Increase or reduce immigration? Recommended reads
Immigration is the hot election issue connecting everything from mismanaged water and mass fish deaths in the Murray Darling to congested cities and unaffordable housing.
The 2019 IQ2 season kicks off with ‘Curb Immigration’ on 26 March. It’s something Prime Minister Scott Morrison promised to do today if re-elected and opposition leader Bill Shorten has committed to considering.
Here’s a collection of ideas, research, articles and arguments covering the debate.
New migrants to go regional for permanent residency, under PM’s plan
Scott Morrison, SBS News / 20 March 2019
Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed his immigration plan today. He confirmed reports he will lower the cap on Australia’s immigration intake from 190,000 to 160,000 for the next four years. He announced 23,000 visa places that require people to live and work in regional Australia for three years before they can apply for permanent residency. “It is about incentives to get people taking up the opportunities outside our big cities” and “it’s about busting congestion in our cities”, Morrison said.
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Australian attitudes to immigration: a love / hate relationship
The Ethics Centre, The New Daily / 24 January 2019
You’ll hear Australians talk about our country as either a multicultural utopia or intolerant mess. This article charts many recent surveys on our attitudes to immigration. The results show almost equal majorities of us love and hate it for different reasons, suggesting individual people both support and reject immigration at the same time. We’re complex creatures.
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Post Populism
Niall Ferguson, Festival of Dangerous Ideas / 4 November 2018
At the Festival of Dangerous Ideas on Cockatoo Island, Niall Ferguson presented his take on the five ingredients that have bred the nationalistic populism sweeping the western world today. Point one: increased immigration. Listen to the podcast or watch the video highlights. Elsewhere, Ferguson points to Brexit and the European migrant crisis and predicts, “the issue of migration will be seen by future historians as the fatal solvent of the EU”.
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Human Flow movie
Ai Weiwei / 2017
Part documentary and part advocacy, Human Flow is a film by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei that “gives a powerful visual expression” to the 65 million people displaced from their homes by climate change, war or famine. It is not the story of ‘orderly migration’ based on skilled visas or spatial planning policies, but rather, one of mass flows across countries and continents.
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Government needs to wake up to impact of population boom
PM, ABC RN / 23 February 2018
IQ2 guest and human geographer Dr Jonathan Sobels is interviewed by Linda Mottram on the impact of Australia’s population growth on the continent’s natural environment. He’s not the only person concerned about this. A 2019 study by ANU found 75 percent of Australians agree the environment is already under too much pressure with the current population size.
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Counter-terrorism expert Anne Aly: ‘I dream of a future in which I’m no longer needed’
Greg Callaghan, The Sydney Morning Herald / 18 November 2016
Dr Anne Aly is a counter terrorism expert come politician with “instant relatability”, according to this feature piece on her. Get to know more about her interesting life and career before catching her at IQ2 where she’ll argue against the motion ‘Curb Immigration’. Aly is the Labor Member for the West Australian electorate of Cowan and first female Muslim parliamentarian in Australia.
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Event info
Get your IQ2 ‘Curb Immigration’ tickets here
Satya Marar & Jinathan Sobels vs Anne Aly & Nicole Gurran
27 March 2019 | Sydney Town Hall
BY Kym Middleton
Former Head of Editorial & Events at TEC, Kym Middleton is a freelance writer, artistic producer, and multi award winning journalist with a background in long form TV, breaking news and digital documentary. Twitter @kymmidd
After Christchurch
What is to be said about the murder of innocents?
That the ends never justify the means? That no religion or ideology transmutes evil into good? That the victims are never to blame? That despicable, cowardly violence is as much the product of reason as it is of madness?
What is to be said?
Sometimes… mute, sorrowful silence must suffice. Sometimes… words fail and philosophy has nothing to add to our intuitive, gut-wrenching response to unspeakable horror.
Thus, we bow our heads in silence… to honour the dead, to console the living, to be as one for the sake of others.
In that silence… what is to be said?
Nothing.
Yet, I feel compelled to speak. To offer some glimmer of insight that might hold off the dark — the dark shades of vengeance, the dark tides of despair, the dark pools of resignation.
So, I offer this. Even in the midst of the greatest evil there are people who deny its power. They are rare individuals who perform ‘redemptive’ acts that affirm what we could be. Some call them saints or heroes. They are both and neither. They are ordinary people who act with pure altruism – solely for the sake of others, with nothing to gain.
One such person is with me every day. The Polish doctor and children’s author, Janusz Korczak, cared for orphaned Jewish children confined to the Warsaw Ghetto. At last, the time came when the children were to be transported to their place of extermination. Korczak led his children to the railway station — but was stopped along the way by German officers. Despite being a Jew, Korczak was so revered as to be offered safe passage.
To choose life, all he need do was abandon the children. At the height of the Nazi ascendancy, Korczak had no reason to think that he would be remembered for a heroic but futile death. He had nothing to gain. Yet, he remained with the children and with them went to his death. He did so for their sake — and none other. In that decision, he redeemed all humanity — because what he showed is the other face of our being, the face that repudiates the murderer, the terrorist, the racist…the likes of Brenton Tarrant.
I know that many people do not believe in altruism. They will offer all manner of reasons to explain it away, finding knotholes of self-interest that deny the nobility of Janusz Korczak’s final act. They are wrong. I have seen enough of the world to know that pure acts of altruism are rare — but real. And it only takes one such act to speak to us of our better selves.
We will never know precisely what happened in those mosques targeted in Christchurch. However, I believe that, in the midst of the terror, there were people who performed acts of bravery, born out of altruism, of a kind that should inspire and ultimately comfort us all.
Most of these stories will be untold — lost to the silence. Of a few, we may hear faint whispers. But believe me, the acts behind those stories are every bit as real as the savagery they confronted and confounded. And even when whispered, they are more powerful.
Evil born of hate can never prevail. It offers nothing and consumes all — eventually eating its own. That is why good born of love must win the ultimate victory. Where hate takes, love gives — ensuring that, in the end, even a morsel of good will tip the balance.
You might say to me that this is not philosophy. Where is the crisp edge of logic? Where is the disinterested and dispassionate voice of reason? Today, that voice is silent. Yet, I hope you can hear the truth all the same.
Dr Simon Longstaff AO is Executive Director of The Ethics Centre.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
Democracy is still the least-worst option we have
If the last decade of Australian politics has taught us anything it is this: democracy is a deeply flawed system.
Between the leadership spills, minority governments, ministerial scandals, legal corruption, and campaign donations, democracy is leaving more of us disillusioned and distrustful.
And that’s just in Australia.
Overseas, various ‘democratic’ governments have handed us Brexit, Russian election tampering (both domestically and abroad), the near collapse of the Euro, the Chinese Government’s Social Credit scheme, and the potentially soon-to-be-impeached Trump Presidency.
It’s not surprising that many are looking for an alternative system to run the country. Something simpler, more direct. Something efficient and easy.
Something like capitalism.
This may seem absurd on first reading – after all, how can an economic system replace the political governance of an entire nation? But capitalism is more than how we trade goods and services. It spills into a broader socio-economic theory that claims it can better represent people nationally and abroad than democracy ever could. This is known as neoliberalism.
Neoliberals argue that we don’t need to rely on the promises of unaccountable representatives to run the government. We can let competition decide. Just as a free market encourages better products, why don’t we let the free market encourage better governance?
If Bob does a better job fixing your car than Frank, employ Bob and vote for that quality as the standard. Frank either picks up his game or goes out of business. If your neighbouring electorate’s MP does a better job representing you, pay him and vote for his policy. If people value businesses that treat their employees well, those businesses will succeed and others will change their practices to compete.
Where democracy asks you to trust in the honour of your leaders, and only gives you a chance to hold them to account every few years, neoliberalism lets you exercise your choice every single time you spend your money, every single day.
This is far from fantasy thinking. It is this essential idea that drives ideas like ‘small government’, privatisation of state infrastructure, decreasing business taxes, and cutting ‘red tape’ – remove government interference from the system and leave the decisions up to the people themselves.
On paper it is the perfect system of government – a direct democracy where every citizen constantly drives policy based on what they buy and why.
Great, right? Well, only if you’re a fan of feudalism. Because that is what such a system would inevitably produce.
Consider this: within democracy, who is in control? The elected government obviously has the reigns of power during their term (to a frankly frightening degree), but how do they maintain that power?
By being elected, of course. Whether they like it or not, every three to four years they at least have to pretend they care about the needs of the people. In reality it’s hardly as simple as ‘one person, one vote’ – between campaign donations, lobby groups, ‘cash for access’, and good old-fashioned connections, some citizens will always have more power than others – but the fact remains that within democracy, the people in power still need to care about the whims of their citizens.
Now consider this: within this ideal capitalist, neoliberal, vote-with-your-dollar system, who is in control? If you express your interests in this system through your purchases, then power is dispersed based on how much you spend, right?
Who does the most spending? The people with the most money.
Here is the critical question and the sting in tail of the neoliberalism: why should the people in control of such a society, where power is determined by wealth alone, give the slightest damn about you?
Whether sincere or not, democracy requires the decision makers to court all citizens at least every election (and a lot more frequently than that, if they know what’s good for them). But in a purely capitalist society, why would the power-players ever need to consult those without significant wealth, power, or influence?
Even in a democratic world a mere 62 people already own more money than half of the entire world’s population, and exert titanic power upon the world’s markets that no normal citizen can ever hope to challenge.
Remove the political franchise that democracy guarantees every citizen by default, and you remove any and all controls of how those ultra-rich exert the power this wealth grants them.
So while we may criticise democracy for its inefficiencies, and fantasise how much better it would all be if government ‘were run like a business’, such idle complaints miss the key value of democracy – that in granting each and every citizen the inalienable right to an equal vote, none of them can safely be ignored by those who would aspire to power.
Perhaps you believe that the neoliberal utopia would be a better system, and the 1 percent would never decide to relegate the masses back to serfdom. But the fact that such a decision would now depend entirely on their whims, should be enough to terrify any sane citizen.
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BY Gordon Young
Gordon Young is a lecturer on professional ethics at RMIT University and principal at Ethilogical Consulting.
Ethics Explainer: Social Contract
Social contract theories see the relationship of power between state and citizen as a consensual exchange. It is legitimate only if given freely to the state by its citizens and explains why the state has duties to its citizens and vice versa.
Although the idea of a social contract goes as far back as Epicurus and Socrates, it gained popularity during The Enlightenment thanks to Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Today the most popular example of social contract theory comes from John Rawls.
The social contract begins with the idea of a state of nature – the way human beings would exist in the world if they weren’t part of a society. Philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that because people are fundamentally selfish, life in the state of nature would be “nasty, brutish and short”. The powerful would impose their will on the weak and nobody could feel certain their natural rights to life and freedom would be respected.
Hobbes believed no person in the state of nature was so strong they could be free from fear of another person and no person was so weak they could not present a threat. Because of this, he suggested it would make sense for everyone to submit to a common set of rules and surrender some of their rights to create an all-powerful state that could guarantee and protect every person’s right. Hobbes called it the ‘Leviathan’.
It’s called a contract because it involves an exchange of services. Citizens surrender some of their personal power and liberty. In return the state provides security and the guarantee that civil liberty will be protected.
Crucially, social contract theorists insist the entire legitimacy of a government is based in the reciprocal social contract. They are legitimate because they are the only ones the people willingly hand power to. Locke called this popular sovereignty.
Unlike Hobbes, Locke thought the focus on consent and individual rights meant if a group of people didn’t agree with significant decisions of a ruling government then they should be allowed to join together to form a different social contract and create a different government.
Not every social contract theorist agrees on this point. Philosophers have different ideas on whether the social contract is real, or if it’s a fictional way to describe the relationship between citizens and their government.
If the social contract is a real contract – just like your employment contract – people could be free not to accept the terms. If a person didn’t agree they should give some of their income to the state they should be able to decline to pay tax and as a result, opt out of state-funded hospitals, education, and all the rest.
Like other contracts, withdrawing comes with penalties – so citizens who decide to stop paying taxes may still be subject to punishment.
Other problems arise when the social contract is looked at through a feminist perspective. Historically, social contract theories, like the ones proposed by Hobbes and Locke, say that (legitimate) state authority comes from the consent of free and equal citizens.
Philosophers like Carole Pateman challenge this idea by noting that it fails to deal with the foundation of male domination that these theories rest on.
For Pateman the myth of autonomous, free and equal individual citizens is just that: a myth. It obscures the reality of the systemic subordination of women and others.
In Pateman’s words the social contract is first and foremost a ‘sexual contract’ that keeps women in a subordinate role. The structural subordination of women that props up the classic social contract theory is inherently unjust.
The inherent injustice of social contract theory is further highlighted by those critics that believe individual citizens are forced to opt in to the social contract. Instead of being given a choice, they are just lumped together in a political system which they, as individuals, have little chance to control.
Of course, the idea of individuals choosing not to opt in or out is pretty impractical – imagine trying to stop someone from using roads or footpaths because they didn’t pay tax.
To address the inherent inequity in some forms of social contract theory, John Rawls proposes a hypothetical social contract based on fundamental principles of justice. The principles are designed to provide a clear rationale to guide people in choosing to willingly agree to surrender some individual freedoms in exchange for having some rights protected. Rawls’ answer to this question is a thought experiment he calls the veil of ignorance.
By imagining we are behind a veil of ignorance with no knowledge of our own personal circumstances, we can better judge what is fair for all. If we do so with a principle in place that would strive for liberty for all at no one else’s expense, along with a principle of difference (the difference principle) that guarantees equal opportunity for all, as a society we would have a more just foundation for individuals to agree to a contract that in which some liberties would be willingly foregone.
Out of Rawls’ focus on fairness within social contract theory comes more feminist approaches, like that of Jean Hampton. In addition to criticising Hobbes’ theory, Hampton offers another feminist perspective that focuses on extending the effects of the social contract to interpersonal relationships.
In established states, it can be easy to forget the social contract involves the provision of protection in exchange for us surrendering some freedoms. People can grow accustomed to having their rights protected and forget about the liberty they are required to surrender in exchange.
Whether you think the contract is real or just a useful metaphor, social contract theory offers many unique insights into the way citizens interact with government and each other.
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BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics Explainer: Just War Theory
Just war theory is an ethical framework used to determine when it is permissible to go to war. It originated with Catholic moral theologians like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, though it has had a variety of different forms over time.
Today, just war theory is divided into three categories, each with its own set of ethical principles. The categories are jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum. These Latin terms translate roughly as ‘justice towards war’, ‘justice in war’, and ‘justice after war’.
Jus ad bellum
When political leaders are trying to decide whether to go to war or not, just war theory requires them to test their decision by applying several principles:
- Is it for a just cause?
This requires war only be used in response to serious wrongs. The most common example of just cause is self-defence, though coming to the defence of another innocent nation is also seen as a just cause by many (and perhaps the highest cause).
- Is it with the right intention?
This requires that war-time political leaders be solely motivated, at a personal level, by reasons that make a war just. For example, even if war is waged in defence of another innocent country, leaders cannot resort to war because it will assist their re-election campaign.
- Is it from a legitimate authority?
This demands war only be declared by leaders of a recognised political community and with the political requirements of that community.
- Does it have due proportionality?
This requires us to imagine what the world would look like if we either did or didn’t go to war. For a war to be ‘just’ the quality of the peace resulting from war needs to superior to what would have happened if no war had been fought. This also requires we have some probability of success in going to war – otherwise people will suffer and die needlessly.
- Is it the last resort?
This says we should explore all other reasonable options before going to war – negotiation, diplomacy, economic sanctions and so on.
Even if the principles of jus ad bellum are met, there are still ways a war can be unjust.
Jus in bello
These are the ethical principles that govern the way combatants conduct themselves in the ‘theatre of war’.
- Discrimination requires combatants only to attack legitimate targets. Civilians, medics and aid workers, for example, cannot be the deliberate targets of military attack. However, according the principle of double-effect, military attacks that kill some civilians as a side-effect may be permissible if they are both necessary and proportionate.
- Proportionality applies to both jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Jus in bello requires that in a particular operation, combatants do not use force or cause harm that exceeds strategic or ethical benefits. The general idea is that you should use the minimum amount of force necessary to achieve legitimate military aims and objectives.
- No intrinsically unethical means is a debated principle in just war theory. Some theorists believe there are actions which are always unjustified, whether or not they are used against enemy combatants or are proportionate to our goals. Torture, shooting to maim and biological weapons are commonly-used examples.
- ‘Following orders’ is not a defence as the war crime tribunals after the Second World War clearly established. Military personnel may not be legally or ethically excused for following illegal or unethical orders. Every person bearing arms is responsible for their conduct – not just their commanders.
Jus post bello
Once a war is completed, steps are necessary to transition from a state of war to a state of peace. Jus post bello is a new area of just war theory aimed at identifying principles for this period. Some of the principles that have been suggested (though there isn’t much consensus yet) are:
- Status quo ante bellum, a Latin term meaning ‘the way things were before war’ – basically rights, property and borders should be restored to how they were before war broke out. Some suggest this is a problem because those can be the exact conditions which led to war in the first place.
- Punishment for war crimes is a crucial step to re-installing a just system of governance. From political leaders down to combatants, any serious offences on either side of the conflict need to be brought to justice.
- Compensation of victims suggests that, as much as possible, the innocent victims of conflict be compensated for their losses (though some of the harms of war will be almost impossible to adequately compensate, such as the loss of family members).
- Peace treaties need to be fair and just to all parties, including those who are guilty for the war occurring.
Just war theory provides the basis for exercising ‘ethical restraint’ in war. Without restraint, philosopher Michael Ignatieff, argues there is no way to tell the difference between a ‘warrior’ and a ‘barbarian’.
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BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics Explainer: Dirty Hands
The problem of dirty hands refers to situations where a person is asked to violate their deepest held ethical principles for the sake of some greater good.
The problem of dirty hands is usually seen only as an issue for political leaders. Ordinary people are typically not responsible for serious enough decisions to justify getting their hands ‘dirty’. Imagine a political leader who refuses to do what is necessary to advance the common good – what would we think of them?
Michael Walzer steps in
This was the question philosopher Michael Walzer asked when he discussed dirty hands, and another philosopher, Max Weber, had asked before him.
Walzer asks us to imagine a politician who is elected in a country that has been devastated by civil war, and who campaigned on policies of peace, reconciliation and an opposition to torture. Immediately after this politician is elected, he is asked to authorise the torture of a terrorist. The terrorist has hidden bombs throughout apartments in the city which will explode in the next 24 hours. Should the politician authorise the torture in the hope the information provided by the terrorist might save lives?
Finding common ground
This is a pretty common ethical dilemma, and different ethical theories will give different answers. Deontologists will mostly refuse, taking the ‘absolutist’ position that torture is an attack on human dignity and therefore always wrong. Utilitarians will probably see the torture as the action leading to the best outcomes and argue it is the right course of action.
What makes dirty hands different is it treats each of these arguments seriously. It accepts torture might always be wrong, but also that the stakes are so high it might also be the right thing to do. So, the political leader might have a duty to do the wrong thing – but what they are required to do is still wrong. As Walzer says, “The notion of dirty hands derives from an effort to refuse ‘absolutism’ without denying the reality of the moral dilemma”.
The paradox of dirty hands – that the right thing to do is also wrong – poses a challenge to political leaders. Are they willing to accept the possibility they might have to get their hands dirty and be held responsible for it? Walzer believes the moral politician is one who has dirty hands, acknowledges it, and is destroyed by it (because of feelings of guilt, punishment and so on): “it is by his dirty hands that we know him”.
Note that we’re not talking about corruption here where politicians get their hands dirty for their own selfish reasons, like fraudulent reelection or profit. What we’re talking about is when a politician might be obliged to violate their deepest personal values or the ethical creeds of their community in order to achieve some higher good, and how the politician should feel about having done so.
A remorseful politician?
Walzer believes politicians should feel wracked with guilt and seek forgiveness (and even demand punishment) in response to having dirtied their hands. Other thinkers disagree, notably Niccolo Machiavelli. He was also aware political leaders would sometimes have to do ‘what’s necessary’ for the public good. But even if those actions would be rejected by private ethics, he didn’t think decision makers should feel guilty about it.
Machiavelli felt indecision, hesitation, or squeamishness in the face of doing what’s necessary wasn’t a sign of a good or virtuous political leader – it was a sign they weren’t cut out for the job. Under this notion, the good political leader won’t just accept getting their hands dirty, they’ll do it whenever necessary without batting an eyelid.
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