After a week where shock official figures showing record-high January arrivals sparked a flood of calls to rein in Australia’s out of control mass immigration numbers, from Dick Smith to Bob Carr, the Liberal Party are starting to notice.
A Sky News editorial by Steve Price (don’t forget how quickly Murdoch’s so-called conservative outlet caves to advertiser boycotts, and will dump its best-rating stars if they become too right-wing, just like its US sister channel Fox News) imploring the Opposition to draft a “population policy” was on Monday picked up by Pauline Hanson, who has ramped up her own anti-immigration rhetoric recently.
Then today Liberal senator Dave Sharma said in his second maiden speech to parliament:
“Until we are able to accelerate our pace of home building, we need to reduce our immigration intake”
This was pounced on by Sydney’s Daily Telegraph (a publication so right-wing its ongoing series on Indigenous youth crime in country NSW leaves out the Indigenous part) in an article headlined: “NSW Senator Dave Sharma joins calls to pause migration amid housing crisis”.
At the time of writing, 95% of respondents to a poll accompanying the piece asking “Should Australia pause migration until more housing can be built?” had answered “Yes”.
But the article by Angira Bharadwaj failed to mention that Sharma also said “without migration, our economy would not be growing at all”.
Sharma, who is so vocally pro-Israel that people automatically assume he is Jewish, is not anti-immigration at all, and neither are the Liberals.
Just like in every other Western so-called democracy, mass immigration in Australia has been pushed by both major parties for decades, despite poll after poll showing large majorities oppose it.
The cycle goes like this:
The Liberals promise to reduce immigration to “sensible levels” while in opposition, then bring in as many migrants as possible while in office to keep the GDP line going up, then when they get voted out due to the negative effects of doing so, they pretend to oppose mass immigration once more, until it’s their turn again to open the floodgates even wider – for the economy, of course.
At the same time, they call any minor party with actual anti-immigration policies racist, insist that being Australian is as simple as filling out a form, and peddle easily debunked myths about skills shortages and diversity being a strength.
This should not be a surprise to anyone, because the Liberal Party are indeed liberals – and even if they were genuine conservatives this would not matter, as conservatives are not anti-immigration either.
The same applies to Labor, who did exactly the same thing when they were in opposition.
So when Peter Dutton starts talking tough on immigration in the coming weeks instead of focusing on asylum seekers, don’t fall for it.
The only way we stop mass immigration, end the housing crisis and see real wage growth again is by voting for a radical right-wing party that will not compromise by promising to “only” bring in 70,000 immigrants a year while actually letting in 100,000+.
Nothing less than a commitment to a total immigration moratorium and remigration will do.
