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Anthony Albanese has never been so sure of anything in his life: he does not want the ISIS women and children to come to Australia. As he hit the airwaves on the issue over the past week and a bit, it struck me that I’ve never before heard him so certain.
Once upon a time, when a politician spoke with such unadulterated confidence, it was time to sit up and listen. It would have indicated deep-seated conviction. Now my first instinct is to check the polls.
New polling shop Fox & Hedgehog confirmed my suspicions. A national poll out last Sunday found that 64 per cent of voters oppose or strongly oppose allowing the return of “the wives and family members of Australian men who flew to the Middle East to fight for ISIS”. Now, it is of course statistically likely that the prime minister is genuinely among the slightly lower, but still majority, 56 per cent of Labor voters who oppose or strongly oppose the repatriation. But it can’t hurt that he knows the Australian people are overwhelmingly with him.
Since Australians have started to worry more about social cohesion, Albanese has been shifting his stance. He’s begun to champion patriotism (with “progressive” as a modifier, to make it less scary) and updated his usage of “social cohesion” to imply integration. One of his ministers even defended Australia Day in a public speech made this week. Yes, even if it continues to be held on the current date. I’ve got whiplash. This is a massive about-turn.
For as long as I can remember, the generalisable position of the two major parties was that the Coalition was concerned with vetting new migrants for skills, character and civic contribution, vehemently against asylum-seekers arriving through illegal channels, and deeply concerned with integration. The Labor Party, on the other hand, perhaps as a repudiation of its historical support for the White Australia Policy, became almost utopian in its attitude to multiculturalism under prime minister Gough Whitlam.
Since then, Labor has been allergic to any suggestion of integration, horrified by its antecedent “assimilation”, and – at least until Kevin Rudd was elected and the consequences of dismantling it became alarmingly apparent – very much against the system prime minister John Howard had created to discourage asylum-seeker arrivals by boat.
I have been arguing for years that the European experience recommended against this type of utopianism and broadly in favour of the approach adopted by the Coalition. So I’m not mad that the Labor Party has finally come around. But I do feel a bit gaslit in the way it has done it.
When the facts change, reasonable people will change their minds. But the facts have not changed – unless polls following the Bondi attack are the facts in question. Yet, Albanese and his team have flipped their former position with no admission that they have done a 180. There’s nothing to see here, it seems. In Orwellian terms, we have always been at war with Eastasia.
Indeed, in a speech to the McKell Institute on Wednesday, Julian Hill, the Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs – the minister who’s confessed to liking Australia Day – discovered that “debates over the scale and focus of the migration program are entirely legitimate … there are genuine community anxieties”.
Hill says he’s concerned about “extremely culturally conservative behaviour”, forced marriage, “reports from high schools in parts of Melbourne – and no doubt elsewhere – about homophobic abuse of gay kids in schools by some newly arrived migrants from multiple countries and faith groups”. And he says, “Calling such things out can be done in a way that asserts shared Australian values without smearing an ethnic or religious group, and we should not be afraid to do so.” In fact, Hill says, it is our responsibility to do so.
Bizarrely, though, from there he pivoted to blaming precisely the people who have tried to navigate those debates for the recent decline in social cohesion. The Liberal Party, in Hill’s telling, has “picked on” or “failed to defend” various groups of immigrants. I’m not going to defend the Liberal Party on this individually or collectively. Some have no doubt said things that were insensitive. But, over the past couple of decades, any attempt to call out behaviour which didn’t accord with Australian values – which Hill now says is our responsibility – was slandered and smeared by the Labor team.
I know this from personal experience: regardless of how carefully I have pointed out emerging problems, there’s always someone like Hill who will turn around and accuse me of “dog-whistling”.
I know, and I’ve still done it for years, because it’s important. As far back as 2016, I tried to explain to an Australian audience the important concept of a leitkultur – a leading culture, or shared core values – developed by Syrian-German intellectual Bassam Tibi. I pointed out the foundations of Australia’s successful multi-ethnic society and the need to refresh and reinforce the principles on which it was built. I argued we had a responsibility to citizens born Australian, to immigrants who became Australian, and to those who sought to join us, to preserve our liberal democracy.
Doing so got me branded a conservative. Which is why I find this U-turn highly suspect. It reeks of political calculation.
“For the last 30 years, Labor’s two Achilles’ heels have been the economy and finances, and security and borders,” Resolve pollster Jim Reed tells me. “Albanese has managed to neutralise those Coalition strengths, and without those foundational brand attributes, it’s difficult to see how the Coalition can come back.”
The prime minister’s response to the Bondi attacks was seen as weak, so he needed a way to show strength and conviction to shore up his position and keep his advantage.
At least he’s got it right, if for the wrong reasons. If there’s one thing Albanese knows with conviction, it’s that he wants to remain in the Lodge.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is an insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. She is also an advisory board member of Australians For Prosperity, which is part-funded by the coal industry.
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Parnell Palme McGuinness is an insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. She is also an advisory board member of Australians For Prosperity, which is part-funded by the coal industry.From our partners
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