Well, the Opposition has slammed the labor government’s immigration policy, highlighting a troubling lack of planning. The attacks come from Shadow Minister for Immigration, Senator Paul Scarr, who joins me now. Senator, Good Morning to you.
Senator Scarr
G’day Graeme, good to be with you and your listeners.
Graeme Goodings
Now, what’s the problem with Labor’s Immigration Policy?
Senator Scarr
Well, one of the problems is the lack of planning and we had this extraordinary interview which Tony Burke, the Minister, gave on Sunday, where he basically said, the Federal Labor Government has moved away from multi year planning towards just giving a figure each year, year to year and we all know, Graeme, your listeners know, if you’ve got any complicated situation, something like immigration policy, population strategy, you need to plan, you need to be able to plan for housing supply, you need to be able to plan for infrastructure. You need to be able to plan for government services and yet, the minister’s saying he’s just looking at it as a year to year proposition, and that’s unfair to the Australian people. It’s also unfair to state governments and territory governments and local councils who need to plan.
Graeme Goodings
So can a Multi Year Immigration plan work?
Senator Scarr
Oh, absolutely. I’ve got absolutely no doubt about it. So, what the government said it was going to do more than two years ago now, was to give a permanent migration program figure for the existing year, and then to give nominal figures for the next three years and in that way, send a signal to state governments, territory governments, to employers, to the broader Australian community in relation to the direction of immigration and if situations change, the Minister talks about the need for flexibility, well you change the plan, just as all your listeners in their own households would have their own financial plan. If the situation changes, you tweak the plan and that’s the situation we should have. So it’s just not good enough Graeme.
Graeme Goodings
The migration figures seem very rubbery at the moment. The government firstly sets out what it intends, the number of people that allow into the country, then the figures come out, then they’re disputed, and so forth. The figures invariably are higher. How do we get the real figures?
Senator Scarr
This has been a real problem. So from the first budget which the Labor Government brought down, it estimated that there would be net overseas migration in it’s first year of 225,000 and the figure came in over 500,000. The second year wasn’t much better. It came in over 400,000, so there’s been a real issue in terms of the forecasting capability and I think one of the issues has been the lack of coordination between the Department of Home Affairs, which sets the Visa settings, and basically the direction in terms of whether or not people can come into the country or not, and then Treasury actually does the forecasts and I think this is a real issue. We’ve got to get the different arms of Government talking to each other, Graeme, so we can get realistic forecasts, and then do the planning which we need to accommodate the growth.
Graeme Goodings
So could a Coalition Government ensure transparency in this area?
Senator Scarr
There needs to be transparency. There must be transparency. It’s not good enough that when the Immigration Minister announced the permanent migration program for 2025, he issued a statement of three sentences. It was less than 100 words. There was no explanation. There was no transparency around for example, what say the South Australian Government said, in terms of their requests, in terms of immigration, there was no transparency in relation to what employers were saying, what other states and territories around Australia were saying. There was no discussion with respect to how they came up with the figure and that’s not good enough. This should not be a black box. This should be something that is open and transparent so the Australian people are brought along the journey.
Graeme Goodings
So how should the Government balance immigration levels with economic and social pressures such as housing shortages of which there are many.
Senator Scarr
Well, we need to balance our immigration intake with housing shortages. The National Australian Housing Supply and Affordability Council released a State of Housing 2025 Report in Australia, and it estimated that unless there was a 15% fall in population growth over the next five years, then we simply won’t build the houses we need to accommodate the increase in growth. So whatever our population figures are, whatever our housing supply figures are, they need to be reflected in terms of our immigration program and at the moment, we’ve just got no visibility as to how the government’s doing that.
Graeme Goodings
But what do we do to ensure that we have enough people in jobs where we need them, particularly in the building industry?
Graeme Goodings
We had a caller just a short while ago, Senator who said, why don’t we adopt the American system, where, if you want to go and live in America as a brick layer, you have to have a job already in place. He cited the situation where someone could be a brick layer and come into this country without a job to go to and end up driving an Uber.
Senator Scarr
Well, this is something that has to be balanced. So we do have chronic shortages in terms of a number of skills areas, and that includes in construction. We’ve also got Graeme, 18,000 people currently in this country who have construction skills that aren’t recognized and I’ve spoken to the Master Builders Association about this, and one of their pleas is that we accelerate the acceleration of recognition of those skills, so those people can actually enter into the workforce and help us build the homes we need to build. So, we need to consider construction skill shortages. We need to consider the demand of our aged care sector, our agriculture sector, but we also need to consider housing supply, and it needs to be done in an open and transparent manner, so the Australian public’s given confidence that the government is weighing up those balancing considerations that you you rightly point out.
Senator Scarr
That’s a good point which your listener makes. We do have different streams of Immigration into the country. So there’s the employer sponsored scheme, which obviously gives people confidence, like your listener, that the person who’s coming into this country actually has a job to immediately go to. It gets a little bit more problematic in some of the areas where, for example, you’re coming into the country, you want to be a carpenter, and we want our small businesses to be able to access those additional skills and it’s just too costly for that small business to potentially sponsor someone into the country. So, it’s a very good point that’s made, and I think that’s something we need to look at. Certainly, employer sponsored immigration does tend to get the best results in terms of matching those skills with a job. So it’s a point well made.
Graeme Goodings
If the Coalition are to win the next election, could you set a target for migration?
Senator Scarr
Absolutely. I think we’ve got to be open and transparent with the Australian people as to what our plans are, and that includes a target, a range, an explanation as to what Immigration Policy would be under a Coalition Government and if I could just make this point, Graeme. In the 10 years before the Covid-19 pandemic, the average rate of net overseas migration, which included nine years of a Coalition Government, was 216,000 a year. For the year ending 31 March 2025 the figure was 315,900, so our Immigration level is still 100,000 higher per year than it was under the Coalition.
Graeme Goodings
Senator, thanks so much for your time today. Good to chat.
