It has been a while since this magazine felt any great desire to praise the Coalition for fresh new policy ideas, but finally that has changed. The speech this week by Angus Taylor, with only one glaring flaw which we will come to, was the most important Coalition commitment on immigration since John Howard first promised, ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.’

As is ubiquitous these days, Mr Taylor’s speech, delivered at the Menzie Institute, comes packaged with a clunky title (the Australian Values Migration Plan) along with several ‘pillars’, ‘instalments’, ‘subheads’, dot points and so on to give the content suitable gravitas (as well as to disguise the aforementioned flaw).

In a nutshell, the Coalition has decided to take on One Nation’s popular anti-migration stance with a suite of measures that they claim, ‘will strengthen Australian values, shut the door to people who abuse our immigration system and show a red light to radicals’.

Or, to put it slightly differently but no less specifically, shadow immigration minister Senator ‘Jonno’ Duniam insists, ‘Our plan will strengthen our borders, fix our broken migration system and ensure Australia is a safe and united nation.’

All of which sounds great. And somewhat overdue. But in essence, the Coalition is attempting to rewind the clock back to an immigration policy and more importantly to a mindset that strives for migrant integration and assimilation ahead of the myth of ‘multiculturalism’. This, of course, was the bedrock of the highly successful post-war ‘New Australians’ policies, deliberately and erroneously maligned by many on the left as ‘racist’.

Already, and entirely predictably, the ratbags of the Greens party are accusing Mr Taylor of ‘racism’ and a return to the ‘White Australia’ policy, although nothing could be further from the truth.

It was the Whitlam Labor government that foisted ‘multiculturalism’ on Australia; a cynical ploy to branch-stack certain electorates by keeping close-knit communities closely-knit to voting for Labor. This was achieved by locking them into welfare and communal voting dependency based on special favours to ‘community leaders’. And it worked. As union membership in Australia declined during the prosperous decades of the 1980s and 1990s, Labor instead relied not on ‘workers’ but on migrant ‘communities’ to maintain its electoral base. One community in particular.

The payoff was that these communities were not only permitted to maintain their ethnic and cultural communal roots, as opposed to assimilating into mainstream Australia, but were actively encouraged to do so. Anyone opposing this blatant scam was accused of ‘racism’ and quickly toed the politically correct line.

The only politician who dared speak up about this disgraceful undermining of the dominant Australian Anglo Judeo-Christian culture was tossed out of the Liberal party and treated as a pariah, and even sent to jail at the connivance of the Liberals.

Now, that particular politician is the most successful political leader in Australia and both major parties are struggling to work out how to counter her ever-growing popularity. Like the most successful leaders (or pop stars), recognition only requires her first name: Pauline.

Cutting through the verbal maze and ‘pillars’ of the Coalition’s new policy, and stripped of all the PC jargon, it appears that the Coalition will be focussing on the quality of migrants as much as reducing the quantity; to bring in to this country people who share our ‘values’ and kick out those who demonstrably fail to do so. All of which is coded language for the two words the Coalition refuses to utter: radical Islam.

Following the Bondi massacre, and indeed following all the grisly events from 7 October, 2023 to the present day, including endless ugly marches, despicable terrorist events and widespread community unease, both Labor and the Coalition have struggled to talk about Islam, radical or otherwise. The Labor party has engaged in the most disgraceful dissembling and obfuscation, bringing in irrelevant gun laws after Bondi and holding a royal commission that many people fear will simply bypass the actual problems.

The Coalition has been more willing to engage in discussions about Islam, but not when it comes to specifics like welfare, housing, NDIS corruption, crime or even immigration.

But in avoiding naming the actual problem their policy seeks to address – namely the high levels of Islamic immigration without integration – the risk is the Coalition will tie themselves up in knots in the coming eighteen months over which countries or cultures are deemed ‘incompatible’ with ‘Australian values’. Let’s be frank. The problem is not in limiting Buddhists, Zoroastrians or Presbyterians. The problem is Muslims migrating in large numbers, often from countries or communities that are extreme in their antisemitic views, with large families who refuse to integrate, who live largely on welfare, and who are beholden to communal leaders or the local imam. Refusing to name the problem doesn’t make it any easier to tackle; it makes it harder. The intention behind Mr Taylor’s policy is plain for all to see. The problem is that the moment he ties his vague ‘values’ mantra to specific individuals, cultures or nationalities, he will run straight into the ‘Islamophobia’ forces that refuse to permit any such examination.

To be frank, it would behove the Coalition to have the fight now rather than let it drag out all way through to the next election. If you mean we need to reduce the number of low-skill, welfare-dependent, non-assimilating Muslim migrants, then say so. Because One Nation most certainly will.