Mobility Symposium – Australian National University, Crawford School of Public Policy
21 March 2016
Michael Pezzullo
Secretary, Department of Immigration and Border Protection
Keynote address on Global Migration and Mobility
E&OE
I am delighted to be able to give the keynote address to this Symposium on Global Migration and Mobility, which is being sponsored by my Department and hosted by the Crawford School of Public Policy in The Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific. The issues that you will be discussing today are at the cutting edge of public policy, and it is entirely appropriate that academia, government officials and other experts should come together in such a forum. A new world of mass mobility and transient migration and cross–border visitation is emerging and we will need new frameworks for conceptualising this new world. Government agencies will need to develop new modes of operating in this emergent environment, and these modes should be informed by the very best in policy research and thinking.
The nation’s migration framework of laws, policies, procedures and systems has to support the nation’s economic development and reform agenda, especially as it relates to ensuring ready access to globally competitive markets for skills and labour, visitors and, of course, students, including those who would seek to further their education at this world renowned institution of learning and research.
In terms of collaborative policy dialogue and working across academic and bureaucratic lines, we have – of course – been here before. During the Second World War, for instance, academics and government officials started to put their heads together to think about new ways of conceiving the post–war social and economic order. My Department and this University are in fact the children of the thinking of the time and resultant decisions taken around the end of the war. Indeed we are siblings, born around a year apart in the era of post–war reconstruction, which has been named ‘Australia’s Boldest Experiment’ by Professor Stuart Macintyre in his recent work on social and economic planning during war and reconstruction in the 1940s.
Over the following seven decades, the bonds between my Department and this University were seen across many disciplines, including demography, economics, statistics, the law and sociology, amongst others. From the beginning, scholars at this University were at the forefront of research into population, immigration and social cohesion. Today we continue to work closely with this University, as evidenced in today’s Symposium; through our collaborative research programme on migration, which was established in 2013, and which I am inclined to renew after 30th June 2016; the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation scholarship programme (one of our officers is currently conducting research as a Sir Roland Wilson scholar, examining irregular maritime migration to Australia); and our partnership through the National Security College, on whose board I am delighted and honoured to serve.
I should like to draw particular attention to the report prepared last year by the Crawford School for my Department on migration and productivity in Australia, which provided yet more evidence for the propositions that migration contributes positively to labour market flexibility by helping meet our growing demand for skills, enhances productivity, and helps to offset our ageing population.
So we are natural partners when it comes to grappling with the issues before us today.
The Australian national story has been fundamentally a story of ‘settlement’ – encompassing our nation’s indigenous origins, the British foundations of our modern nation, and the subsequent waves of migrant arrivals. In our Department, we are especially attuned to the fact that Australia would never have become the nation that we are today were it not for immigration, and specifically the remarkable programme of managed mass migration which was undertaken after the Second World War. We are the proud custodians of that magnificent legacy of nation building.
Unlike last century, we no longer rely solely on permanent migration and settlement for our economic and social prosperity. Certainly, Australia will (for as far as I can see) maintain a permanent migration programme, which will continue to be crucial for our long–term economic prosperity and our demographic health. In recent times, however, we have increasingly seen different forms of migration emerge, as we have come to appreciate the national benefits of short–term visitation and temporary migration, for tourism, work and study purposes in particular. These international visitors collectively make a substantial contribution to the national economy.
During 2014–15 for instance, we issued more than 700,000 temporary resident visas, predominantly to students, working holiday–makers and temporary migrants who were invited to come to Australia because of the skills that they bring. All of these visa categories, along with the special category visa which allows New Zealand citizens to come and go, have varying work rights, and within a labour market of about 12.5 million, that is a significant contribution. Compare that figure with the 189,000 permanent skilled and family outcomes for 2014–15, and you can see the scale of temporary migration and visitation today. In future, we will have to give more thought to how we might best continue to capture the benefits of globally mobile labour, especially as populations in advanced economies and middle–income countries age, and the global competition for highly skilled labour intensifies.
More broadly, in the 21st century, we have well and truly entered an era of global mobility and movement, as the world becomes ever more connected through the forces of globalisation – whereby travel, business, trade, investment, study, work and leisure (and so much more besides) are being organised and undertaken on a global scale. Indeed, today’s world is more connected, networked and interdependent than ever before. Amongst other developments, we have seen the ‘wiring’ of the world, or borderless connectivity, which commenced on a global scale in the early 1990s with the mass rollout of personal computers, mobile phones and the Internet. We have also seen the expansion of global patterns of trade and investment over the same period, which has seen the rapid growth and proliferation of global supply chains, manufacturing networks and capital flows.
In this era of global mobility and movement, border entry points are increasingly forming the ‘connective tissue’ of the modern world. In various ways, nations are looking beyond the notion of a border as a ‘barrier’. They are increasingly connecting their border systems and processes – for example through ‘trusted trader’ and ‘trusted traveller’ arrangements – which will further connect people and businesses on a global scale, and further expand opportunities for cross–border mobility and movement.
This is a transformative era in human and economic affairs. As a people, we are supremely well equipped to embrace this world of global opportunity, and to prosper as a result. Having knocked down the walls of insularity (in the form of economic protectionism and discriminatory migration policies), and having opened up our society and economy in recent decades, we are today geared to take risks and engage with the world, and prosper as a result.
Our social diversity – and our success as a nation of migrants – has laid the foundations of our national outlook as a confident, outward–looking and internationally engaged people. Australia’s success as a multicultural society challenges the idea that citizens of a nation–state have to share a singular identity that is grounded in a differentiator of race, creed or belief. Our nation nurtures active social participation and shared national values, while being mutually respectful and tolerant of our diverse identities. Long may Australians respect one another regardless of our cultural, racial, religious or other differences, and long may all participate equitably in our society, with a full appreciation of the rights and responsibilities that come with membership of that society.
I know from many discussions with foreign colleagues that Australia has a positive story to tell the world regarding social cohesion, multiculturalism and a long tradition of orderly migration that has typically enjoyed strong levels of public confidence and support.
We cannot, however, afford to become complacent. This exciting era of human history also creates global opportunities for those, such as transnational criminals and global terrorists, who would seek to take advantage of global trade, travel and mobility networks to pursue their evil ends – by profiting from human misery or engaging in violence in the name of distorted and perverted beliefs. As the nation’s immigration and border protection agency, we are alert to these risks as core business, and we should be very proud of the work that we do to keep our fellow Australians safe.
There is another potential trend to which we need to be alert, which is itself the consequence of globalisation, transnational mobility, and borderless connectivity. With high levels of global mobility, and increasing levels of temporary migration, the traditional model of migrant integration is being challenged around the world, and will have to continue to adapt. What do I mean by this? Earlier periods of relative isolation from family, friends, and ethnic culture and language, often compelled new migrants to integrate into their host societies, as occurred in post–war Australia. Perversely, in the future, in a world of global mobility, movement and borderless connectivity, we could – if we are not vigilant (and this is not inevitable) – see the emergence of ‘virtual’ transnational communities that are built around resurgent and ancient bonds of race or religion (or both), with a parallel disengagement from host societies. As borders blur, so too may allegiance to the nation fray, at least amongst immigrant groups that have not been well settled and integrated into that nation’s society. Around the world, (and this is not the experience in Australia as I outlined earlier) we see the consequences of low levels of social cohesion in some areas of high immigrant concentration, along with social disengagement, marginalisation and, potentially, radicalisation and extremism.
Global mobility and movement work well for connecting the world, and generating prosperity, as does the ‘borderless’ digital age in which we now live. It is a good thing that borders are shifting from being seen as barriers to being seen as points of connection. However, a nation cannot simply be an arbitrary spatial construct which happens to be inhabited by individuals who lack any civic connections and common allegiances. The very idea of ‘the nation’ implies bonds of mutual regard, trust and allegiance.
To be clear, Australia is a successful multicultural nation which operates an immigration policy which is non–discriminatory as regards race, ethnicity, religion and more besides. Equally, we are entitled to expect that those who come here – to settle, or to visit, work or study for shorter periods – will integrate into our community in terms of adhering to Australian values, respecting our laws and institutions, and exhibiting mutual respect towards one and all. We also have the right to expect that those who seek to come here reject extremism, and violence as a means to deal with political, religious, ethnic and other differences.
Our nation is on a journey as we take advantage of this dynamic period in human history, while navigating the challenges and risks of increasingly blurred borders. Our department is assisting in this journey by re–framing how we see and undertake our role. We are of course undertaking far–reaching changes. While our institutional history is a guide, it should not constrain our future. Last year, we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Department in 1945, when we opened our doors for business – with a mission to build the nation’s population through an ambitious permanent migration programme, whose aim was to build the nation’s labour force and the family units of the post–war years. That original mission has now passed into memory.
From 1st July 2015, our mission changed fundamentally, with the amalgamation of the nation’s immigration, customs and border protection functions and the establishment of the new integrated Department and the Australian Border Force. Today, our new departmental mission is to protect Australia’s border and manage the movement of people and goods across it. Our role is to manage our nation’s border processes by which we oversee the
flow of people and goods, to and from our nation. In other words, we are Australia’s gateway to the world, and the world’s gateway to Australia. To enjoy the enormous economic and social benefits to Australia from these flows, we must also play something of a national risk management role. This is a difficult balancing act. On occasions, we will need to act as the gatekeepers and as necessary protect our borders by all lawful means. However, the daily operating mode of the Department will be to act as the open conduit of Australia’s engagement with the world around us, for the purposes of trade, travel, migration and more besides.
In a highly–connected global environment, we will need to encourage increasingly ‘seamless’ cross–border movement. A new ‘flow’ model of the Australian border is in fact already emerging, in the form of our increasing capacity to deal with rapidly growing volumes of visitors, migrants and goods – trend lines which will only continue to increase, as the world ‘shrinks’, and as Australia’s global linkages broaden and deepen. Our ability to achieve this in the future will be critically dependent on our best asset – our people – being supported by ever improving capabilities such as data fusion and predictive analytics, information–sharing with intelligence and law enforcement partners, advanced biometric systems, intelligence–based targeting of high–risk border movements, and quick–response interdiction. Such capabilities will increasingly allow us to minimise our interventions in relation to lower–risk border movements, and concentrate our efforts where they can make the most difference in terms of enforcing our laws, protecting our community and helping to ensure our nation’s security.
Further reform is imperative. To take one example, we will not be able to cope with the growing volume (numbered in the millions) of future visa applications otherwise. We will continue to develop means to ensure rigorous scrutiny of those applications in quick turn–around times, and at high volume. We will need to be prepared to operate more like other large–scale, high–volume enterprises, dealing with masses of data, processing transactions rapidly and using advanced techniques and technologies to discover and deal with risk. This will place a premium on new systems and processes, as well as commensurate learning, development, training and other forms of support for our people. Not only will these changes make us safer, but they will be good for business—shorter, simpler and safer transactions with immigration and border agencies are what people increasingly expect. Here we can learn a lesson or two from retailers which have long been using big data and advanced analytics to enhance their customers’ experience through digital channels, targeted product information, secure transactions and convenient service.
I very much look forward to hearing about your deliberations today. Australia’s migration programmes, both permanent and temporary, will need to adapt to respond to the emerging migration–mobility continuum of the 21st Century and to ensure that Australia remains an attractive and efficient place to do business for firms and individuals. We will need to balance the benefits of facilitating relatively free movement with national security and border protection concerns, changing domestic labour market conditions and employment opportunities for Australians. Symposiums such as this are part of this process of collaborative policy dialogue. The ultimate success of this event is up to you. I therefore encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to share your ideas, listen to your colleagues, and respectfully challenge the views of others, where relevant and as appropriate.
In conclusion, can I re–iterate what I said earlier about how delighted I am that we in the Department are working in partnership on these cutting edge policy issues with one of Australia’s best learning and research institutions and one of the world’s great universities. Bringing policy and academia together can only generate better policy and better national outcomes. I wish you all the very best in your deliberations today.
