our history. In 2014-15, it was slightly lower at 189,097.

The current permanent migration program is 185,000. In other words, Abbott has done nothing to curtail the permanent immigration program. He and the Chief of Staff (who now talks constantly about the level of immigration) conveniently said nothing about reducing immigration while they were in office.

The humanitarian aid program reached 13,768 in 2013-14 and 13,756 in 2014-15. This is around the average level of humanitarian programs this century. Abbott also made an announcement. Additional 12,000 places for Syrian refugees This brought the overall humanitarian program count to over 20,000. The current humanitarian program is 20,000.

It is true that under Abbott net migration fell sharply from 230,330 in 2012-13 to 187,780 in 2013-14 and 184,830 in 2014-15. While he has tried to take credit for this from time to time, he now tends not to do so too much, having probably realized that the decline in net migration is due entirely to the huge increase in unemployment in Australia.

This led to a massive exodus of Australian citizens (and to a lesser extent visa holders). During Abbott’s two years in office, we have experienced a net exodus of more than 45,000 Australian citizens. The net outflow of Australian citizens in the two years before Abbott came to power was 15,450. Abbott was literally driving Australians out of the country faster than ever before. So did he engineer the huge increase in unemployment to achieve this result?

There was also a huge return of New Zealand citizens who came to Australia. A net of 34,060 New Zealand citizens came to Australia in 2012-13. In 2013-14, this number dropped to 12,470 and in 2014-15 it dropped to 4,670. The unemployment rate in New Zealand was significantly lower than in Australia during the Abbott years. This resulted in a return.

It’s no surprise that Abbott no longer boasts about these “achievements.”

However, Abbott laments the huge increase in net migration immediately following the reopening of international borders (2022-23). This was actually unexpected.

But what Abbott didn’t explain is that the increase was almost entirely due to a range of COVID and pre-COVID policies. In fact, Dutton was advocating increasing immigration as late as the second half of 2022 and was doubtful that the new Labor Government could achieve this.

It would be fair to criticize the Labor Government for moving too slowly to tighten policy, but there is no basis for Abbott to exonerate his Coalition colleagues for harshly criticizing the immigration accelerator.

Composition of migration

Abbott complains:

‘…more than two million Australians today were born in China or India.’

But when Abbott became Prime Minister, the two leading source countries on our immigration program were – as you might expect – India and China. Abbott has not taken any policy initiatives to reduce immigration from these two countries; In fact, he did the exact opposite with the changes he made to the international student visa.

However, it has resulted in a reduction in the number of UK citizens receiving permanent visas. These fell from 23,220 in 2013-14 to 21,078 in 2014-15.

Abbott also says:

‘We have every right to discriminate on the basis of values if we wish to avoid importing destructive passions. And if we are proud of Australia, as we have every right to be, we must be wary of immigration, which risks leaving the native-born feeling like outsiders in their own neighbourhoods.’

Abbott is entitled to that view, but he doesn’t say anything about how he’ll do it (it’s a bit like Trump’s Muslim ban). This may be because, like Andrew Hastie, who has adopted the same language, he has no idea how to apply the “values test” but is happy to blow the whistle on it.

Abbott declares:

‘…universities and colleges should not rely so much on foreign students.’

But the Abbott Government has proposed legislation to cut university funding by 20% (it was rejected in the Senate, as was much of Abbott’s radical agenda), which would have made them even more reliant on overseas students. It also introduced a provider-level risk rating system for student visas, triggering a boom in overseas students.

As a result, the number of foreign students rose from 346,962 in September 2013, when Abbott was elected, to 425,741 in September 2015, when he was dismissed. Due to risk rating changes implemented under Abbott, student numbers continued to rise to 633,816 until the onset of COVID in September 2019.

The truth is that Abbott complains about the level and composition of immigration but has done little about it and now offers little on how to implement his new ideas – ideas he did not implement when he was Prime Minister.

Maybe it’s really just a slogan and has no substance.

Doctor Abul Rizvi Independent Australian columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Immigration Service. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.

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