Australia should be confident enough to welcome people from anywhere, as well as confident enough to explain what membership of our society requires.

This really shouldn’t be a controversial proposition. Too often the migration debate degenerates into a polarised contest between those who regard every new arrival as a threat and others who treat concerns about immigration as a moral failing.

Where is the nuance in that binary distinction?

Welcoming people is a policy decision. Making integration work is a governing responsibility. This is where our politicians must do the heavy lifting.

It requires rather more effort than simply issuing visas, posing at citizenship ceremonies and delivering speeches about our wonderfully diverse nation.

For a start, integration requires some understanding of what people are actually joining when they become Australian citizens.

Multiculturalism describes the coexistence of different cultures, which is fine. By itself, however, it doesn’t explain what binds them all together as Australians.

I’m talking about democracy, equal citizenship, freedom of expression and religion, including the freedom to reject religion altogether in our secular society. Equality between men and women is another principle new arrivals need to respect.

Australia should be confident enough to welcome people from anywhere, as well as confident enough to explain what membership of our society requires (stock image)

Governments that want people to integrate should make sure that they have the tools to do it (Pictured, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Parliament House on Tuesday)

These aren’t unreasonable demands. They’re commitments embedded within the federal government’s own Australian Values Statement. The question is whether they mean anything beyond words on a page.

Consider forced marriages, for example. The Australian Federal Police received 118 reports in 2024/25, up from 91 the previous year. 

These aren’t large numbers, thankfully, but it’s a steep rise. You’d like to think the numbers would keep coming down as society modernises.

A young woman’s right to choose her husband must take precedence over her family’s demands. Her freedom can’t depend on whether exercising it might offend someone claiming to speak for her community or culture.

There is nothing respectful about leaving a woman at the mercy of people who deny her rights that everybody else enjoys in this country. 

Defending her freedom is precisely what a successful multicultural society like ours should do.

The same standards must apply to someone whose family arrived last week as well as someone whose ancestors arrived with the First Fleet. No exceptions.

Then there is the practical business of helping people participate in our Australian society.

Net overseas migration added more than 500,000 people in 2022-23 before dropping to 306,000 in 2024-25 (file image) 

Take speaking English, for example. Analysis by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) of the 2021 Census found that 82 per cent of permanent migrants who had arrived within the previous five years were proficient in English, compared with 91 per cent of those who arrived more than a decade earlier. 

That’s not bad, all things considered, but there has been a drop-off.

Being able to speak to your child’s teacher, understand workplace instructions or explain your symptoms to a doctor is fundamental to independence in an English-speaking country like ours.

Governments that want people to integrate should make sure that they have the tools to do it.

We also need to be able to house new arrivals. Net overseas migration added more than half a million people in 2022-23. It fell after that, dropping to about 306,000 in 2024-25, which was still a sizeable intake.

The post-pandemic catch-up helps explain the surge, but it doesn’t conjure up the homes, classrooms and services all these new arrivals need. 

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council reported that Australia completed 177,000 dwellings in 2024, against an estimated underlying demand for 223,000. That is a shortfall of 46,000 homes in a single year.

Migration is far from the only cause of the shortfall in housing availability. Planning failures, construction costs, labour shortages and years of inadequate supply all matter too. 

Integration requires some understanding of what people are actually joining when they become Australian citizens, Peter van Onselen writes

But a government aware of such constraints has an obligation to account for them when setting the migration policy, year in, year out.

When housing becomes harder to secure and services struggle, resentment can (unfairly) be directed at new arrivals who neither wrote the migration rules nor failed to plan the infrastructure.

Migrants deserve better than arriving in a country whose government hasn’t adequately prepared for them. 

Existing residents deserve better than being lectured about tolerance when they are living with the consequences of poor policy planning by governments.

There is no contradiction between welcoming migration and questioning the scale of it. 

Too many political commentators trapped inside the Canberra bubble, living a world away from the pressures other major Australian cities are grappling with, think otherwise.

It’s also reasonable to support cultural diversity at the same time as insisting on common civic obligations. The two propositions can go together.

Australia’s identity will continue to evolve. But that evolution requires sound judgement about what is worth keeping, rather than an embarrassed reluctance to defend anything at all. 

Our politicians need to lead but they also need to reflect the sentiments of voters.