The Albanese government places party unity before most other considerations, so it is notable that there is more than one opinion in cabinet about what to do about immigration policy.

The decision of the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, to pull out of a National Press Club speech this month, having intended to announce a new policy, suggests that this is an unusually difficult issue for the government. One Nation, attracting three in 10 voters in some polling, makes no bones about blaming immigration levels for most of the country’s ills.

To be fair, immigration has almost always been a difficult issue for Labor in government. Labor was historically the low immigration party. From its earliest years, it saw migrant workers as a threat to wages and jobs, building on longstanding working-class attitudes towards unfair competition. Not even British workers passed muster, especially when they arrived under contract to local employers. Fear of labour competition trumped white solidarity or imperial brotherhood.

Labor did not invent the White Australia policy, but it was the most fervent supporter of it. The desire for security in the face of the threat of being “swamped” provided the context for the impulse to populate or perish for 70 years after Federation in 1901. Labor never had the power to prevent such migration and, in any case, all the Labor party’s early leaders were migrants. In the end, the perceived need for a larger white population for the sake of national security challenged........

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