Bob Birrell: Labor’s parent visa for immigrants a costly exercise
Labor’s policy for temporary parent visas could see as many as 200,000 applications in its first three years alone, writes Bob Birrell.
Opinion
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It would be nice to think that voters are being presented with the full costing of the policies the major parties intend to implement. However, one major proposal, the Labor Party’s new temporary parent visa, has not been accompanied by information on the number of visas likely to result or the long terms costs to the taxpayer.
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The Labor proposal was announced on 22 April. It was for a parent visa that would substitute for a modest competing proposal from the Coalition. The latter was dismissed as “heartless, callous and cruel”.
Labor’s proposal is extraordinarily generous. It will apply to all parents with children in Australia regardless of the sponsors’ capacity to provide for their parents.
There is no cap on the numbers. Nor is there any requirement that sponsors take on any financial obligation for the public services their parents receive.
Labor’s proposal is for a renewable five-year temporary visa. It is a de facto permanent entry visa, since no Australian government will force parents to return home after five to 10 years of continuous residence here.
It will eventually require the Australian taxpayer to assume the welfare and health costs of these elderly residents.
There is no parallel to Labor’s proposal in other Western countries. All, even Canada, hedge parent migration by applying strict financial obligations on the sponsors.
Labor’s proposal is a naked appeal to the migrant vote. It is a throwback to the early 1980s when there was open competition for this vote between the major parties.
Once in power in 1983, the Hawke government laid out the welcome mat for the close relatives of migrants, including parents. They could immediately access all Australia’s welfare and health entitlements.
It took 30 years to unwind these the very expensive entitlements.
But here we go again. Prior to the 2016 federal election, the Turnbull Coalition offered migrant communities a new temporary entry parent visa (additional to the existing restrictive permanent entry parent visa).
When its details were announced in late 2018 they included a cap of 15,000 and serious sponsorship obligations. Labor hinted that it would do better, but no details were announced.
It was only on April 22 that an outline of the proposal was put to the Australian public, again without any information as to the likely numbers or costs to the taxpayer.
This was policy on the run. It is doubtful that even Labor’s leaders knew what the party was committing itself to.
The numbers and costs could be enormous. The reason is that there are hundreds of thousands of Asian residents in Australia who will be interested in taking up the offer.
Apart from the 650,700 Chinese born residents, there are another 592,310 India-born residents, 87,750 from Iraq, 71,390 from Iran and 59,730 from Afghanistan.
The Chinese-born residents have already shown a high propensity to sponsor their parents under the existing permanent entry parent visa — with near 100,000 applicants queued up and having to wait for five to 30 years before their turn comes.
Relatively few of the Indian and West Asian communities have applied for this visa because they can’t meet the balance of family test which requires that half or more of the siblings be resident in Australia.
Or they can’t meet the financial obligations of the current permanent resident parent visa.
Large numbers from these communities will be keen to take up the Labor offer.
They will be able to do so because there is no balance of family test under the Labor proposal or any financial obligations to meet the public costs flowing from their parents’ presence here.
I think it is possible that some 200,000 parents will be sponsored in the first three years of a Labor government.
The result will be a significant increase in the congestion problems and infrastructure backlogs evident in Sydney and Melbourne, where most of the potential sponsors live.
Pressure on already stretched public services, especially in the health sector, will be flash point.
Maybe when the hardheads in the Treasury assess the implications of Labor’s proposal it will be wound back, or perhaps converted into a non-core electoral promise.
The problem is that once voter expectations are aroused it will be hard to backtrack.
Labor has presented itself as an electoral champion of Australia’s Asian origin communities and of a broader multicultural agenda.
Its parent proposal states that “Labor knows that modern Australia and multicultural Australia are the same thing, which is why we value families being able to spend time together and help each other”.
One indication is that since Labor’s April 22 announcement, the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has had nothing to say about the proposal.
This implies that the Coalition feels it has more electoral skin to lose by antagonising migrant voters than it has to gain by telling other voters about the implications of Labor’s proposal.
Bob Birrell is the head of the Australian Population Research Institute. He is the author of The 2019 election and the impending migrant parent deluge, published by the Institute.