Extract from ABC News
Analysis
As thousands protest immigration in London, some in the Liberal Party, but not all, want to emulate Nigel Farage's rise in the UK. (Reuters: Jaimi Joy)
An anti-immigration march through central London has drawn more than 100,000 protesters.
The scale of the protest outgrew police estimates, with violent clashes between protesters and police. The images of protests on these issues tell the story of the growing angst. There is a disturbing rise of racism that comes with it.
So, while it is easy to reduce Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price's comments to just some rogue and "clumsy" language, this ignores where those comments are coming from.
There is a bigger battle going on inside the Liberal Party about how to frame arguments around immigration.
Some, like Senator Price, want the party to campaign against "mass immigration" and go in very hard against it. But others, including the man tasked with prosecuting the argument as the frontbencher Ley appointed, have now publicly opposed the language of mass immigration being the problem.
Last week, I pressed shadow minister Paul Scarr to tell me if he believed Australia was experiencing "mass immigration," and he said "no".
"Well, I don't think it's correct. I think mass migration, when we consider that term, you're talking about huge movements of people from one geographical location to another," Scarr said.
"So, mass migration, from my perspective, would include what happened in India and Pakistan in the 1940s when there was that huge movement of people … or from Europe to the new world, to the United States. That, from my perspective, is an example of mass migration. So I would not use that term."
But the problem for the Liberals is that while he might not use the term, others like Nampijinpa Price believe it is exactly what should be used. This isn't just some linguistic issue. The term "mass" is deliberately scary. It conjures up large groups of people coming in a way that is unmanaged and lawless.
Ley faces a huge battle on a myriad of policy fronts, but immigration is far from settled. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
From border security to immigration
Labor knows the danger of this perception gaining traction.
This is exactly why they have maintained draconian-level controls on our borders, and the recent Nauru deal proves just how committed they are to that strategy.
So, what is happening is that the conservative wing of the Liberal Party wants to turn the historical advantage they had over border security and boat people that Labor has neutralised into a debate about the number of people coming in legally.
And they have some history here. In the wake of the attacks in Paris 10 years ago in 2015, then federal cabinet minister Scott Morrison said, controversially, he expected Christians would be the focus of the Australian government's Syrian refugee program.
Former PM Tony Abbott wrote last week: "It's more than possible to be pro-migrant without supporting an ever larger and ever more diverse immigration program." (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
When the former prime minister Tony Abbott first announced Australia would take in 12,000 extra refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria, some members of his party called on him to give Christian refugees priority.
But the Department of Immigration was quick to clarify this would not be the case.
The head of the government's Syrian Refugee Resettlement Task Force, Peter Vardos, told the ABC that Christians would not be given priority to be resettled in Australia.
"There is no selection based purely on religion, as has been suggested in some quarters," Vardos said.
"It is a non-discriminatory program across the board. And I am confident that by the end of this process, when you look at the make-up of the 12,000 people, they will come from a range of ethnicities and religions."
The point is, we've seen this show before.
Debating immigration in coded language
Last week, Abbott wrote: "It's more than possible to be pro-migrant without supporting an ever larger and ever more diverse immigration program. Indeed, given that migrants choose to come to their new home, there should be no expectation, in making migrants welcome, that they want their new countries to resemble their old ones."
It's important to listen to Abbott's words here. He is saying the quiet bit out loud.
The "ever more diverse" is the key bit here. This isn't a benign statement about the core numbers of immigrants coming into our country. It's about who we are bringing in, just as much as the volume.
Privately, I have spoken to Liberal MPs who share Abbott's view and believe the composition of who we are letting in is an issue. It is a departure from the consensus we've generally had around a non-discriminatory immigration policy.
If some people are really talking about the diversity of the immigration program, they should be honest that that is what they are debating in coded language. A colour-blind immigration policy would run dead on questions of diversity.
Abbott, who encouraged Price's move to the Liberals months ago, made comments that go to this after the Liberals' election loss.
On the Rebuilding Australia podcast, produced by former Nationals leader and deputy prime minister John Anderson, Abbott said: "They accuse us of starting a culture war. I don't think we started the war on our culture. There has been a war on our culture for the best part of 50 years … The long march of the left through the institutions is essentially a war against Anglo-Celtic culture … we need to resist the attack on our culture."
As the opposition leader, Peter Dutton said earlier in the year, if his government were elected, it would slash Australia's net overseas migration levels by 100,000.
It was a big part of his pitch to Australia, and now Labor has won 94 seats in the lower house.
The Liberals are decimated. It turns out that the rhetoric around immigration didn't have the electoral sugar hit he had hoped.
Ley faces a huge battle on a myriad of policy fronts, but immigration is far from settled. Watch this space.
Patricia Karvelas is the host of ABC News Afternoon Briefing at 4pm weekdays on ABC News Channel, co-host of the weekly Party Room podcast with Fran Kelly and host of politics and news podcast Politics Now.
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