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Our most and least successful migrants: Peter Dutton is very right, a little correct and very wrong

Michael Pascoe

Peter Dutton isn't the first Liberal Immigration Minister to criticise Malcolm Fraser for taking the "wrong" Lebanese back in the 1970s. He's just the first to do so publicly. Philip Ruddock was saying it away from microphones around the turn of the century.

And for all the publicity Dutton has generated for the coalition's tough-on-refugees, suspicious-of-Islam image, he's only added a tenuous terrorism footnote to an old story that's had regular airings to no one's benefit.

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Dutton's remarks on Lebanese dangerous

It is reasonable to consider which groups make successful migrants, to try to work out why and try to lift the less successful. It is not reasonable to individualise a generalisation. Michael Pascoe comments.

On broad economic measures, the mainly Muslim Lebanese migrants accepted during the Fraser years have been among our least successful, unlike earlier Lebanese migration that gifted us Marie Bashir, Steve Bracks and Bob Katter, among many others. (I'm thinking Bob Katter Senior there.) So one strain of the "Fraser mistake" story is a little correct. Overall though, it's very wrong – and even attributing the outcome to Malcolm Fraser could be false as well.

Other than establishing credentials as a One Nation fellow traveller, there was absolutely no benefit in grandstanding about a decision made four decades ago. You might hope statements by a government minister would try to reduce divisiveness and the appeal of Islam's ratbag fringe. Dutton has done the opposite. Dumb and Dutton.

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It is reasonable to consider which groups make successful migrants, to try to work out why and, if we are an intelligent society, try to lift the less successful. It is not reasonable to individualise a generalisation – "Australians drink a lot, you're an Australian, you must be a drunkard".

Figures are wonderful and dangerous things if not kept in perspective. For example, looking narrowly at Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011 Census data, resident Greek men had a median weekly income of just $345, less than half the Australian-born figure of $776 and the third lowest out of our top 48 countries of birth. Italian men weren't much better at $395 a week.

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But in 2011 the median age of the 48,813 men born in Greece and the 94,812 born in Italy was 67 – they're mainly pensioners. The median age of Australian-born males was a sprightly 32.

On the same way-too-narrow measure, doing best were the median 39-year-old South African male receiving $1,251 a week ahead of the 38-year-old Zimbabwean on $1,196 and 39-year-old Canadian with $1,138.

To get figures that actually mean something about the economic performance of migrants, it's necessary to mine the ABS data treasure trove on a non-sexist basis, consider arrival dates, the unemployment, the participation rate of those aged 18 to 64 and apply some consideration of the circumstances of arrival.

The average refugee after years of war and camps is not as likely to achieve immediate economic success or bring as many assets as a brain surgeon transferring from one first-world operating theatre to another. And the smaller the group, the ropier the statistics become.

With those caveats, the top-performing country-of-birth category in 2011 belonged to the 30,251 people from Zimbabwe. They had a median age of 38, the highest participation rate of 87.4 per cent, a low unemployment rate of 4.4 per cent and the highest median weekly income of $908. They also were recent arrivals, nearly two-thirds of them turning up in the first decade of this century. It's not a particularly large cohort though – ranked 43rd.

The income and participation rate silver medals go to the Irish – median age of 43, income $892, participation rate 87.3 per cent and a very low unemployment rate of 3.6 per cent. There also were substantially more Irish-born, 67,316 people, our 28th largest source.

South Africa, ranked 17th  with 145,683 people, was bronze on income, $882, and participation rate, 84.8 per cent, with an unemployment rate of 5 per cent.

The baseload 15 million Australian-born had a median age of 33, income of $597 a week, an unemployment rate of 5.3 per cent and a participation rate among 18-to-64-year-olds of 80.1 per cent.

All Blacks and Wallabies

It hurts for a rugby fan to record it, but our third-largest category, the 483,397 born in New Zealand, scored a median income of $760 and a higher participation rate of 84.3 per cent – possibly the same difference in the work rate of All Blacks compared with Wallabies. But they were older with a median age of 40 and had a higher unemployment rate of 5.9 per cent.

At the other end of the scale were those most likely to be recent refugees, including people not permitted to work under their visa conditions. Some 65 per cent of 28,599 people born in Afghanistan arrived in the 10 years to 2010, had a median age of 30, income of $272, a participation rate of 45.1 per cent for 18-to-64 year olds and an unemployment rate of 18.5 per cent.

The 48,168 people born in Iraq had similar figures – median age 37,  the lowest participation rate, 39.3 per cent, the second-lowest median income of $288 and an unemployment rate of 16.2 per cent.   

With one rather surprising exception (I'll come to it), the participation rate for working-age people is the key indicator of economic success. It's there that the post-1975 Lebanon-born Australian residents markedly underperformed and without being particularly recent arrivals.

There were 76,450 people recorded by the census as being born in Lebanon, our 24th largest group. Their median age was 48 and 50.5 per cent arrived in the 1970s and 80s. Only 15 per cent arrived between 2001-10. The median age was 48, median income $333 and the participation rate for those of working age was the third-lowest – 50.7 per cent. The unemployment rate was 9.1 per cent.

The participation rate for Lebanon-born males aged 18 to 64 was 68.5 per cent, females just 32.1 per cent. Only Iraq and Afghanistan were lower. The comparable Australian-born rates were 85.6 and 74.7 per cent.

Feckless Fenians

So is that low median income and participation rate the fault of that "soft on refugees" Malcolm Fraser? Or is it that of subsequent governments that did not endeavour to make up for the skills, language and education deficit?

For the sake of the late Fraser's reputation and humanist legacy, whichever way your prejudices choose to view it, it seems the selection of that particular group of Lebanese migrants may not have been Fraser's doing anyway. A decade ago when the story was again doing the rounds, conservative writer, BA Santamaria fan and sometime Liberal Party historian, Gerard Henderson, wrote on these pages that the selection of a largely rural Muslim group seemed to devolve to bureaucrats on the ground. 

There was a time in Australia when the Irish were regarded by the ruling class as dangerous, ignorant rustics, feckless Fenians. There was no shortage of sectarianism – you don't have to be all that old to remember being shown as a boy "RC need not apply" under employment classifieds in the newspaper.

Now the Irish are about our most successful migrants and Catholic-Protestant differences no longer an issue for any but a few of the pea-brained. A successful society moves forward, it doesn't look back to stir up division for cheap political mileage.

One commentator has suggested Peter Dutton fancies the leadership baton of the Liberal Party's harder right. Maybe he thinks it looks like a truncheon.

PS: Oh, the curious abnormality in the total age/income/participation rate equation? People born in mainland China. There were 318,969 here on census night, the fourth largest group, with a median age of 35, a participation rate of 64.1 per cent but a median income of just $328.

They had one of the higher unemployment rates – 11 per cent - and 58.6 per cent arrived between 2001 and 2010. (More than 42,000 Chinese students were granted asylum by the Hawke government after Tiananmen Square.) No doubt the 2016 census numbers, when crunched, will tell a brighter story.

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