IMMIGRATION Minister Peter Dutton at least has highlighted one point: it costs a lot to bring people to Australia. He restricted his remarks to refugees, but there is a cost in bringing family-reunion and economic migrants to Australia as well.

The difference, though, is that we have a moral duty to help with the world’s refugee problem, but we do not have any moral duty to take economic migrants who just like the idea of living and working in Australia.

One of the best indicators of the cost and duties can be found in Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Databook. The Swiss bank is well-placed to measure wealth as it has sat at the top of the world’s national wealth table for every year of the five years of the databook’s history.

The databook shows Australia is really a very wealthy country and with wealth more evenly distributed than almost anywhere else on the planet. In 2013 average total personal wealth in Australia was second only to Switzerland. We can and should do more to help the world’s refugees.

So that’s the duty side. Now for the cost.

Since 2013 – in the term of this Coalition Government, as it happens – little New Zealand crept up the wealth table and overtook Australia with an average net personal wealth of $US400,800 compared to Australia’s $365,000. New Zealand is now second to Switzerland and Australia third.

New Zealand (population about 4.5 million) has a population growth of around 1 per cent, whereas Australia’s is closer to 2 per cent. In 2012, New Zealand had zero net immigration and usually runs at about 12,000 a year. Australia’s net immigration runs between about 170,000 to 300,000 a year – up to four times the New Zealand rate.

Our birth rate is higher, too. Increased population means less wealth per person.

Australia’s higher population growth may improve the wealth of some people in the property game, but overall it is costing everyone else.

Even with very high visa fees and sponsored immigration lowering the immediate cost to government, the longer-term cost remains high.

As it happened, Dutton mentioned literacy, numeracy and Medicare, in other words, health and education. His remarks were directed at refugees, but they are true of all immigrants. Extra schools, hospitals, roads and the like have to be built for them.

As Dutton said, “So there would be huge cost and there’s no sense in sugar-coating that, that’s the scenario.” He was referring to the extra refugees that the Greens want to take, but it is equally true of all migrants who come to Australia.

Higher population also puts a strain on the environment.

The cost of high population growth is borne out by the fact that, even though Australia’s income per person has been higher than that in New Zealand in recent times, Australia has still fallen behind New Zealand for total wealth per person.

Dutton also mentioned jobs. He said of refugees, “These people would be taking Australian jobs, there’s no question about that.”

But to the extent that that is true, it is also true of all migrants.

Then Dutton got a bit jumbled because he said of the refugees: “For many people – they won’t be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English. . . . For many of them that would be unemployed, they would languish in unemployment queues.”

It is an odd image – people in dole queues taking Australian jobs.

It is also odd to draw a distinction between “Australian jobs” and jobs taken up in Australia by refugees. Surely they are all Australian jobs. And in any event, to the extent that a job taken up by someone who arrives in Australia is one less job for a person already here, it is true whether the arrival is a refugee or another sort of migrant.

All of Peter Dutton’s arguments about costs and jobs with respect to refugees apply also migrant in general, although refugees are initially more costly to government education and health services because they often come from places where education and health are poor so there is some catching up to do.

But that said, refugees generally want to make a new home and get ahead like everyone else. And Australia is the place to do it. Australia has the lowest percentage of its people owning less than $US10,000 than any other country.

It would be far cheaper to get refugees integrated into the community than in imprisoning them indefinitely on third-world islands.

We should recognise our duty to help more with the international refugee crisis.

We should drastically reduce the number of economic migrants.

We should make an arrangement with Indonesia and other near neighbours so that they would take back any refugees arriving in Australia through people smuggling with no chance of ever settling in Australia. In return we would take as many or more people from among the refugees in those countries. And if there are no boat arrivals we should concentrate on taking refugees from our region anyway.

That would wreck the people smugglers’ business plan because refugees in Indonesia would know that any attempt to get to Australia by boat would mean permanent disbarment from Australia. That idea would compare poorly against the better option of waiting their turn in Indonesia with some hope of getting resettled.

We should empty the prison camps on Manus Island and Nauru, by bringing the occupants to Australia and accepting New Zealand’s offer to take some of them.

After all, New Zealand can afford it now that it has pipped Australia and taken second place on the world wealth table.

Alas, all this is so unlikely. Too many people with money and power profit from high immigration even if the great majority loses from it. And no one lost a vote playing the fear game and kicking refugees while they are down.

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