Senator Paul Scarr, Liberal Senator for Queensland has accused the Australian Government of a lack of planning on its immigration policy. I think it’s being too polite. He’s called Immigration Minister Tony Burke’s defense of abandoning multi year planning for Australia’s migration program as woeful. Look, Australia has always had a planned migration program. We’ve been a country that’s actually prided ourselves on being able to find a place for refugees as part of the mix. But if we’re not migrating people to this country for our best interest, what the hell are we doing it for? Net Overseas Migration for the year ending 31 March was more than 315,000, it’s higher than the 10 year average prior to the Covid 19 pandemic, and it’s also higher than the Albanese Government’s own forecast for next year. As Senator Scarr is, of course, the Shadow Minister for Migration, and he joins me in the studio now. Good to see you, Paul. As always, we’ve known each other for years, so I’m just going to call you Paul, and I will say Senator. The concern with this program, it needs to be planned. We deserve a plan. We need to know what it is.
Senator Scarr
Absolutely Gary. I mean, this is madness and as you said, when our migration policy has worked for Australia, there has been long term planning, and we know we’ve got a housing supply issue. We know we’ve got pressure on infrastructure. We know we’ve got pressure on services, including government services. So there needs to be in depth coordination between the federal government, each of the state and territory governments, and local council in order to have the long term plan which enables all levels of government to address those issues. So it’s absolutely woeful that Tony Burke was on TV yesterday, and when he was asked about this, why have you abandoned the multi year planning of immigration? He said, Well, I need flexibility. I need flexibility. But that’s no answer. Anyone who runs a business, anyone who runs a large organization, you have a plan. You work to the plan. Circumstances change. You change the plan.
Gary Hardgrave
I think the books read budgeted, and then actual, you actually have a comparison. You’ve got a budgeted or a projected result that you want, you perform to that and then you actually report again the actual [cut off]
Senator Scarr
Absolutely and the other point to note is when Minister Burke released the permanent migration program for the current year, he did that two months late, so he released it in September.
Gary Hardgrave
That’s a lot of flexibility, Paul Scarr.
Senator Scarr
That’s a lot of flexibility. But at the same time, all we received was three sentences and less than 100 words. There was no explanation with respect to how the government was taking into account things like housing supply issues, infrastructure pressure and government service pressure. There was no transparency in relation to what each of the states and territories was asking for in terms of their sponsoring of especially skilled migration, especially for our regions. Absolutely no information for the Australian public and this at a time when, as you know, there’s heightened community concern around immigration numbers. It’s not good enough.
Gary Hardgrave
When you get people who never, ever, ever march deciding to march to roll the flags out and to say we’re not against any particular type, we’re actually against the numbers. We want to know. Why is the government not trusting people with the knowledge on what is planned because we can all fall in and understand that plan if they did.
Senator Scarr
Exactly Gary and that’s the great frustration I have, because we do have labor shortages in relation to particular skilled areas, including in our construction industry. We do have the demands of our agriculture industry in Queensland, the aged care sector, etc, but we need to explain it to the Australian people.
Gary Hardgrave
You can trust people. I remember when Philip Ruddock and I were Ministers in the Department of Immigration. We actually ran public meetings and we’d say, look, we’re going to bring in 10,000 refugees this year because we can afford to do that, because we’re bringing in 50,000 people with skills that Australia wants.
Senator Scarr
Yeah, exactly and that’s what we need. We need to actually engage with the Australian people and be upfront and be transparent. It’s absolutely critical
Gary Hardgrave
315,000 people though – that is net overseas migration. That’s a lot.
Senator Scarr
The average in the 10 years before the covid 19 pandemic was 216,000 so we’re still 100,000 above that long term average before the covid 19 pandemic. So it needs to keep coming down.
Gary Hardgrave
So this is traffic, this is water, this is electricity. I don’t know how anybody can afford to pay it. Why would you come to Australia if you actually knew what you were paying for power for instance. But it’s actually a problem for people trying to buy their first home. They’re competing with money coming in fresh from overseas because you come to this country cashed up. That’s just how you do it and state governments in an effort to try and deal with housing shortages are feeding the demand side by offering all sorts of discounts to various people, including people from overseas. This is insane.
Senator Scarr
Well, there are laws of economics – supply and demand, right? There was a really important report released in May, earlier this year on the state of the Australian housing market and there’s a section in that report, and your listeners can go and have a look at it. Section 5.3 of that report talks about the impact of population growth, and if you brought population growth down 15%, the government’s own agency is saying that over the course of the next four or five years, we would actually be able to meet our housing supply, right? But by the same token, if you increase the population by 15% growth, increase it over and above what’s estimated, then we’re going to have even a higher deficit. So it’s supply and demand.
Gary Hardgrave
Absolutely. So there’s too many people coming in, feeding demand, not enough supply, because we can’t keep the housing. We can’t respond by building more houses.
Senator Scarr
The other point is, Gary, there aren’t enough people leaving. So people who’ve come here on student visas, they’ve studied, they’ve hopped across different visas. Many people are actually doing jobs below their skill level. So they might have studied here as an engineer or whatever, but they can’t get a job as an engineer, and they’ve even applied for further student visas. So we’ve got something like 40,000 people who’ve had further student visa applications rejected in the Administrative Review Tribunal seeking review of those decisions. Right? So the system is completely clogged up with these issues.
Gary Hardgrave
We know that – everybody knows that. I mean, most people feel it instinctively. They can feel a pressure at the local shops, at the local coffee shop, in the traffic. So Paul Scarr, what is the Coalition going to do? You obviously want Migration, but what do you do? Do you change the mix? Drop the numbers? Sussan Ley told me last week, there has to be a drop in the numbers. Is that the story?
Senator Scarr
Oh, absolutely there’s got to be a drop in the numbers and you know, there’s a few benchmarks we’ve talked about. That 216,000 benchmark before the Covid 19 pandemic, I think is a useful statistic. So, we do need to drop the numbers. We need to make sure when we bring people into the country with skills, they’re actually employed using those skills as well and that’s a really important point as well and we need the long term planning, and we need to explain to the Australian people why we have the migration program we have and bring them along on the journey.
Gary Hardgrave
I think the 216,000 may even be too high, given that we’ve got to take a dip to try and rationalize it. But anyway, that’s the debate that’s got to happen.
Senator Scarr
It’s also an open question at the moment, right? So we need to go through each of the specific cohorts in terms of our immigration and work out what the optimal number is.
Gary Hardgrave
Yeah, because things are difficult for so many people, and the resentment is growing and I don’t like to see resentment in the migration system. I want to see all of us receiving people. But the government is just mucking this up and it’s almost seems deliberate to me, in a lot of ways, what they’re doing.
Senator Scarr
Well, it was certainly deliberate for Tony Burke to move away from the long term planning, to give himself flexibility. I mean, what a bizarre thing to say. I can’t imagine that having happened under Philip Ruddock and yourself, Gary. I mean, it’s just bizarre.
Gary Hardgrave
Well, Tony Burke’s a pillow. Whoever leans on him last leaves an impression. He obviously has no big plan. That’s the problem, and we need to know what the plan is. I think smaller is the answer. A lot of people are very worried about all of that, and I just think the resentment factor is going to continue, which is not good for anybody who a person perceives as looking different or eating different or worshiping different. It’s not a good thing.
Senator Scarr
Absolutely and we’ve got to make sure we have this debate without going into that territory. But that’s one of the reasons we need to have the debate. So we actually address the legitimate concerns of the Australian people.
Gary Hardgrave
Most of us have got family that’s come from somewhere else. That’s our family history. We understand that, but it’s actually people who’ve migrated here in their own lifetime who actually resent the sort of almost wholesale disregard for their effort to come here properly by the way, the government’s currently running things.
Senator Scarr
Look, it should be noted that certainly there’s been research undertaken that people from non English speaking backgrounds, they’re concerned with the immigration numbers.
Gary Hardgrave
Yeah because they’re angry, they feel defamed and demeaned.
Senator Scarr
Well, these issues affect all Australians.
