This is a speech given to a speakout in Sydney on April 10 against the Gillard government’s racism towards overseas workers employed on 457 visas.
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What this debate is about isn’t a particular category of visa. What it’s about is racism, and the zero tolerance that Australian society and the Australian left should show for it.
Regardless of the other debates we might want to have about 457s, we should only condemn the kinds of contemptible dog-whistling Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been using those visas as an excuse for.
Because as political tactics go this one couldn’t be more transparent or more desperate.
The current attack on guest-workers comes from a familiar playbook.
Once again, the party of White Australia is trying to conjure up the genie of xenophobia.
And it’s doing this by fabricating a political issue out of nothing — just as it’s been doing with refugees for more than 20 years.
As if those relentless attacks on refugees aren’t enough, the light on the hill has sparked yet another racist spot-fire under a vulnerable and precarious group in society.
It doesn’t care that usage of the 457 program itself seems to be on a downward trend.
It doesn’t care that the threat to jobs in this country doesn’t come from foreigners.
It doesn’t care that it applies a shameless double-standard, targeting non-English speaking guest-workers in the same breath as it defends appropriate provisions allowing New Zealanders to work here.
None of that matters because, as usual, the government’s not interested in doing something that would actually improve ordinary people’s lives in any meaningful way — all it’s interested in is getting re-elected, and no reckless, destructive ploy is too much for it.
Opposition leader Tony Abbott and opposition spokesperson for immigration Scott Morrison deserve just as strong condemnation.
They have no commitment to the inherent equality and dignity of all people. Their position serves the interests of the corporations, because they’re essentially arguing for labour-market freedom.
We know how dangerous that capitalist El Dorado is. We know that the market’s invisible hand is wielding a hefty club, and that it will batter workers with it one minute, and the next lovingly iron the dollar bills gushing into the bank accounts of the Woodside Petroleums and the News Corps of this world.
We must do everything we can to resist Gillard’s appeal to xenophobia and toxic downwards envy. We must do everything we can to defend 457 workers and improve their conditions.
But you can’t advocate for fairer conditions for guest-workers by demonising them as job-snatchers, calling for the abolition of their visas, and for Aussie jobs to be put first.
That won’t be understood as anything other than an attack on the foreign workers themselves. At a time when Australian nationalism is in the ascendant and when the state of the global economy creates the ideal conditions for the ugliest racist forces to be unleashed, that’s something that we simply cannot afford.
I was very struck last year to read of calls from within the Greek community here to create a new class of visa that could be used to give jobs in Australia to Greek victims of the eurozone crisis.
As usual, the community itself is a lot further to the left than the political classes.
When people compare Australia to the other parts of the world, they see quite clearly that the economic conditions do actually exist in this country to bring prosperity to everyone.
But that kind of vision is completely at odds with the corruption and hollow chicanery of electoral politics.
We cannot allow this pernicious, bankrupt racism to go unchallenged, which is why I have signed the open letter and call on every other union member to do so.