Did you hear the Turnbull government has abolished 457 visas?
Because if you are thinking about voting for Pauline Hanson, or if you are attracted by Bill Shorten’s regular flirtations with tub-thumping economic nationalism, that’s the message the government would really like you to hear – which is why the announcement was pushed out through Facebook, minus some key fine print and minus the sceptical media filter.
Because if you are thinking about voting for Pauline Hanson, or if you are attracted by Bill Shorten’s regular flirtations with tub-thumping economic nationalism, that’s the message the government would really like you to hear – which is why the announcement was pushed out through Facebook, minus some key fine print and minus the sceptical media filter.
You don’t have to do anything as politically crude as stand up in your parliament house courtyard and declare out, out, [politically inconvenient] foreigners, because that’s implicit when you say, as the prime minister did in his Facebook video, “We are an immigration nation ...
“... But ... ”
It’s not just an abstract qualification. Some mid-sentence whimsy. You are meant to stub your toe on it.
So all stirring stuff – nick off, you pesky foreigners – the first of a sexy sovereignty sequence, hot off the cabinet presses, solidly on political trend. Except, of course, the minor factual inconvenience that the Turnbull government is not actually ending temporary skilled migration.
The Australian economy requires a modest bedrock of skilled migration to contribute to our national wealth and will go on requiring it, whether that reality offends Pauline Hanson or whether it doesn’t.
The government isn’t abolishing anything, except a title – the 457 visa. The government is rejigging the current system, creating two new categories of visa, and it’s doing it under the cover of a substantial public genuflection before our collective, surly, scapegoating, political sensibilities.
While genuflecting before the political disrupters du jour, while empathising with shock jock-stoked feelings that globalisation sucks and foreigners behind the counter at Maccas are responsible for our declining wages growth and nagging work insecurity – the government is proposing more temporary skilled migration with some caveats: a narrower list of designated occupations, a tougher English test, more labour market testing and a mandatory police check.
Turnbull said on Tuesday the government had moved against 457s because it, the visa category, had “lost credibility” – a statement that politely neglects to mention the major pressing problem the government faces is its own loss of credibility with the voting public.
In a very short space of time, Turnbull has lurched from being Mr Globalisation (remember those exciting times and those fresh-faced, T-shirted tech kids disrupting like their apps would burst while he looked on approvingly) and pushing back against the snake oil of the new protectionism – to cheerfully entering the #StrayaFirst auction himself.
Turnbull performs these whiplash-inducing political transitions quite often – one minute excitement, another furrowed brow gravity. On one downdraft coal is great for humanity, the next minute pumped hydro will save us – less prime minister steering a steady ship than a magpie collecting shiny objects.
The swerves can be unconvincing at best and downright confusing at worst.
The latest 457 swerve is natural John Howard territory. Comfortable Peter Dutton territory. Solidly Tony Abbott territory, right in the pocket.
But is it Malcolm Turnbull territory?
Will disaffected voters really buy Turnbull in this mode?
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