Immigration Minister declares there’s no ‘magic number’ for the intake
Almost two years after launching its migration rescue plan, core parts of Labor’s strategy are either not in place or failing to solve problems in the visa system.
It’s hard to predict, he said. There are levers the government can and can’t control. When it comes to workforce challenges, if we go too hard to cut migration it will affect home building, farm work, aged care and, of course, AUKUS.
“So, I won’t give you a magic number,” he told a reporter from Nine’s metro newspapers. “I don’t think there is a magic number.”
If that sounds slippery, from someone with target commitment issues, it sums up migration planning and storytelling from Canberra in general and this government in particular. It’s akin to not having budget rules. After all, they would embarrass the incumbent custodian and give those suckers from the Coalition a focal point they’ve been searching for since 2022.
Burke took refuge in policy boilerplate: “The principle you need to start with is making sure that our immigration system is tailored to the needs of the nation.” Well, duh!
If Burke has his laissez-faire way with migration targets, how can the minister or government be held to account? Hard numbers are for soft minds, apparently. As Burke told ABC’s Insiders program a week ago, he wants “full flexibility”, not for him, mind, but for the good of the nation. Flexibility can curdle into chaos and panic.
Australia is being sold short on migration, in part because of Labor’s dawdling on its own reforms. It’s also because it inherited a stinking policy miasma. Public tolerance is being tested, while migrants are scapegoated for serial failures in housing supply, infrastructure planning, education funding and skills development.
We’re not getting the talent we need in engineering, project management and construction, and are finding it difficult to send home those we’ve educated or invited to holiday and work here for a time. It’s perverse policy, but utterly rational, for foreigners to game what we know are dysfunctional visa arrangements.
If the only measure you care about is the NOM (the difference between long-term arrivals and departures), and it’s clear that all of Labor’s policy shortcuts lead here, then there’s little to see. The annual migrant rush crested two years ago at 555,000 and has plunged by 43 per cent. (NOM was 315,900 in the year to March.)
Facts have not stopped knaves raising the alarm on “mass migration” and the anaerobic fools who can’t comprehend the data, even after the Australian Statistician provided a remedial tutorial.
The new NOM normal will probably be higher than the 10-year average of 220,000 before the pandemic. For one, the population is itself larger at 27.5 million, so based on past growth rates NOM is more likely to settle at around 250,000. A decade ago natural population growth (births less deaths) was 155,000 a year; it’s now 105,000. More women are not having children, and those who do are having fewer children. Short of a baby bounce and an elixir to keep Gen X working until they drop, migration will be doing the heavy demographic lifting in the 2030s and 40s.
So we need to get migration right, not only to manage the inflow and attract the best talent but also to restore visa integrity to maintain community support. Despite some tightening up on abuses by migration agents and dodgy education providers, stricter rules for student entry and the end of Covid-era work rights, the system is dysfunctional.
At the end of August there were a record 400,000 people here on bridging visas. Some foreigners apply for an extension of temporary stay, while others, often the partners of residents, seek a permanent place through the migration program; bridging visas allow them to stay here lawfully while awaiting the outcome of their visa application or review of a visa decision.
Former officials claim processing is gummed up because of poor visa design and not enough departmental resources to cope with the post-pandemic surge. Labor has tried to end visa hopping of students, whose main objective is work or permanent residency.
As many have observed, it’s a game of whack-a-mole. Because there’s another avenue to extend a stay: claiming asylum. Life must be terrible in Keir Starmer and Charles III’s Britain for 53 UK passport holders to lodge a claim for a protection visa in Australia last month. Join the queue.
According to Home Affairs, there are 26,668 people here awaiting a refugee status determination (the department makes 2200 of these each month and the outstanding case load has fallen by 4500 across the past year). The next step is proving to be more difficult. At the end of September there were more than 101,000 individuals who were not granted a final protection visa and have yet to be deported.
At Senate estimates this month, officials said about 48,000 were seeking merit reviews by the Administrative Review Tribunal; another 14,525 were awaiting judicial review; a further 26,603 were unlawful noncitizens in the community, at “different points of their removal or departure journey”, as one official put it; and about 11,000 were holding a bridging visa associated with a different process.
Labor inherited a broken visa system; it was, as the review chaired by Martin Parkinson documented, neither good for the foreigners coming here, nor working optimally for the benefit of Australians. That review, completed in early 2023, set out reform directions; it would be another nine months before Labor responded with a strategy.
That blueprint involved some basic repair after the previous tenants left in a hurry. But there were three standout reforms that were potential game changers.
First, a revised points system to underpin permanent migration. Second, a new, three-tiered skills in demand visa for temporary workers. Third, integrated migration planning with state and local governments over a multi-year period.
The points test should be a foundational tool for skills-based settlement. It’s in limbo, in “development”, and so we’re relying on a faulty screening method for applicants who will live here for decades.
There are three streams for the skills in demand visa. The first two are a specialist, high-wage stream, that is meant to spur innovation and job creation, with a seven business day turnaround for processing; and a core skills stream to fill workforce gaps identified in a revamped list of 456 occupations, developed by business, government and Jobs and Skills Australia, with a 21 business day turnaround.
Applications for employer-sponsored temporary skilled visas jumped by more than one-third in the year to June. But processing times for the first two streams have blown out. The median is currently 14 (calendar) days for the specialist stream and 82 for core skills.
A third stream for the lower-paid, who have “essential skills” in aged care and disability support, is evolving. For now, it’s for workers nominated by employers who have a labour agreement with the Australian government. At the end of June there were 132 of these agreements in place, with the department estimating a potential 30,000 extra workers (if required). Only 2305 visas had been granted.
A report this month by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia said these agreements were failing to address critical workforce shortages, just as sweeping new reforms, including expanded in-home care, are due to come into effect in a matter of days.
CEDA found that instead of bringing in qualified workers from overseas, 90 per cent of visas under the scheme were going to migrants already here, usually on student, partner or working holiday visas.
The independent think tank estimates another 400,000 aged-care workers will be needed by 2050 and we can’t meet that demand on homegrown talent.
CEDA is calling for a new essential skills visa as a priority, in line with Labor’s Migration Strategy, that would allow all aged-care providers to sponsor workers in residential and in-home care without the complex negotiations currently required.
As the Parkinson review suggested, Labor also made a commitment to planning migration intakes over a multi-year period, with the states and territories heavily involved. A four-year planning horizon was set to begin in July but this, too, has stalled or possibly been shelved, according to the federal opposition.
The annual planning level for the permanent intake for 2025-26 is 185,000 places, unchanged from the previous year. Burke announced it in three brisk sentences in September, two months into the financial year, with no mention of future years.
The head of immigration in Home Affairs, Clare Sharp, told estimates “the government hasn’t abandoned the multi-year planning level for this year”, which was “one of the more complex elements” of the migration strategy.
“We are continuing to work with stakeholders on the development of what a multi-year planning model would look like,” Sharp said. “It will be a very substantial change.”
Parkinson’s great hope was moving beyond the reliance on the permanent migration cap and having more control of temporary arrivals, which rule the NOM. The review flagged a migration target that had upper and lower bounds.
“An upper bound ensures migration remains linked to infrastructure and planning,” the review said. “A lower bound ensures the benefits from migration are still captured during an economic downturn.”
As the review argued, a 10-year planning cycle, with all levels of government in the tent, “sets expectations for businesses and provides certainty to the local population that both permanent and temporary migration will be monitored and well managed”.
Burke may continue resisting what he claims are magic numbers, while flaunting his narrative sorcery. But the community is restless. Australia would be better off without Labor’s interminable policy delays and if a responsible adult had a firm grasp on the migration levers.
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