Australia’s migration debate has become consumed by numbers, borders and fear, while failures in temporary migration management and the treatment of Palestinians expose deeper questions of multiculturalism and humanitarian responsibility.

Poorly managed migration and a humanitarian failure.

Instead of migration being about economics or humanitarian concerns, Pauline Hanson turns it into a culture war about identity and fear.

The problem is also not so much about ‘migration’, but failure to properly manage temporary residents.

For decades we have been told that migration is too high. Blaming the outsider, the stranger, the migrant is as old as human history itself, and blaming migrants for housing unaffordability protects the real culprits. Australia’s housing crisis is produced by zoning failures, negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, neglect of public housing construction for decades and the financialisation of residential property that turned the family home into a shelter for a speculative asset class.

We are an immigration nation. We can be proud of what we have achieved. We have done it better than any other country. The government should stop being so negative and defensive about it.

We see that pride in our strong support for multiculturalism. Critics talk about migration in the abstract, but through encounters with the Lebanese shopkeeper, the Filipino nurse or the Muslim doctor we learn that our hostility and scepticism is misplaced. Our health and care services would collapse without migrants.

Tony Burke and his Department of Home Affairs have let us down. The department is focused on security and border control, not migration. That same neglect is reflected in the handling of multiculturalism. The minister for multicultural affairs is Dr Anne Aly but we hear little from her.

The government inherited a migration mess from Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton. We had the Nixon Review into exploitation of Australia’s visa system and the Parkinson Review of the migration system to try to clean up the mess. The government response has been very slow.

But there is more than managerial failure. We have failed to respond to the plight of Palestinians in the hell hole of Gaza because of decades of ethnic cleansing, violence, apartheid and murder by Israel.

The government has fallen for the ploy of the Zionist lobby that to give sanctuary in Australia for Palestinians would bring Hamas activities and supporters to Australia. Not so long ago, Netanyahu’s governments were facilitating Qatari funding into Gaza that helped sustain Hamas rule, part of a strategy that kept Hamas and the Palestinian Authority divided. The Coalition has been even more cruel and heartless in refusing to hear the cry of Palestinians for rescue.

Supported by tens of thousands of Australians including Jews, the Palestinian and Arab communities have expressed public concern about the genocide. But the prime minister scolds them, telling them that they must “lower the temperature”. But the group that should be lowering the temperature are those who support genocide. The prime minister should reflect on the damage his behaviour has done to multiculturalism and social cohesion in Australia.

Between October 2023 and September 2024, Australia rejected more than 7,100 Palestinian visa applications and granted fewer than 3,000 – a rejection rate of about 70 per cent. Over roughly the same period, 9,865 visas were granted to Israelis and 255 rejected, a rejection rate of about 3 per cent. These figures have come through questioning of Home Affairs officials at Senate estimates by Senators Pocock and Shoebridge. A 70 per cent rejection rate for Palestinians and 3 per cent for Israelis tells the real story of our failure. The lives of Israelis are much more valuable than the lives of Palestinians!

One of the stated reasons for rejecting so many Palestinian applications is that applicants had not demonstrated a “genuine intention to stay temporarily in Australia”.

APAN president Nasser Mashni said: “It beggars belief that the government was rejecting applications while implying that it believes people won’t leave Australia because of how unbearably oppressive and dangerous the Israeli government has made life for Palestinians. How absurd. Palestinians were being refused safety in Australia because they were not able to return to homes that Israel had destroyed.”

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Australia rapidly granted about 5,000 visas to Ukrainians and offered those arriving in Australia access to temporary humanitarian visas. We did that promptly and correctly. When the Taliban took back Afghanistan in August 2021 Australia promptly issued more than 5,000 temporary humanitarian visas. When NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999, we provided immediate refuge for 4,000 Kosovar Albanians.

By contrast, in over two years of genocide in Gaza, with well over 73,000 Palestinians murdered by the IDF, only around 1,700 Palestinians from Gaza have reached Australia.

Australian citizens of Palestinian background feel abandoned by our prime minister, the minister for home affairs and the minister for foreign affairs. Palestinians have been made to feel that they do not belong, that they are second-class citizens.

This ministerial trio have done great damage to our multicultural society and the social cohesion which we have been building for decades. They have also fuelled antisemitism.

Is this really a Labor government?

We were active in facilitating the settlement in Australia of Jews facing persecution in the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I was secretary of immigration at the time. I was thanked by Jewish leaders. I spoke at the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce NSW. But how things have changed. The critics of genocide are now accused of antisemitism.

To add to his poor judgement, the home affairs minister recently turned a blind eye to around 40 Israelis, including IDF soldiers, who participated in the recent Sydney Marathon. Chris Sidoti, an Australian member of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Palestine, said that he was especially concerned that a former deputy company commander in the Israeli military’s Golani brigade was among those participating in the marathon. Sidoti said: “Golani’s 13th Battalion is probably the most notorious brigade in the Israeli military. It is one of the worst performing, most criminally accused brigades … these soldiers should be met at the border and if they have served in units suspected of war crimes they should be held and interviewed or turned back home. We have an obligation under international law to investigate possible war crimes.”

Our legacy media thought IDF participation in the marathon was hardly worth a mention. Legacy media has consistently pushed the Israeli agenda. It is complicit in the genocide.

We have humanely responded in the past to support people facing persecution and often death. We have a proud record. But the Albanese Government, fearful of the Zionist lobby, turns its back on the suffering of the Palestinian people. It is cowardly.

I am ashamed.