Recall that Labor’s first federal budget in October 2022 projected net overseas migration (NOM) of 470,000 over its first two years (FY 23 and 24):
Source: October 2022 Federal Budget
Instead, Labor delivered around one million NOM, more than double its projection:
Labor MP Andrew Charlton recently stated that the government was in the process of “halving” net migration:
“We’re getting the migration numbers down by half and doing it in a way that will deliver lots of positive benefits to Australia in the longer term”, he said.
“By making sure we bring integrity back to our international education system and by reforming the migration system to make sure it best suits the needs of Australia”.
On Wednesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released monthly net long-term arrivals data, which showed that immigration remains turbo-charged.
The following table shows that over the first seven months of 2024, Australia received an unprecedented 335,184 net permanent and long-term arrivals. This was 15,361 higher than last year’s record arrivals and 110,175 higher than the same period in 2019:
The May federal budget projected that NOM would be 395,000 in 2023-24, which has clearly been obliterated, before moderating to 260,000 in 2024-25, which has also started poorly:
Source: May 2024 Federal Budget
The only upside is that monthly net arrivals have moderated since March versus last year, as illustrated in the table above. However, every month this year there have been higher net arrivals than 2019.
The following chart from Justin Fabo at Antipodean Macro shows that net migration remains at extreme levels, despite moderating slightly:
In annual terms, Australia’s immigration intake remains at historically high levels, even though it has passed its peak:
Given that NOM has repeatedly overshot projections, Labor cannot be trusted to manage immigration.
