South Australia’s big ambition to drive up lagging population growth

SOUTH Australia is falling behind the rest of the country in attracting new migrants, Peter Jean and Jade Gailberger report.

• Special visa plan to lure migrants to South Australia
• SA lost 25,000 people to other states, gained 53,000 immigrants
• Proposal to cut immigration could reverse SA’s population climb

South Australia is falling behind the rest of the country in attracting new migrants, Peter Jean and Jade Gailberger report.

IT’S a numbers game that South Australia is struggling to compete in – and one that threatens to stymie our state’s economic growth.

Since the “populate or perish” policy in the aftermath of World War II, Australia has been locked in a seemingly never-ending debate about the benefits or pitfalls of encouraging migrants to our shores.

Australia’s population is set to reach 25 million this month – 24 years ahead of a Federal Government prediction made in 2002.

That has led former prime minister Tony Abbott to argue that increased migration has contributed to unaffordable housing, stagnant wages, clogged roads and an African crime wave in Melbourne.

But Premier Steven Marshall wants to increase SA’s migrant intake to boost the economy and provide a skilled workforce to regional towns.

SA’s population grew by just 0.6 per cent in 2016-17 to 1.72 million, well below the 1.6 per cent national growth rate.

Mr Marshall met Federal Citizenship Minister Alan Tudge in Adelaide this week to discuss ways of encouraging more migrants to SA.

Ideas include a special class of visa to attract entrepreneurs, visas that require migrants to live in regional areas for a set period and enticing expats back to SA.

“A lack of skilled migration in South Australia is holding back our productivity and it needs to be addressed,’’ Mr Marshall said.

“There are skills shortages right across regional South Australia.’’

Mr Tudge said options included “binding” migrants to regions where workers were needed.

“There’s a lot of at least anecdotal evidence that people might come to a region just to get their permanent residency, but then once they’ve got their permanent residency quickly move to Melbourne or Sydney,’’ Mr Tudge said.

“If we can bind them to a region for at least a few years, they’re likely to put roots down, their kids will be going to a local school and then hopefully they make that region their home.’’

With SA women having the equivalent of 1.8 babies each over the course of their lifetimes, the state needs migration to keep the population growing – or prevent it from going backwards.

Economic struggles has made it hard for SA to compete with the booming big cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. It’s a sad situation for a state that started out as “free- settler” colony, shunning convicts and carefully vetting prospective arrivals during the 19th century.

Today, immigration rules are determined at the national level. However, with the debate being driven by the situation in Sydney and Melbourne, South Australia’s ambition to boost its population is at risk.

Adelaide migration agent Mark Glazbrook has been lobbying for reforms to the migration program to benefit SA.

He is particularly concerned about rural parts of the state, where the population is in danger of decline.

“Perhaps we need to build a wall – not to keep people out, but to keep them in,” Mr Glazbrook joked.

While greater Adelaide’s population grew by almost 10,000 to 1.3 million in 2016/17, the number of people in the rest of the state increased by just 846 to 389,600.

Mr Glazbrook said many agricultural and other businesses in regional parts of the state needed access to foreign workers to fill jobs that Australians were unwilling or unable to do.

He said the immigration program needed to change to a “demand-driven system” which met the genuine needs of employers and local communities. “We need to have a serious discussion about what do we want the future of the Australian migration program to look like and what do we want to achieve,’’ he said.

“When we work out what we want to achieve, then we can set the program in place with all the integrity measures we need.”

The entire state of SA is classified as “regional”, allowing employers to apply to sponsor skilled workers for local visas.

But Mr Glazbrook said regional areas also needed access to semi-skilled workers, such as truck drivers, scaffolders and agricultural workers.

Federal Labor has proposed the establishment of an independent Australian Skills Authority, which would restrict temporary work visas to areas where there were genuine skills shortages.

Federal Opposition immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann said migration was an important contributor to SA’s society and economy, and visa applicants were being forced to wait too long for their applications to be assessed

For South African Gary Edwards, the move to Australia stemmed from the chance to give his children better opportunities in life.

Mr Edwards, 50, emigrated in February last year on a 457 visa, after scoring a job as a sales and marketing manager at an Unley car dealership.

He moved with his wife Nicky and daughters Hayley, 15, and Madison, 5 – leaving another daughter and son in South Africa.

“We wanted to leave South Africa because of the high crime rate and all the murders,” Mr Edwards said.

“For me, it was more about giving my kids an equal opportunity, which they don’t have in South Africa at all.

“There’s a lot of reverse racism there now … so they have got really no future there.”

Mr Edwards, who has since been promoted to dealer principal at Southern Vales Nissan, Morphett Vale, said his teenage daughter was loving the freedom that came from living in a safe city.

The family last month received their permanent residency, which Mr Edwards said allowed them to “really start making Australia our home”. But he said delays to visa issuing from 12 to often 24 months was putting a lot of migrants’ lives on hold.

Mr Edwards was also concerned a blanket rule for shrinking immigration targets Australia-wide would hinder states like South Australia that needed migrants to boost the economy.

“South Australia is really desperate for talent. The Government would do the regional areas a huge favour by not having one blanket rule,’’ he said.