Terry McCrann: Why Scomo’s cap on Aussie immigration is pointless

Our prime minister has vowed to cap the number of migrants to Australia at 160,000 every year. But his promise is hollow — and it counts for nothing anyway, writes Terry McCrann. Here’s why.

The Coalition has unveiled a blueprint to cap immigration at 160,000 a year. But it counts for absolutely nothing, writes Terry McCrann.

There are two critical points to be made about the federal government’s move to slash migration numbers.

As far as I can judge, only one of those points has so far been made.

READ MORE: THE PM’S NEW IMMIGRATION BLUEPRINT

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That point is that the government is not actually slashing the numbers.

Yes, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has formally announced that the maximum cap for permanent migrants in any year will be cut from 190,000 to 160,000.

But as our colleague at The Australian, Judith Sloan, has succinctly and also rather sharply pointed out, the actual inflows under the permanent stream in the past two years have been, well, around 160,000.

So in effect, Scomo, as he apparently prefers to be called rather than PM, has announced a real cut from 160,000 to, well, 160,000.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants to cap permanent migration to Australia — but only at its existing level.

More importantly, that means it will make absolutely no difference to anything — whether you want a big, BIG Australia, a somewhat bigger Australia or a very modestly bigger Australia.

If you think too many migrants flooding into Melbourne and Sydney are making those cities less liveable — and indeed, extraordinarily, they are arguably already even less liveable than the planet’s number one mega city, Tokyo — that would continue unchanged.

Equally, if you are on the diametrically opposite side of the argument and believe the economy needs as many migrants every year in the future as we’ve been getting, well, you would also get your wish.

As Sloan has also pointed out, the 160,000 only deals with permanent migration.

Every year, we also get a flood of temporary migrants — many of which, by the bye, miraculously morph into permanent migrants.

Add these in and in the past financial year, (total) net migration was bumped up from that 160,000 to 236,700.

Actual net migration to Australia last year was 236,700.

The temporary cohort is made up of New Zealanders, international students, temporary workers and ‘tourists and visitors’ (whatever the difference is).

Now you might think, they — with the possible exception of that quaintly identified ‘NZ’ category — would balance out from year to year: that the number of people arriving would be offset by the number leaving.

But they don’t necessarily. Those numbers are also hard to control systematically.

And New Zealanders have been a consistent source of net inflow for decades.

Indeed, the entire population of our across-the-ditch neighbour could decide to come here, and they all could.

It’s that bigger number — the 236,700-plus — that our cities, and especially Melbourne and Sydney, have to fit in and provide infrastructure for, not just the so-called permanent 160,000.

Further, the real numbers are actually much higher.

There are two aspects to that ‘plus’.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief James Pearson has called the immigration cap an “economic own goal”.

The first is that the 236,700 refers to the net increase in the past year.

We still have to provide infrastructure for the permanent ‘temporary population’ living here, especially foreign students but also (theoretically) temporary workers.

Secondly, it’s by no means clear that the numbers accurately capture the flows, either gross or net, precisely because of overstays and those swapping categories.

This reality — that in fact absolutely nothing will change — renders bizarre the immediate howls of rage from the ‘BIG Australia’ cohort (the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s James Pearson called it an “economic own goal”).

Seriously now, even if we were going to cut permanent migration from 190,000 to 160,000 a year, would anyone seriously suggest it will have a real impact?

Is having 1.6 million new people flowing mostly into Melbourne and Sydney over the next 10 years, instead of 1.9 million, going to make any difference?

To anything? Either way? To either wrecking the economy or (further) wrecking those cities?

Bill Shorten will be in the Lodge soon, says Terry McCrann. Picture Kym Smith

That brings us to the second point and why the howls were so hopelessly ludicrous: it’s all meaningless.

The government — the Scomo government — can announce all it wants, but it’s pretty much on a par with Adolf issuing orders from the bunker in another March, of 1945.

In two months, Bill Shorten will be PM and Chris Bowen will be treasurer.

What happens to our immigration numbers and their composition in 2018-19 — and quite probably for at least a few and possibly many years after that — will be in their gift.

I made the same point earlier this week about the utterly bizarre high-fiving and woops of joy from the mortgage broking community when the government announced it would defer any ban on mortgage trailing commissions.

Any announcement from this government, including, very specifically, anything in the Budget Tuesday week, is, bluntly, worth four-fifths of five-eighths of very little.

AND ANOTHER THING …

The new Fox is up and running. The formal split of one half of Rupert Murdoch’s global media and entertainment empire took effect yesterday.

The ‘pure’ Hollywood assets of the old 21st Century Fox have been sold to Disney, enabling that company to ‘bulk up’ in the battle against the Netflixs, Amazons, Googles and the like — and rivals like Warner.

The new Fox is centred on the Fox News Channel and the Fox Broadcasting Network, one of the four US FTA-TV networks.

It’s still a formidable company, capitalised on day one on the Nasdaq at over $100 billion.

Separately is its continuing, smaller, sister company, NewsCorp — owner of all the businesses in Australia, including this paper and (75 per cent of) the Foxtel pay-TV group. Its cap is a little over $10 billion.

In short, Murdoch ain’t retiring anytime soon. Extraordinarily, he’s about to pass two-thirds of a century building, building, running, running.

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