Alana Lentin guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 July 2013 15.50 AEST

The Australian opposition immigration spokesman's speech betrayed his views on migration policy: they're based not on social cohesion, but divisive racialised immigration

Shadow immigration minister Scott Morrison. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison is nothing if not a skilful rhetorician. There was something for everyone in the speech he gave this week to the Affinity Intercultural Foundation, an interfaith organisation – migrants (skilled ones, mind) old and new, the religiously diverse, "my own adopted brothers and sisters, uncles and aunties", the Aboriginal people of Australia.

Morrison reads his audience carefully. He’s listened to the polemics on multicultural failure screeched by his European counterparts over recent years and decided that, in Australia, they won’t wash. Rather,

We have learnt to appreciate our differences [...] We must disconnect ethnicity from citizenship. We must come back to the important point of connection between all of us; which is not where we have come from, but where we are going together.

Morrison’s reading of Australia’s migration history is one of unfettered success. Australia does better than its European counterparts, because it chooses its migrants and tightly controls its borders. The chosen ones have better life chances, higher rates of education and employment than migrants to Britain or Germany, according to a study cited in the speech by the free-market think tank the Centre for Independent Studies (the same centre that invited Thilo Sarrazin, author of Germany Abolishes Itself and arch anti-multiculturalist hysteric, to Australia in 2011).

So far, so rosy – but what was the real message behind Morrison’s careful spin?

Taken together, Morrison’s insistence on the Liberal party's commitment to turning back the boats, a more flexible approach to English language requirements for migrants and what has been described as a "re-embracing" of integration are significant.

First, gung-ho talk on rejecting asylum seeker boats within the context of a speech on "the reasons to be optimistic about Australia’s immigration future" follows an old script according to which "others" – in this case, the wrongly-labelled "illegal asylum seekers" – are blamed for racist attitudes. This lets systemic racism, political rhetoric and media spin off the hook. Rather, the very presence of "illegitimate" arrivals is here painted as the reason for social unrest – as if their portrayal by politicians and the media had nothing to do with the rancour they face.

Second, the combination of tough talk on refugees and softer talk on migrant integration to an organisation initiated by young Muslims sends the message that those Australia accepts must play by "our" rules. Presenting Australians as migrants, repeated by Morrison, rewrites the illegality of invasion, and is offensive to Aboriginals. Beyond this, it forgets that many descendants of post-White Australia migrants, including many of Morrison’s audience last Wednesday, would not have made the cut under either Labour or the Coalition’s migration policy.

Third, Morrison made much of the importance of English as a "a key skill to help migrants get a job and participate, rather than withdraw and segregate from the Australian community." In addition to the implication that a failure to learn English is either a widespread phenomenon or the fault of uncaring, "self-segregating" migrants, Morrison’s mention of the need to test for "progressive levels of English language capability" is indicative of the type of migration he envisages for Australia.

In fact, his discussion of the need for a "socially cohesive migration nation" is at odds with this flexible approach to language learning. The key is in the statement, "the level of language skills required of someone applying to come to Australia should also take into account how long they intend to stay."

As Australia relies increasingly on temporary labour migrants with fewer long-term prospects to settle in the country, language testing may be used as an additional means of policing the boundary between temporary and permanent migration. Permanent migrants will continue to be primarily sourced from Britain.

However, as knowledge of English grows across the world, it will be easier to seasonally replace a temporary migrant labour force with increased regularity. The consequence of this will be worse, not better, social relations, and more division not less, as communities have fewer opportunities to get to know the newcomers before they depart again. Taken together with Bob Carr’s conflation of refugees with "economic migrants", we would see an increase in mistrust of migrants of all categories.

What Morrison did not say is that integration is not the same as inclusion; it requires those conceived of as different to follow a line already forged, rather than allowing them to shape a future society on equal terms with those with so-called greater legitimacy.

Separating migrants into two narrow camps – economically useless (refugees) and economically useful (temporary economic migrants) – unravels Morrison’s carefully crafted inclusivity. Until migration is seen as neither socially detrimental or economically instrumental, but as an undeniable fact of a rapidly changing world that must lead to a fundamental reshaping of "Australianness", integration will mean no more than the window dressing it is.

No end of talk about social cohesion will change the fact that a racialised immigration policy is the main culprit for a racially divided society.

Why Scott Morrison is wrong on immigration | Alana Lentin | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk