By Stephen Saunders:
As was predictable, the report from Clare O’Neil’s review sidesteps the whopping levels of immigration, rummaging instead through immigration procedures.
Last year, Home Affairs Minister O’Neil went all Yes Minister. Never start an inquiry, unless you know what its findings will be.
Rolling out Aussie fibs, her “systemic” inquiry assumed mass migration is all upside. Heading her show was Martin Parkinson, ex Treasury chief. He’d consult with powerful “stakeholders”. They’re also big fans of mass migration.
At the time, the Treasury number was 235,000 net migration for 2022-23. Already a big ask. The same number was used in the January 2023 Population Statement.
Days later, Treasurer Chalmers conceded 300,000 was the go. Weeks later, he intimated 350,000. Whoopsie, now it’s 400,000, thrashing that eye-watering Kevin Rudd record.
Where are voters in this Olympic slalom? Yeah nah, there to be lied to. Gaslit by ABC and ABS.
Voters don’t totally buy the Treasury line. They seemed to like the COVID migration lull.
The Australian Population Research Institute (TAPRI) survey of July 2021 found only 19% of voters wanting the reboot to “Big Australia” immigration of 240,000 plus. 48% wanted net migration “much lower” or even zero. Overall, 69% didn’t see Australia needing more people.
TAPRI survey of late 2022 produced similar results. Other polls taken during or since COVID don’t usually find voters craving mass migration. Some polls aren’t that rigorous.
No problem for Parkinson, though. Not the first to cherry-pick from the Scanlon social cohesion (aka immigration) lobby. Commission your own poll I’d say, rather than activate Scanlon.
Hence, the most important thing about this review report is what it ignores. Albanese Labor’s all-time immigration ambush. This “master” plan has already got economic growth floundering to keep up with population growth.
Echoing the recent Productivity Commission report, Parkinson tells Treasury tales: Our world-envied immigration program keeps us youthful while delivering on scarce skills.
More likely, delivering fat salaries for Treasury mandarins. Whose barely substantiated net-migration targets induce raw population growth for raw GDP growth.
Once you excise family dependents, purported “skilled workers” are much less than half of our permanent or net migration tallies. That’s unlikely to change. Plenty of Labor’s post-COVID immigration deluge lies in poorly-regulated overseas student visas.
But this review sees trees not forest. Sure, O’Neil didn’t want it examining Treasury targets. Yet how can you ignore them? If to deliver her “holistic” strategy.
It’s as if: Step 1: At great cost, turbo-charge migration. Step 2: Make like, Step 1 never happened. Step 3: Time to fix the broken migration system.
That’s ridiculous. It’s like shutting the stable door after converting the horse to pet food. To really fix the system, start from much lower migration.
For the nth time, Treasury and not Home Affairs is the ultimate overlord of immigration. For years now, their Budgets have set these huge migration targets. Innocent “forecasts” in Treasury-speak. Insulated from voter opinion. Invisible in the Treasurer’s speech.
How does Parkinson handle this larrikin Aussie tradition? He simply denies it. In a colossal report with 11 “reform directions” and 38 “supporting measures”.
His first direction is, “develop a clear migration strategy”. With four motherhood measures.
Second comes “redefine how Australia defines the size and composition of the migration program”. The genius measure here is, “plan migration, based on net overseas migration”. This zinger was also at point 82 of Albanese’s election platform.
As they both well know, here’s what Treasury already does: Plan population, based on net overseas migration.
But this report delinks our “slowest in 60 years” productivity growth from the addictive population growth. Its headline is “migration has boosted productivity”.
Under “better target permanent skilled visas”, key measures offered are “revisit the allocation of places” and “recalibrate the points test”.
Eleven measures go to “temporary skilled migration”. The devil’s in the detail. Sure, let us “rely on Job and Skills Australia…remove labour market testing…increase the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold…adopt risk-based regulation”.
The catch is the “tiers” of risk. For a “light touch high salary cohort” of temp skills, the proposed threshold is “full time average weekly ordinary time earnings”. Currently $98,000.
As for the report’s “mid-level cohort”, government already says, that threshold’s rising to $70,000, and it’s not indexed to wage growth.
Derisory. Put ‘em all on $98,000. Get half serious – if you’re purportedly in a global war for talent.
Paradoxically, the report punts a third or “lower” tier of temp skills. “A lower wage cohort, in sectors experiencing persistent shortages and who are most at risk of exploitation”.
I’m also perplexed, by measure 22. “Review the drivers that have created a ‘permanently temporary’ [migration] cohort”. Hullo, isn’t net migration the big driver?
Not for Parkinson. He claims we “manage migrant numbers” through the “permanent migration cap”. We lack the ability to “cap” or “manage” net migration.
Disingenuous at best. As above, we plan population, based on (humungous) net migration. Add in (predictable) natural increase. Bingo, population growth estimate.
Despite the data lags, the vagaries of border movements, our pre-COVID Home Affairs looked to be landing those big net migration outcomes roughly within 20% of the Treasury “forecasts”.
In any case, most of the permanent migration “outcomes” that we “manage” are already camped in Australia. Just upgrading their visas.
As a far-flung island nation, usually we can manage net migration well enough. We swiftly locked down during COVID. But we rather prefer to “manage” right up. The world knows how eager we are.
This year too, Labor threw $42 million at its “visa backlog”. As never before, net migration pulverised the “forecast”. More accurate Home Affairs service resumes (we hope) in 2023-24.
Finally, Parkinson proposes six measures, for “strengthening international student outcomes and transitions”. These too seem a bit (sorry, equines) cart-before-horse.
We constantly get this dodgy claim, international students are a $40 billion “export” industry.
But when did voters agree,we should “transition” more of them to residency? Note here, Albanese’s carefree decision to blanket-recognise Indian qualifications.
How does all this chime with the increasingly debt-saddled aspirations of our local students?
We’re also gaslit about that “talent war”. But the epic (student) migrant drive has indiscriminately pushed migration way higher than Coalition targets.
Albanese counters that immigration is still “much lower than it would have been and was predicted by the former government”. Seriously, old mate? Even at 400,000?
To sum up, Parkinson has adroitly ducked the government’s population/migration big picture. To look-over-there. At “skilled” migration, migrant wages, student visas.
Sure, he offers worthwhile measures. But it’s not the “once in a generation reform” he schmoozes.
Also, where’s the missing recommendation: A root-and-branch examination of the Immigration empire and culture in Home Affairs.
Including the chronic corruption and shady middlemen that must inevitably attend massive immigration levels.
Immigration’s internationalist inclination is mucho migration. That doesn’t always coincide with the legitimate wishes of voters.
How could they flip immigration so radically? From negative 85,000 in 2020-21, to plus 400,000 now? Nearly doubling this year’s “forecast”. Pundits didn’t see that one coming. Neither do they care to check it out too closely.
This bold Chalmers population drive will keep on flattening wages, boosting unemployment, reinforcing housing/rental unaffordability. Before we even talk about negatives for the environment and equality.
Parkinson also presumes, that we’ll keep on hogging “a disproportionately large component of the world’s migration flows”.
Backing these Treasury immigration imposts, the grey eminence does himself (and voters) few favours. Of course, the government’s comfy. Their first response mirrors his report.
Media, too, is happily buying the O’Neil shtick. A Joan of Arc overhauling a broken system. She even ventured she wasn’t “someone” for a Big Australia. Yeah, Julia Gillard said that too.
This government’s No. 1 objective thus far, so I claim, isn’t the Voice or Republic.
It’s Albanese’s ideological Migration Nation. To institutionalise, our immigration-based economy. Which will ever require of them this debilitating and corrupting propaganda.
This festival of gaslighting never lets up.
“Growth” in the 9 May Budget will still rely on heavily induced (and lazily accounted) rivers of immigration. Pretending, those rivers are as natural as raindrops. Shucks, ain’t we ever the Lucky Country?
Several reports suggest Chalmers’ revised 2023-24 migration target might even rise, above his existing 2023-24 target of 235,000. To 315,000. That’s hardly returning to “normal”.
As certain pundits have soothed us. ‘Twould be nearly four times long-term normal. Huge.
