Scott Morrison warns resentment to free trade and immigration threatens economy
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Version 0 of 1. Scott Morrison has warned about the rise of populist resentment to immigration, free trade and foreign investment, saying it threatens the foundations of Australia’s economic growth. He said news that 49% of Australians support a ban on Muslim immigration was a serious concern, as were polls that found similar opposition to trade deals and foreign investment. It would be dangerous to endorse such “policy sentiments” because it could cut off Australia from the primary sources of prosperity it has enjoyed for two centuries. Speaking at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, in his third major economic speech in recent weeks, the treasurer said it would be foolish to deny there was a concern about immigration in Australia. “The way to address it is not to be dismissive, but to engage on those concerns and have policies that effectively address them as the Coalition has done, under Howard, Abbott and Turnbull, ably assisted, I would like to think, by their respective immigration ministers,” he said. Many voters wondered why they felt they were not benefiting from recent economic growth in Australia, with stagnating wages and fewer hours at work. The way to fix that, said Morrison, was to pursue a program for investment, trade and immigration that focused on bringing people to Australia “who make a contribution rather than take one”. One Nation’s leader, Pauline Hanson, used her maiden Senate speech this month to question the value of globalisation and call for a halt to “further immigration”, warning that Australia was in danger of being swamped by Muslims. Last week she said she did not believe the recent poll that found 49% of voters supported a ban on Muslim immigration to Australia. She said she thought the true figure was much higher. On Friday Morrison said voters’ anxieties about immigration and the economy would be ameliorated by policies that created jobs, increased wages, drove growth, and boosted living standards. He said Australia should not reject foreign investment, including investment in agricultural land, despite concerns about the supposedly high level of Chinese investment. “The agricultural land register firstly shows that 86.4% of all agricultural land in Australia is owned by Australians, and that of the 13.6% agricultural land owned by foreign interests, 84% of this interest is leasehold,” he said. “China accounts for just 3% of all foreign-owned agricultural land, while the Americans, British and Dutch account for more than two thirds of the holdings. “Of the major agricultural foreign investment applications I have approved as treasurer, the largest were to combinations of US, Canadian, Dutch and Swiss investors, not Chinese.” He assured Australians that the Turnbull government had strengthened controls on foreign investment, including increasing the application fees for foreign investors buying real estate, lowering the screening threshold for agricultural foreign investments from $252m to $15m, and putting a $55m threshold on investments in agribusiness. He also said Australians could not afford to turn their backs on world trade, and it was in Australia’s interest to keep arguing for continued trade liberalisation to keep our markets open. He said Australia must keep accepting immigrants, too, because the immigration program had been the “prime driver of population growth that has supported our economic growth”. “The Productivity Commission is projecting our GDP to be around 58% higher by 2060 than it would with only natural increases in population,” he said. “We saw this economic impact during the years of the Howard government when not only did we double the level of permanent immigration to Australia, but we increased the proportion of skilled migration of our intake from less than 30% under Labor in 1996 to almost 70%, where it has remained ever since. “The Turnbull government is committed to ensuring that we keep this strong economic focus without our immigration program.” He said Australia must continue to focus on trade, immigration and foreign investment if it wanted to remain one of the fastest-growing advanced economies. “We cannot deny this prosperity to future generations by disconnecting ourselves from the very sources of this prosperity,” he said. |