Rudd suffered a humiliating defeat by his own party.
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With the dramatic news in that the once popular Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has stepped down in the face of a leadership challenge, we ask if Australian immigration policy may have played a part in his fall from grace.
When Kevin Rudd first came into power all seemed well with the PM, he was popular and was most certainly the people’s choice. He took the people back to traditional Labour roots, issuing a landmark apology to the country’s aboriginal people and advocating more land and rights for them and he swept aside the tough immigration policies from Howards regime.
Under his rule more people than ever before emigrated to Australia for a better life in a country that was successful and thriving. However along with the legal migrants also came the illegal immigrants, arriving in their hundreds by boat. Rudd was criticised by humanitarian groups for not keeping his promise of only detaining refugees offshore in emergencies and he was accused of discriminating against those refugees who arrived by boat.
The overcrowding of detention centres such as Christmas Island, which was controversially reopened in 2005, led to criticism from human rights groups – Rudd’s solution? To announce in April of this year a freeze on all new refugees from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.
His population plans have also come under fire after he made it clear that he supported the idea of a ‘big Australia’. However words are one thing, the actions of the DIAC are another. A number of policy changes concerning Australian visas has not gone down well with potential migrants to Australia, some of who paid thousands to enter Australia, were left waiting for up to 3 years for their applications to be finalised, only to have their visa applications cancelled. The CSL was scrapped and the new skills list reduced to just 181 occupations. Some major Australian businesses, particularly in the mining industry, also criticised the DIAC for failing to address the workforce shortages they were facing.
Kevin Rudd’s eventual demise was a row with major mining companies over the mining tax, which was later watered down. But the people of Australia had seen enough of Rudd’s u-turns and broken promises and so the party, fearing an election defeat, supported Julia Gillard’s challenge to elect Australia’s first Prime Minister.
Given Ms Gillard’s support for a mandatory detention policy it doesn’t seem likely that her appointment will appease the human rights groups, but whether or not she will support the many skilled migrants wanting to enter Australia remains to be seen.
For now Australia must protect the economy in the aftermath of such a defeat by his own party. Watch this space.
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