When Labor announced a 35,000-place increase in permanent migration at the September 2022 jobs and skills summit, the Albanese government braced for “Big Australia” blowback.
But to the newly elected government’s surprise and delight, Peter Dutton agreed “we do need an increase in the migration numbers”.
The Australian economy was running hot, and almost every policy problem was exacerbated by workforce shortages, whether it be the energy transition, teaching or the care economy.
The politics of migration turned in the new year, when an explosion in the number of arrivals since Covid border restrictions were lifted pushed up net overseas migration.
In his budget reply, Dutton warned Australia was on track to add more than the population of Adelaide in five years and the Coalition started to link the issue to surging rents.
The government insisted that net overseas migration is mostly demand-driven, not part of a Labor plan or target, but promised that reforms to improve the integrity of the migration system would result in a smaller intake.
Those reforms have now landed. It’s clear the home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, and the immigration minister, Andrew Giles, are seizing the levers they have to restrict what the migration strategy describes as “back doors and side doors” into Australia to tune the dial back away from Big Australia.
The aim of reducing the intake is explicit: O’Neil and Giles refer to “rebuilding social licence by returning migration levels back to normal”. Permanent migration is being cut from 195,000 last financial year to 190,000 in 2023-24.
Reduction of numbers is also implicit in the many “integrity” measures, particularly for international education: higher English-language requirements; $19m for “more scrutiny of high-risk student visa applications”; and restrictions on onshore “visa hopping” especially hanging around on graduate visas.
The government has also committed to a “multi-year planning model for permanent migration”, which sounds like a pre-emptive move to counter any “Big Australia” scare at the next election by pointing to future targets.
This week the mid-year economic and fiscal update will update the net overseas migration figures, expected to show a decrease towards the long-term average of 230,000 a year.
Of course, budgets projecting future surpluses or smaller deficits don’t stop the opposition accusing the government of driving the economy into the ground – so I wouldn’t expect Dutton to be silenced by a planning model or Myefo either.
The strategy makes the link between housing and migration by noting that when investment in housing “does not occur, public confidence in the migration system can erode”.
The migration program shows “insufficient regard for pressures on housing and infrastructure”, the strategy says, agreeing with a thesis advanced by even sensible mainstream economists such as Chris Richardson that in the short term we’re not building enough housing so immigration levels will need a nip and tuck.
But it also gives a nod of approval to Giles’ foray defending migration on the basis migrants help build new homes.
“We have a strong history of well-managed migration that supports, rather than runs counter to, our housing and infrastructure needs,” it says.
The government has committed to create two pathways: one for highly skilled workers, for example in the technology or green energy industries; and one for “core skills”, essentially quicker updates of the occupation list to bring in tradies or whoever else we need.
Labour market testing is being relaxed and may eventually be dropped entirely, meaning Jobs and Skills Australia deciding where the gaps are with no need for employers to take out ads and wait to hear crickets.
The references to social licence are a reminder that the government is in both the policy substance game and the perception game.
Elections are decided by questions such as whether voters feel better off, do they feel that housing and infrastructure have kept up with population and that migration is well managed.
John Howard benefited doubly: from the perception of a well-managed program by his hard rhetoric on asylum seekers; and from the substance of a booming economy supported by an influx of migration.
In the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison era, the Coalition benefited from the perception of having stopped the boats, while the number of people arriving in Australia by plane on other visas then claiming asylum ballooned.
In opposition Kristina Keneally and in government O’Neil attempted to prosecute Dutton with the charge he failed as home affairs minister because of the incidence of so-called plane people.
Anthony Albanese got in on the action on Saturday, reminding voters “there were more than 100,000 asylum seekers claiming protection on Peter Dutton’s watch”.
That is an indication that Labor is worried the Big Australia scares could bite, and is starting to fight back over Dutton’s ruthless weaponisation of the high court ruling that indefinite immigration detention is unlawful, resulting in about 150 releases so far and a string of bad headlines.
Because migration and border security aren’t perceived as Labor strengths it wants to make inroads to easing the population and housing squeeze before the election. After all, voters care about what they feel to be true – not the trajectory of a chart in a strategy or budget update.
