Dutton is following the Trump playbook, and that needs to be called out. Maybe the ‘racist country’ comment was a step too far… but then impartiality is fast becoming a thing of the past anyway. More and more journo seem to think it’s no longer necessary.
That being said it’s nice to see someone at the ABC call out the Liberals… makes a nice change from Leigh Sales and Annabel Crabb fangirling over Malcolm Turnbull and the other Liberal wets.
Laura Tingle’s remarks at the Sydney Writers’ Festival at the weekend lacked the context, balance and supporting information of her work for the ABC and would not have met the ABC’s editorial standards. Although the remarks were conversational, and not made in her work capacity, the ABC and its employees have unique obligations in the Australian media. Today she has explained her remarks in more detail to ensure there is a factual record of the relevant context and detail. The ABC’s editorial standards serve a vital role. Laura has been reminded of their application at external events as well as in her work and I have counselled her over the remarks.
Laura Tingle is one of Australia’s most experienced, knowledgeable and accomplished journalists. During her career, including working for The Australian, the AFR and the ABC, she has always sought to better inform Australians by cutting through the politics that often alienates them. The ABC strongly believes hearing informed and independent voices is valuable to our society.
For much of the past two weeks, the political debate has focused not on the federal Budget but on the Leader of the Opposition’s budget reply in which he pledged to cut migration to deal with the housing crisis.
I have written and broadcast on this decision and its implications on ABC platforms numerous times since then. I was also a panellist at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on the weekend when migration and housing were also discussed in a panel on the year in politics.
In my writing and broadcasts over the past two weeks I have observed on several occasions that there were considerable dangers for the way our political discourse would unfold – and for social harmony – in linking migration to the housing crisis.
At the Writers’ Festival I was asked to comment on the Opposition leader’s policy on migration and the economy, including housing. Mr Dutton has been vocal on this topic, particularly over the past fortnight.
“It’s not just housing,” he said. “People know that if you move suburbs it’s hard to get your kids into school or into childcare. It’s hard to get into a GP because the doctors have closed their books. It’s hard to get elective surgery. These factors have all contributed to capacity constraints because of the lack of planning in the migration program.”
He has also said migrants are the cause of “congestion on our roads”.
As the alternative Prime Minister, with an election approaching within a year, Mr Dutton’s comments deserve rigorous scrutiny and examination.
I have also pointed out that there were flaws in the Opposition’s position as a piece of viable policy. That is, while on the face of it an obvious answer to a shortage of housing might be to immediately try to cut the number of people seeking it – and the obvious answer there is migrants – things are actually a lot more complicated when you try to do that.
The Morrison government announced an almost identical cut in permanent migration numbers in the 2019 Budget, saying the “planning level of the Migration Program will be reduced from 190,000 to 160,000 places for four years from 2019-20”. The pandemic rather disrupted that plan.
But the very same 2019 budget papers were forecasting that net overseas migration would be 271,700 in 2019 before dropping to just 263,800 three years later in 2022, despite the cut of 30,000 permanent places a year.
A big reason for the fact that net overseas migration was not forecast to fall, despite the cut in the permanent number, is that more than half the people who are accepted as permanent migrants are already here when they apply. So cutting permanent migration doesn’t necessarily mean fewer people in, or coming to, the country. Some of the migration pool just changes “class”. Others are still able to come here on temporary visas.
There has also been confusion about whether the Coalition planned to cut the (relatively small) permanent migration number, or to cut back the much larger, demand-driven net overseas migration number, which includes programs that have no formal caps and includes overseas students.
Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor added to that confusion last week when he said the plan was to cut net overseas migration by 25 per cent, not just permanent migration. Mr Taylor also accused Labor of using migration to prop up the economy – and it is true that the post-pandemic surge in returning temporary visa holders has indeed played a crucial role in keeping a barely simmering economy from dropping into recession. But that raises the question of what happens if you cut migration as dramatically as the Coalition appears to want to do.
Discussions at writers’ festivals are much less formal and more free-flowing than a piece of analysis on an ABC platform and this was a format where adding detailed context to the discussion wasn’t really possible.
Panellist Niki Savva had quoted those points Mr Dutton had made about too many migrants meaning things like it was too hard to buy a house, get in to see your GP, or get into childcare, and noted that the Opposition Leader seemed to bring everything back to immigration.
In agreeing with that observation, based on Mr Dutton’s own quotes, I once again raised the risks for the political debate of a major political leader doing this, which I truncated as “everything that’s going wrong in this country is because of migrants”.
That was simply a result of trying to summarise a point in a much less structured forum and was not intended to imply he had said that verbatim. If I had been speaking on an ABC platform, or not in a five-way discussion, I would have provided all that context, as I do in my stories for the ABC.
I did indeed make the observation on Sunday that we are a racist country, in the context of a discussion about the political prospects ahead. I wasn’t saying every Australian is a racist. But we clearly have an issue with racism. For some months now, for example, The Australian newspaper has been devoting considerable space to its alarm about a rise in anti-Semitism in Australia.
Without even going into the historic record, there is also ample evidence that racism remains a particular problem in our legal and policing systems. A coronial inquest underway in the Northern Territory has become mired in an expose of racism in the NT’s elite policing unit. Racism and racial profiling repeatedly show up as an issue of concern in our policing and justice systems.
The morning radio news bulletins on the ABC on Monday featured several stories that were related to racism, including one about racial profiling of young South Sudanese men in a police presentation to legal practitioners in Melbourne.
Surveys, including by the ABC, have repeatedly found the majority of Australians of non-European backgrounds reporting experiences of discrimination and racism in their lives, sometimes starting as early as primary school.
Is it relevant to raise this record of Australian racism in political analysis? Absolutely, if it becomes an issue of controversy in our political contest – as it clearly did when Pauline Hanson appeared on the national stage in 1996 and declared the country was being “swamped with Asians”. John Howard had similarly flirted with the issue of Asian immigration in the 1980s and Julia Gillard did too in 2013 when she used a speech on a visit to western Sydney to announce a clampdown on the issue of temporary skilled worker visas.
In my commentary at the ABC, and at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, I expressed my concern at the risks involved in Peter Dutton pressing the hot button of housing and linking it to migration for these reasons.
Political leaders, by their comments, give licence to others to express opinions they may not otherwise express.
That does not make them racist.
But it has real world implications for many Australians.
Finally, panellists were asked to nominate a positive change that had come from the change of government, on the basis of the famous quote that “when you change the government, you change the country”.
Not having the time in that setting to attempt a detailed and serious assessment of what has changed with the change of government, I made an off-hand observation that simply observed we now had fewer stunts like the “needles in strawberries” affair and that, whatever its failings, the current government seemed serious about policy.
I regret that when I was making these observations at the Writers’ Festival the nature of the free-flowing panel discussion means they were not surrounded by every quote substantiating them which would have – and had – been included in what I had said earlier on the ABC.
This has created the opportunity for yet another anti-ABC pile-on.
This is not helpful to me or to the ABC. Or to the national debate
I am proud of my work as a journalist at the ABC, on all its platforms, and I let that work speak for itself.
It is based, always, on solid research and a lifetime of experience reporting on Australian politics.
That work is built on, and delivered in, the framework of the ABC’s very high editorial standards.
Sarah now on leave, Laura Tingle will be hosting from Monday.
Was watching 7.30 tonight and had the most unfortunate opportunity to watch that Trump apologist Marjorie Taylor Greene ranting about Australian media and trying to own Sarah Ferguson, complaining about the ABC and trying to push through the rubbish about Trump and poor him and how he and the fascist neo-Nazis were the victims and stuff, and then some irrelevant BS about Ferguson getting the line from the Democrats or crap.
Why did they even give her the airtime knowing she’s nothing but a blonde airhead?
730 has always had run ins with Trump aligned supporters. I recall Sarah H/S had a bad interview also.
Trump camp won’t like the way Sarah interviews, they know they won’t be able to walk around questions pretty quick!
She needs to stop cutting people off however. I know they never answer the question but many interviews are just two people yelling at each other.
She needs to do that for the likes of MTG and any of those Trump apologists. They’re just spewing crap and if they’re going to appear then they should get the grilling they deserve rather than the cuddles they get on Fox News and Newsmax.
Getting them trying to answer and then shouting all over them gives them a taste of their own medicine.
I’d prefer not to see those idiots on screen but if you have to, then I’d like to see them get roasted to the core.
Because apparently she supported the release of Julian Assange.
Sarah is on the cover of Sunday Life magazine inside The Sun-Herald and Sunday Age today (paywall article)
Thursday 12 September -
Laura Tingle hosting tonight.
Been a while!
God they need to update the set and graphics on this show.
Agreed that theme is much better than what is currently used. The current is very underbaked
Plus it’s rarely heard - only for about 2-3 seconds at the end.
Call it 7:30 Report again too. 7:30 means nothing.
Worse still that they repeat it on the ABC or ABC News in a different timeslot.
Call it ABC Reports or something for the streaming age. It’s a good show to repeat.
Yeah. I was surprised they didn’t relaunch with a new title after Leigh Sales left. It would have made sense.
Monday 16 September to Thursday 19 September and Monday 23 September -
Laura Tingle hosting this week.
