Clare O’Neil makes a huge call, declaring she’s rebuilding the nation’s engine of prosperity
Australia is a migrant nation, perhaps the most successful one on the planet.
Half of us were either born overseas or have at least one of our parents who is a migrant.
But even with this inheritance, public support for immigration waxes and wanes.
Fundamental to the social licence for the program is a confidence that our authorities control both the composition of who gets to come here and how long they can stay.
In the post-pandemic migration surge, part artificial catch-up in foreign students and part employer push to fill job vacancies, Canberra has lost control and locals believe they are paying a stiff price – higher rents, more congestion and endless services snarls.
Clare O’Neil is trying to fix a broken system, one that was already failing well before the pandemic hiatus in migration.
Martin Parkinson found a contaminated visa ecosystem of outdated rules, legal perversions and policy drift that demands a 10-year rebuild.
Labor is starting small, by cracking down on flagrant abuses in education visas, ending Covid-era open tickets and tightening English-language requirements.
Then the real work begins: a workable regional population policy, long-term planning with the states and a sustainable way to staff the future jobs Australians don’t want to do, such as caring for the soon-to-be decrepit Baby Boomers.
Coalition governments missed a golden opportunity during the pandemic to make the system less complex; the federal opposition’s criticisms of the present mess should be the spur for old hands like Peter Dutton and Dan Tehan to offer solutions rather than just bang on about “Big Australia”.
Don’t just wedge and whine, folks, shape a better future.
Long before she inherited the policy morass, as a new MP O’Neil saw a system that was back to front, and a long way from the amazing dynamic that had built modern Australia.
The tail of temporary entry was wagging the dog of the whole purpose of migration: if you meet a tough entry test, you’re very welcome to work hard and build a life.
We got forever migrants, over many generations, able families called Abbott, Howard, Gillard, Wong, Plibersek, Lowy, Barassi and Khawaja.
Then we lost the plot and got greedy, ending up with a king tide of self-selecting students and low-skill workers who become stuck in a low-paid limbo, shifting from visa to visa.
O’Neil wants to rebuild the engine of our prosperity by turning the system on its head.
She wants the most talented people we can entice here – AI specialists, software engineers, medical researchers – to get the 7-day, express-lane treatment and then have a path to stay.
And also to get more of them, so that permanency is the rule, not the exception.
At the other end, O’Neil recognises young people want to experience our education system and roam the country as working holiday-makers.
Ten thousand foreigners a week with work rights, mainly students, are hitting our shores.
But too many of them are hanging around in dead-end jobs, with little prospect of permanency or a better life.
Even those who have studied here and graduated can be stuck for years in the bottom skills classifications of work.
Most would be better served knowing straight away their return air ticket has got to be used when their course is over.
And so would Australia.
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