The point is that the government is right to be wary about the economic costs of taking more refugees, given the above information.

The current annual intake is 13,750 humanitarian entrants, a figure that has been in place for some time. The government plans to increase this figure to 18,750 in 2018-19, as well as accept an additional 12,000 Syrian refugees in the meantime.

Labor, by contrast, wants to increase the humanitarian annual intake to 27,000, which is estimated to cost an additional $2.3 billion over the budget forward estimates. The Greens want 50,000, which would cost an additional $7bn.

So what do we know?

Three quarters of refugees who come to Australia have some high school education or lower levels. Close to one-fifth have no formal education.

These results really should not surprise us because so many refugees have come from war-torn countries and have lived chaotic lives.

What is perhaps more disturbing is the fact that 60 per cent of refugees have not acquired a new qualification five years after their arrival.

As the Settlement of New Arrivals report notes: “Most who arrive with little or no education do not obtain any education after arrival.’’

We also know that few have jobs. According to the latest figures, less than one-quarter of refugees work for a wage or salary and almost 12 per cent are unemployed. This compares with 80 per cent of skilled migrants who work for a wage or salary.

As far as welfare dependence is concerned, a high percentage of refugees receive Centrelink payments, even five years after arriving. Again quoting the Settlement of New Arrivals report: “Humanitarian entrants are heavily dependent on Centrelink payments and, based on information reported in this survey, that dependency reduces only slightly over time.’’

There are, however, some marked differences according to country of birth. For example, nearly 94 per cent of refugees from Afghanistan receive Centrelink payments five years on compared with 73 per cent of refugees from Sri Lanka.

The ABS survey on the personal incomes of migrants tells us that refugees earn much less than other migrants and take many years to settle in.

Even after 10 years, refugees earn less than half of what skilled migrants earn, on average.

Grendel wrote on May 19^th, 2016 at 4:18pm:


Sometimes it is more diplomatic not to use brutish language when you can make the same point  (as Turdfull did) without being accusatorial or derogatory.

What was brutish or racist about what Dutton said?

"They won't be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English. These people would be taking Australian jobs, there's no question about that. For many of them that would be unemployed, they would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare and the rest of it so there would be huge cost and there's no sense in sugar-coating that, that's the scenario."

What a moment for Peter Dutton.

Like a mountaineer opting to climb the final stage of Everest in thongs, he first boldly threw aside an Australian leader's favourite tool of trade - dog whistle be gone; no need for it once you have mastered the art of actually barking. And then he gave us what might be called the "English Overboard" affair of the 2016 campaign, a neat bookend to the kiddies-in-the-drink spectacular that so distinguished the 2001 showdown - the very election at which Dutton first presented his chiselled features and chosen fancies to voters.

Dutton's statement on asylum seekers was, in its way a work of art - and a particularly Queensland work of art at that. Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen himself would've been proud to have produced this collision of words and sentences, tumbling forth and governed only by the rule that each sentence was to make a swift nonsense of the sentence immediately preceding it.

And what a joy it is to behold - a minister holding forth on questions of literacy with the grammatical flair of an autocorrected drunk text.

Grendel wrote on May 19^th, 2016 at 4:38pm:


Who mentioned 'racist?'