December 20-2013
. . . outspoken
Australian Senator Sam Dastyari, the only Iranian-born member of the Australian federal Parliament, has used his maiden speech in Parliament to argue that the country should open itself wide to immigrants in order to grow much bigger.
Immigration has become something of a dirty word in Australia in recent years and politicians tend to avoid the subject, called “Big Australia,” ever since it backfired on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a few years ago.
So, it was a surprise when Dastyari fervently embraced the case for a “Big Australia.”
Dastyari, although only 30 years old, was elected by his state assembly to be a federal senator a few months ago and made his maiden speech last week.
He told the story of his own family migrating from Iran to Australia in the 1980s to get away from the revolution.
The senator said it was time Australians had a mature debate about migration and refugees. Now that the “emotion” of the September election is over, the country should calmly reappraise the vexed subject, Senator Dastyari said.
“Friends, let me be clear, I unequivocally believe in a Big Australia. Immigration adds to our national wealth. Immigration is nation building. Immigration makes us strong. The people who come here will drive Australia’s economic prosperity for decades to come,” he said, laying out the argument for immigration primarily in economic terms.
Australia is the world’s sixth largest country in terms of area, but it has only 23 million people, a quarter of whom were born elsewhere. It is one of the most thinly populated countries in the world. But much of the country is desert and the population is largely confined to the southeast corner, where settlement began 225 years ago when Australia was created as Britain’s penal colony after the American revolution meant Britain could no longer order criminals across the Atlantic.
The Sydney Morning Herald said “alarmism” has dominated the public conversation about the size of Australia’s population since Prime Minister Rudd mounted—and then swiftly abandoned—his case for a Big Australia in 2010.
At the time, Rudd appointed Tony Burke as Australia’s first population minister, but fears about immigration were fanned effectively by then opposition leader Tony Abbott—who just defeated Rudd and has become prime minister—and Rudd soon retreated from the debate.
When Julia Gillard upended Rudd in an internal Labor Party coup and took over as prime minister in 2010, she quickly and explicitly distanced herself from the whole idea of a “Big Australia.”
Upon replacing Rudd, Gillard changed Burke’s title from ‘‘minister for population’’ to ‘‘minister for sustainable population.’’ That word ‘‘sustainable’’ reflected her determination for a small Australia.
MPs on both sides of the political divide have shunned the subject ever since—as did Rudd himself did when he toppled Gillard in a counter-coup last spring and resumed the prime ministry until losing the September election.
But not Senator Dastyari, a member of Rudd’s Labor Party. He said Australia risks becoming an “insular” country, dominated by fear-mongering political rhetoric and ignoring the economic and social benefits of a larger migration program.
“For too long, everyone’s been scared away from engaging in this debate,” he told the Morning Herald last Wednesday. “But the truth is that the future of Australia needs to be a big one.”
Dastyari said politicians found it easy to score short-term victories by exploiting fears about immigrants. “Everyone’s under a lot of pressure.Ö It’s very easy to play on those fears and say to people [that] a short-term increase in the migrant intake is going to be extra traffic, extra congestion.
“My argument is if you look at the history of this country, proper, sustained long-term growth in immigration, pursuing a Big Australia model, will be the only path we have to pay for an aging future.” The country is aging and every year a larger part of the population is retired, with a proportionately smaller population supporting the retirees.
Asked about Labor’s controversial crackdown on asylum seekers, Senator Dastyari admitted to feeling uncomfortable about the “boat people” debate.
“I can’t help but have sympathy,” he said, for the many families like his own who had fled oppressive regimes for a better life in Australia. The largest bloc of the boat people in the past year have been Iranians.
