Abul Rizvi is a strange guy. He has spent years attacking yours truly and howling “racism” at anybody calling for lower levels of immigration.
Yet when pushed, he often holds similar views.
This suggests that it is only not “racist” or “xenophobic” to call for lower immigration when he does it.
A case in point is Wednesday’s interview by Rizvi on Radio 3AW.
Rizvi told Neil Mitchell that “by October 2022, it was clear that migration was shooting up at a rate much faster than Treasury had predicted”.
“At that point, it [Labor] started to think about tightening policy. But it didn’t move until a few months ago”.
“Most of the tightening it has done has been good. But it probably hasn’t been enough. It’s been far too slow. And as a result we have net migration of 500,000”.
Rizvi wants the federal government to commit to a long-term net migration target:
“The problems that relate to immigration include infrastructure, housing if you are not building fast enough. Thirdly, government service delivery. And fourthly, it makes it really hard for businesses to plan if it doesn’t know what the government’s long-term net migration target is”.
“History shows that whenever we get to net migration approaching 300,000, governments struggle in terms of delivering services, delivering infrastructure, etc”.
“The government does not have a net migration target. It has never has a net migration target”.
“It’s been really hard to get either side to commit to a long-term net migration target. I think that’s a cop-out”.
“I think the only way … is if the media put their feet to the fire”.
Hilariously, Rizvi refused to provide an optimal immigration figure, except to say that a “net migration figure of 150,000 is as low as you could possibly get” and 300,000 is too high.
I will only add that Rizvi is re-writing history by claiming that the Albanese government “started to think about tightening policy” in October 2022.
This claim is categorically false, given just the month prior, in September 2022, the Albanese Government held the Jobs & Skills Summit with the express purpose of gaining a fake consensus to increase immigration into Australia.
It then ramped immigration to record levels via:
- Extending post-study graduate visas by two years, in turn making student visas more attractive.
- Committing $42 million and 600 staff to clear the so-called “one million visa backlog” and rubber stamping as many visa applications as possible.
- Raising the permanent non-humanitarian migrant intake by 30,000 to 190,000, thereby increasing the chances of temporary migrants gaining permanent residency.
- Approving 66,000 “pandemic event visas” and waiting too long to close the rort down.
- Prioritising offshore visa applicants over onshore.
- Removing a requirement that international students acknowledge that they are not applying for a student visa to migrate to Australia.
- Signing radical migration agreements allowing Indian students and workers to live in Australia long-term.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil boasted in March 2023 that the record projected immigration “is a welcome indicator of the ongoing recovery from the pandemic and a reminder of the critical role migration plays in our economy, but also shows that we still have a long way to go to fill the gap in our workforce left by the pandemic”.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers likewise said that “even with this big bounce in net overseas migration, we still haven’t caught up with what we lost in Covid”. Yes we have, Jimbo:
The Albanese government has deliberately engineered this immigration boom and Abul Rizvi should acknowledge it.
