Speaker 1: For an immigration program to work in the national interest,
Speaker 1: it must discriminate based on values.
Speaker 2: It's a controversial proposal, immigration based on deliberate discrimination.
Speaker 1: Those who migrate from liberal democracies have a greater likelihood
Speaker 1: of subscribing to Australian values.
Speaker 2: Compared to Opposition leader Angus Taylor has outlined the Liberal
Speaker 2: Party's hardline migration policy in a provocative speech in camera.
Speaker 1: Not everyone wanting to migrate to Australia will be a
Speaker 1: net benefit to Australia. Indeed, some will be a net train.
Speaker 2: Parts of the plan had echoes of Donald Trump, others
Speaker 2: of John Howard, as Taylor made a play for one
Speaker 2: nation's growing pool of lapsed Liberal voters. So what's in
Speaker 2: the plan and will the libs risky move on migration
Speaker 2: pay off in the polls. I'm Nicole Johnston and you're
Speaker 2: listening to seven AM Today Press Gallery journalist Karen Middleton
Speaker 2: on the Liberal Party's hardline new migration policy. It's Wednesday,
Speaker 2: April fifteenth. Karen, We've been waiting for the Opposition's immigration
Speaker 2: plan to come out for a while now. It's been
Speaker 2: delayed a couple of times. We finally have it. What
Speaker 2: changes is Angus Taylor proposing, well, we've got.
Speaker 3: A bit of it, Nicole. We haven't really got the
Speaker 3: whole lot, as the numbers are actually missing. But what
Speaker 3: we have got is a framework that's true. And for example,
Speaker 3: we have the proposal that that would be the introduction
Speaker 3: of a safe country list, so a list of countries
Speaker 3: whereby if people who've claimed asylum are rejected, there'll be
Speaker 3: a list of countries that are deemed safe to return
Speaker 3: them to, and that's supposed to fast track the refusal
Speaker 3: and return process for us IS claims.
Speaker 1: Countries on this list would be those deemed generally free
Speaker 1: from persecution. If a citizen of Australia safe country applies
Speaker 1: for a refugee and humanitarian visa from outside Australia, it
Speaker 1: will be assumed to be inadmissible.
Speaker 3: There's a proposal to reassess more than two thousand visas
Speaker 3: issued to Palestinians since the October seven, twenty twenty three
Speaker 3: Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the war that followed that.
Speaker 1: The Garzan cohort of seventeen hundred people here on visas
Speaker 1: presents a high risk to our nation. That cohort must
Speaker 1: be reassisted entirely with far greater scrutiny.
Speaker 3: Then anyone applying for visa, including tourists, would have to
Speaker 3: submit their social media details to be vetted at the
Speaker 3: Australian end before they get visas. So that sounds an
Speaker 3: awful lot like what Donald Trump is introduced in the
Speaker 3: United States proposal for new funding for law enforcement agencies
Speaker 3: so they can track down and arrest and deport people
Speaker 3: who are deemed to not fit into the Australian community
Speaker 3: or who've broken the law.
Speaker 1: If you do the wrong thing, we'll keep you out
Speaker 1: or will kick you out, you will be deported.
Speaker 3: And then there are three key pillars that Angus Taylor outlined.
Speaker 3: The first, he says, is values, Australian values. The second
Speaker 3: is shutting the door to people who abuse the immigration
Speaker 3: system here, and the third is showing the red light
Speaker 3: to radicals. He said, so getting rid of people who
Speaker 3: have come from somewhere else and are deemed to be
Speaker 3: causing social unrest.
Speaker 2: So, Karen, if we could just go through a few
Speaker 2: of them, pick them apart. What did you think of
Speaker 2: the part of Taylor's announcement when he talked about this
Speaker 2: screening of social media for all these or applicants, even tourists.
Speaker 1: The Coalition will establish an enhanced Security Screening Center using
Speaker 1: the full suite of intelligence, screening and enforcement capabilities. The
Speaker 1: center will stop radicals, extremists and terrorists from entering our country.
Speaker 2: Doesn't it start to cross over into the government invading
Speaker 2: people's privacy and how would something like that even work?
Speaker 3: Well, it is certainly an invasion of privacy. Having said that,
Speaker 3: social media is public, so there's an implication with the
Speaker 3: way that the Trump system works that they're digging deeper
Speaker 3: than that. The problem here is what are they looking for?
Speaker 3: What are the things in your social media that might
Speaker 3: deem you not eligible to come to Australia, either as
Speaker 3: a tourist or as a migrant. Any kind of prejudice
Speaker 3: could be allowed to run, which is exactly what this
Speaker 3: policy purports to be trying to stop. I guess, so
Speaker 3: it's very unclear how it would actually work. It would
Speaker 3: also cost a huge amount of money. I expect to
Speaker 3: have people going through every applicants social media accounts in
Speaker 3: detail and then writing reports about them, and then someone
Speaker 3: making a decision about them, and then the process that
Speaker 3: is involved in all of that. And I think if
Speaker 3: we look at the United States. This certainly from the
Speaker 3: outside looking in, there's a general impression that if you're
Speaker 3: someone who's been outspoken about Donald Trump and his government,
Speaker 3: and especially if you're someone with any kind of profile,
Speaker 3: then you'd have to think you are a good candidate
Speaker 3: to be screened out based on your social media. So
Speaker 3: if that's what's going to be introduced here, then it
Speaker 3: would be entirely up to the government of the day
Speaker 3: what it decided the rules were and what was an
Speaker 3: acceptable level of criticism and of whom and what wasn't.
Speaker 2: If we could move on to the part of the
Speaker 2: speech that talked about enforcement, now that was going after
Speaker 2: visa overstayers and people who've exhausted their appeals by having
Speaker 2: this task force to target around sixty five thousand unresolved cases,
Speaker 2: and it does start to sound like Angus Taylor is
Speaker 2: not ruling out a us I style crackdown on immigration.
Speaker 3: Well, I think he was asked about that on radio
Speaker 3: and he didn't comprehensively rule it out. But again, it
Speaker 3: isn't clear how that would work.
Speaker 1: We will deport people who no longer have a visa
Speaker 1: and shouldn't be in this country. We should we should do.
Speaker 4: That with you know, like a team with vans and
Speaker 4: armed police and all that.
Speaker 1: Sort of thing. We're talking a very different thing here.
Speaker 1: They're talking well over ten million people. We're talking about
Speaker 1: sixty five thousands. So I don't know.
Speaker 3: Under the existing system, if people either break Australian law
Speaker 3: and their foreign citizens or they've applied for asylum or
Speaker 3: refugee status and are rejected, then the system works to
Speaker 3: ultimately send those people back to the country that their
Speaker 3: country of origin or to a third country. But of
Speaker 3: course practically that doesn't always happen. We know, and there
Speaker 3: is a backlog of cases that have been a frustration
Speaker 3: to successive governments, including the current one, and that goes
Speaker 3: to this sort of safe list idea that the coalition
Speaker 3: is talking about trying to make it easier to deport people,
Speaker 3: but there are practical obstacles to that, not all of
Speaker 3: which are in the control of an Australian government.
Speaker 2: Karen, one of the main messages or themes that we
Speaker 2: had was this issue of Australian values.
Speaker 1: Australia has a non discriminatory immigration program. We don't discriminate
Speaker 1: based on nationality, race, gender or faith.
Speaker 2: But he said that we should discriminate based on values.
Speaker 2: Now what's he talking about.
Speaker 3: Well, that's an excellent question because again it's open to interpretation.
Speaker 3: Now there is a statement of Australian values that people
Speaker 3: who are coming here on a shorter term basis, temporary
Speaker 3: visa applicants for example, have to say that they understand
Speaker 3: a set of values that include or read from some
Speaker 3: of them, for unicol respect for the freedom and dignity
Speaker 3: of the individual, freedom of religion and freedom to not
Speaker 3: have a religion. Commitment to the rule of law, so
Speaker 3: everyone's subject to the law and has to obey it.
Speaker 3: Parliamentary democracy, so that the law is determined by parliament.
Speaker 3: Equality of opportunity for all people, and that's about gender,
Speaker 3: sexual orientation, age, disability, race or national ethnic origin. And
Speaker 3: then there's this idea of a fair go and they've
Speaker 3: defined that as mutual respect, tolerance, compassion for those in need,
Speaker 3: equality of opportunity for all. And then it also talks
Speaker 3: about the English language meaning the national language, and it's
Speaker 3: an important unifying element of Australian society. But what Angus
Speaker 3: Taylor seems to be talking about is effectively legislating these values.
Speaker 3: Now that's going to get into pretty tough territory because
Speaker 3: if what you're making people do is sign up to
Speaker 3: what it then becomes a legal document. And on that basis,
Speaker 3: if they are later found to not have upheld those
Speaker 3: values and they're going to be deported, there has to
Speaker 3: be a legal framework for that. There has to be
Speaker 3: specific legislation that tells us what constitutes a breach of
Speaker 3: those values, a breach of the fair go or the
Speaker 3: freedom and dignity of the individual. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's sort of got the feel of a lawyer's picnic
Speaker 3: about it to me.
Speaker 2: Coming up, could Taylor's hard right pivot backfire.
Speaker 1: What we've seen in recent years, the Bondi Beach terrorist attack,
Speaker 1: radical Islamic preachers espousing hate with.
Speaker 2: Impunity, Karen. In the second half of Taylor's address, he
Speaker 2: talked about immigrants with quote subversive intent. So what was
Speaker 2: he talking about there and how did he go about
Speaker 2: linking migration to the Bondai Beach terrorist attack last year?
Speaker 3: Well, this is interesting because we've got to remember that
Speaker 3: the man who's been charged and who's still living, of
Speaker 3: the two, there was a father and son accused of
Speaker 3: these crimes. The father migrated to Australia from India twenty
Speaker 3: seven years ago and has lived here ever since. The
Speaker 3: son was born in Australia, so he's not a migrant,
Speaker 3: he's an Australian. So it seems to be an attempt
Speaker 3: to suggest that people of Arab background, of Muslim face
Speaker 3: maybe are people that we should be worrying about. And
Speaker 3: I think you're getting into dangerous territory when you're starting
Speaker 3: to blur the lines around all of that. So people
Speaker 3: with subversive intent. Our security agencies are already looking for
Speaker 3: those people. They work extremely hard to try and make
Speaker 3: sure that those people don't get into the country, and
Speaker 3: by and large it seems they're pretty successful at it. So,
Speaker 3: you know, there are just a few kind of logic
Speaker 3: questions around what they're actually talking about.
Speaker 1: Genocidal marches in major cities, anti Semitism across Australian communities.
Speaker 1: These are the ramifications of an immigration system where standards
Speaker 1: have erated.
Speaker 2: What's been the reaction to all of this so far, Well, I.
Speaker 3: Guess the earlier reaction is probably what you would expect.
Speaker 3: So the Greens are saying, you know, this is potentially
Speaker 3: a revival of the wide Australia policy.
Speaker 4: The Coalition think that reintroducing elements of the Wide Australia
Speaker 4: policy is the way forward for Australia in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: That is not the way forward for Australia. Australia gains
Speaker 4: so much immigration.
Speaker 3: They're concerned, particularly about the emphasis on English language and
Speaker 3: whether that's supposed to be now enforced. The Labor Government
Speaker 3: has said it's a race to the bottom and this
Speaker 3: is all about trying to stem the flow of voter
Speaker 3: support from the Coalition to one nation.
Speaker 5: The Coalition have got zero credibility and immigration. They let
Speaker 5: net migration explode after COVID and now we're just seeing
Speaker 5: desperate dog whistling from Angus Taylor who's desperately trying to
Speaker 5: compete with one nation at a race to the bottom.
Speaker 3: I think you would expect that some of the communities
Speaker 3: that are particularly being singled out in his speech and
Speaker 3: identified as places of concern alike could also raise concerns
Speaker 3: about it. But it will appeal to a lot of
Speaker 3: people who feeling secure, who are under financial pressure, and
Speaker 3: for whom migrants are the most obvious target. So there
Speaker 3: is an undercurrent or not so undercurrent. Now it's out
Speaker 3: in the open of politics around this issue, which goes
Speaker 3: beyond just the raw economics that we usually talk about
Speaker 3: in relation to migration numbers.
Speaker 2: And so, Karen, when you take a step back from this,
Speaker 2: does it seem that Taylor is trying to move the
Speaker 2: migration debate away from how many people come here and
Speaker 2: towards what type of people the coalition thinks should be
Speaker 2: allowed into Australia.
Speaker 3: I think he wants to do both, but I think
Speaker 3: he's doing the latter first, and that is quite deliberate.
Speaker 3: If you look back just prior to when the Liberal
Speaker 3: Party changed leaders and elected Angus Taylor's to replaced Susan Lee,
Speaker 3: there was a big push from the Conservative side to
Speaker 3: do more to try and win back those one nation voters.
Speaker 3: And James Patterson, who's a significant member of the coalition
Speaker 3: and a key Conservative, had given a speech so late
Speaker 3: last year I think where he talked about the pathway
Speaker 3: for the Coalition to getting back into government had to
Speaker 3: be winning those people back and they needed to prioritize that,
Speaker 3: and they needed to emphasize things like Australian values and
Speaker 3: patriotism to ignite passion for the flag and to use
Speaker 3: those kinds of issues, sort of populist nationalist issues to
Speaker 3: attract those people's attention, come up with policy ideas that
Speaker 3: might bring them back, and then after that worry about
Speaker 3: things like economic policies and maybe the numbers of migrants.
Speaker 3: So I think what we're seeing looks like the beginning
Speaker 3: of that kind of strategy rolling out.
Speaker 2: And so when you put it all together, the values test,
Speaker 2: the social media checks, Gaza refugee reassessment, what does this
Speaker 2: all say about where Taylor wants to take the Liberal Party.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a very conservative approach to this issue, and
Speaker 3: I think he's also wanting to hark back a bit
Speaker 3: to that John Howard days, where John Howard managed to
Speaker 3: wield this issue about levels of migration very very successfully
Speaker 3: as a political where he even quoted John Howard's old
Speaker 3: saying back from the two thousand and one election, which
Speaker 3: was we will decide who comes to this country and
Speaker 3: the circumstances in which they come. Now, that's the statement
Speaker 3: of the obvious. Every country should do that, but it's
Speaker 3: used in a way to, as you said earlier, bring
Speaker 3: up ideas of the right kinds of migrants, who's the
Speaker 3: right kind and who's not.
Speaker 1: Will decide who deserves protection and the circumstances in which
Speaker 1: that protection is.
Speaker 3: And so this debate is just it's just got a
Speaker 3: different tone about it, and I think it's drawing heavily
Speaker 3: and what was happening in the United States. It is
Speaker 3: a risk for the coalition because it will attract a
Speaker 3: number of those people who are just talking about who
Speaker 3: are feeling frustrated and disillusioned and are looking at parties
Speaker 3: like one Nation, but it will probably scare a whole
Speaker 3: lot of other people. And the question is where do
Speaker 3: they live and where do they vote? And will it
Speaker 3: be a net gain and a net positive for the
Speaker 3: opposition in the long run. And I think it's interesting
Speaker 3: to note that the new leader of the Nationals, Matt Canavan,
Speaker 3: and while he's endorsing a lot of populist ideas, he's
Speaker 3: been very strongly against the kind of xenophobic stuff that
Speaker 3: Pauline Hanson has been known about. You know, it's going
Speaker 3: to be interesting to see how this all plays out
Speaker 3: within the coalition because there are elements of this that
Speaker 3: might be seen as giving sort of tacit approval to
Speaker 3: that kind of language and that those kinds of ideas.
Speaker 3: So I think there could be some robust debate inside
Speaker 3: the Coalition about all of this and where it's headed.
Speaker 3: And there's a big question about whether it makes us
Speaker 3: more unified as a community or less. So we'll watch
Speaker 3: that with interest.
Speaker 2: Karen, thank you so much for explaining it all to
Speaker 2: us today.
Speaker 3: Thanks Nicole.
Speaker 2: Also in the news, Quantus says it's cutting flights as
Speaker 2: a result of the war in the Middle East, which
Speaker 2: has led to soaring price of jet fuel. The airline
Speaker 2: has announced it will reduce domestic capacity by five percent
Speaker 2: between May and June, with most cuts affecting routes between
Speaker 2: major capital cities. Quantus estimates its fuel bill could reach
Speaker 2: up to three point three billion dollars, more than eight
Speaker 2: hundred million above its previous estimate. The airline says impacted
Speaker 2: customers who have booked with Quantus or Jetstar will be
Speaker 2: offered alternative flights or a refund. And the Duke and
Speaker 2: Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan, have started an official
Speaker 2: tour of Australia after arriving in Melbourne yesterday. The couple
Speaker 2: will also visit Cameron Sydney, addressing causes that focus on
Speaker 2: mental health, community resilience and support for veterans. Some questions
Speaker 2: have been raised on how much the four day visit
Speaker 2: will cost taxpayers, with concerns that police have been enlisted
Speaker 2: to provide protection for the pair. Harry and Meghan's team
Speaker 2: has maintained the trip is being privately funded. I'm Nicole
Speaker 2: Johnston and this is seven am. Thanks for listening.