‘Australian values’ – an immigration test with no answer

There are a handful of topics guaranteed to get everyone’s blood boiling faster than a comments section can turn feral, but if it’s a throwdown you’re looking for, the topic of immigration is always a safe bet.

All sides of the immigration debate walk into the conversation with an overdeveloped sense of fight or flight, hypersensitive to being called a racist or being exposed to racism. Irrespective of what anyone is trying to say, the conversation usually devolves into fireworks in seconds.

A few weeks ago, I went to a preview screening of a new doco set to air on SBS this month. The Hunt For The Last Nazis – by award-winning writer, producer and director Dan Goldberg – examines Australia’s post-war immigration policy, which sought to restrict Jews while allowing thousands of Nazi war criminals to build comfortable, post-war retirements in leafy suburbs around the country and subsequent attempts to track down those criminals and bring them to justice. 

It’s an excellent, albeit harrowing, account of missed opportunities, racism and how certain aspects of immigration policy have historically, and are still, letting us down.

Any Australian knows from the waves of migration over the two centuries since the British invasion of this stolen land, despite all the fear-mongering and racist mudslinging, that immigration has brought us culture, vibrancy and community.

Beyond the beauty of it, our economy cannot and will not survive without immigration. Our birth rate is declining. We have an ageing population. We have critical skills shortages in areas including healthcare, construction and education.