Democrats vote on numbers

By Peter Boyle

"One could argue that in 20 years we could pay off the foreign debt if we didn't have an immigration program", said Australian Democrat leader and official immigration spokesperson, Senator John Coulter.

It may not sound like it, but the Australian Democrats formally do not have an anti-immigration policy, the Democrat ethnic affairs spokesperson, Senator Sid Spindler, assured Green Left. "We are generally in favour of reducing the immigration intake for environmental and urban infrastructure reasons, but we haven't decided on the numbers". A ballot of the party's 3000 members has been carried out, but the results will not be known for at least another week.

Members were offered the choice between a range of annual intake numbers from 50,000 to 110,000, said Spindler, who heads a "strand of opinion in the party which says we cannot ignore global and humanitarian obligations when determining immigration policy".

Australia is a wealthy country and to turn away refugees and others seeking immediate relief from desperate situations in their home countries would be inhumane, he said.

On the environmental argument against further immigration, Spindler said he always believed that "Australians cannot adopt an attitude that we should exclude immigration in order to continue our present profligate use of resources".

Spindler is opposed to basing migrant entry more on skills and wealth. If there are skills shortages, training should be provided. He is totally against "business migration" (virtually automatic entry for immigrants with $500,000 or more to invest) and favours a system based mainly on family reunion, refugees and other humanitarian categories.

He said he personally favours an annual intake of about 100,000 (at present the federal Labor government's target for 1991-92 is 110,000 though it expected that this could be cut to as low as 80,000).

From GLW issue 43