Writer
Kevin Bain
Kevin Bain has been an economic analyst, social entrepreneur and teacher in Australia and Indonesia. He reviews refugee books at Refugee Research Online and his Reading Guide to refugees, immigration and multiculturalism is hosted by the Bayside Refugee Advocacy and Support Association.
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Inspirational heroes abound – discover and promote them
Gellibrand MP Tim Watts draws on his family experience – his children, Hong Kong Chinese wife and in-laws – for his book “The Golden Country: Australia’s Changing Identity”. A modern response to Donald Horne’s 1960s “Lucky Country”, Watts see our future as a “golden country”, reflecting a largely Asian Australia. Continue reading »
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Defusing the Population Bomb: a Response to Paul Collins
Paul Collins’s alarm about the environmental challenges facing the planet leads him to overlook the refugee issue I wrote about (“Prospects for Refugees and Migrants if Population Bomb goes Bust”, 23/7/2020), and line me up with all those he opposes: who think the world needs more people, or “more of the same” economic growth, or Continue reading »
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Prospects for refugees and migrants if the population bomb goes bust
The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) says that the UN projections up to 2100 for global population growth are about 2 billion too high, because fertility rates almost everywhere are dropping much faster than expected. Continue reading »
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“We asked for footballers, but we got people instead.” (with apologies to Max Frisch)
It is said that if we misunderstand our history, we won’t solve today’s problems. Much in The Australian Dream– the new film about the booing of AFL star Adam Goodes and its aftermath – reminds us of the need for truth-telling, including the policies of indigenous extermination and “soothing the dying pillow.” Continue reading »
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KEVIN BAIN. Refugees going nowhere – can nothing be done?
In their November 2015 Foreign Affairs article and subsequent book “Refuge – Transforming a Broken Refugee System” (reviewed here), economist Paul Collier and refugee academic Alexander Betts put forward a radical re-think of the refugee support system on the grounds that it is not a good fit for today’s world. Continue reading »
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KEVIN BAIN. “Down with refugee capture and storage!” Part 2 of 2
In Part 1 I pointed to opinion research which suggests that European and Australian political leaderships are playing to their narrow base, that the population has not abandoned humanitarian attitudes towards refugees, but do reject the dominant slogans of advocates and the implied consequences. I’ll comment on one of the aspects, and report on the Continue reading »
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KEVIN BAIN. New thinking needed on refugee policy for a new period (Part 1 of 2)
Both Robert Manne and John Menadue have recently put proposals at this blog for better refugee policy. As an amateur who has accumulated an awareness of the counter-intuitions, swirling dynamics and deep knowledge required in this fiendishly complex policy space, I have no detailed prescriptions of my own other than “first, do no harm”. But Continue reading »
