Major parties needs 'hard targets' for migration to fix broken visa system, expert warns
Australia is in dire need of a ‘long-term migration plan’ that includes ‘hard targets’, a top immigration expert says.
Australia is in dire need of a “long-term migration plan” that includes “hard targets”, an immigration expert has said ahead of the Coalition releasing the first details on its policy.
Former deputy secretary of the Immigration Department Abul Rizvi said the nation’s visa system was “clogged like never before” and urged for the major parties to “dump the rhetoric” and set out clear targets on different visa classes. As Sussan Ley reiterated her commitment to outline the Coalition’s “principles” on migration by the end of the year, Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie told of her expectation for finer details to be hashed out by the two Coalition parties through a Senate committee process that kicked off on Friday.
While the parliamentary inquiry she and Andrew Bragg instigated earlier this year is due to focus on productivity, Senator McKenzie said the committee would also look at “a multi-decade settlement strategy that will examine how population and immigration will shape a future Australia”.
“We need to plan for the type of Australia we want to be and whether that entails tens of millions more people being jammed into the cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, or whether we want a continent with several larger inland and coastal cities,” she told The Australian.
Senator McKenzie echoed comments by Ms Ley indicating deep cuts to international student numbers, accusing the university sector of being “addicted to the billions in revenue from paying overseas students” while neglecting the responsibility to improve housing and infrastructure.
Immigration policy is widely expected to be the next cab off the rank for Ms Ley following the settlement of the Coalition’s position on net zero, but Liberal sources said there were vastly different views across parties and factions.
While the Nationals were wary of immigration cuts that would impact regional workforces, conservative Liberal MPs are exercised on looking at different cohorts coming into the country and ensuring migrants adhere to Australian values. It comes after Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke approved requests from 31 of 32 universities to increase their international student quotas by at least 50 spots in 2026.
Mr Rizvi also raised concerns over international student visa approvals, with his latest report showing student and working holiday visa holders have further blown out temporary resident numbers, which swelled to 2.9 million in September.
The former immigration official also pointed to the soaring number of bridging visa holders, which had climbed to more than 400,000 as of September, almost double the 2019 figure.
Bridging visas allow temporary residents to apply for a different visa while they are in the country but Mr Rizvi said only a “few thousand” people were meant to use the system when it was established in 1994.
“The longer Labor and the Coalition put off developing a long-term migration plan that addresses backlogs, the bigger the problem becomes, and you just cannot let the number of temporary residents and visa applicants keep growing and growing,” he said. “Both parties need to dump the rhetoric and set a plan with hard targets, but politicians on neither side of our political system appear to have courage to take on the hard job.”
The Albanese government has maintained its permanent net migration figure at 185,000 but both parties have dodged questions about lowering net overseas migration, which covers annual arrivals and departures.
Coalition MPs have sought to reduce this number by 100,000 after it hit 315,900 in March this year, but Ms Ley has scuppered the target in favour of flagging crackdowns on international students.
In a podcast on Friday, former prime minister Tony Abbott also weighed into the debate and urged the government to crack down on universities and education providers, arguing Australia has “created a vested interest” that wants slack migration policies to continue.
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