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Even as the migration debate threatens to get ugly, Australia’s politicians agree more than they disagree.
For example, most profess agreement that migrants have made a positive economic and social contribution. And most also agree that there are problems with our current approach, like the precarious status of many temporary entrants.
But last week, Peter Dutton sharpened migration into a political weapon by tying it to public anxiety about housing affordability, accusing the government of a “big Australia policy” and blaming a surge in migration for the housing crisis.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers called that claim “dark” and false, suggesting sweeping cuts to migration would “trash” the economy. But the government already had its own plans in motion for a short-term cut. Now the opposition has one too, although some details remain unclear.
Even as the two parties push in the same direction, the debate will be heated. But where will it lead us on a policy front? The answer requires a trip into the weeds of our notoriously complicated system for deciding who comes to this country, and by which circumstances.
How does migration work? It ebbs and flows
There are two categories of migration, temporary and permanent.
These often come one after another. Most permanent migrants start on temporary visas – perhaps as students, backpackers or temporary workers.
Each year, a set number of people receive permanent visas, either sponsored by an employer (the skills pathway) or because they have relatives in Australia (the family pathway).
The government has set the level at 190,000 this financial year and 185,000 next year. Roughly two-thirds of these are skilled and one-third family.
The Coalition plans to cut that to 140,000 for two years, then 150,000 for one year and 160,000 after that. It would maintain the current proportions of skilled and family visas, implying a cut of about 30,000 skilled and 15,000 family.
It also wants to cut the humanitarian resettlement program from 20,000 to 13,750.
But all of these numbers are dwarfed by the temporary program. At any one time, there are more than one million temporary migrants in Australia.
When the pandemic arrived, that figure plummeted as many returned home. But in 2022, they roared back. There are now more temporary migrants than before the pandemic, although broadly following the same upwards trend as before.
Getting back there meant a very large annual intake. Net overseas migration, the common measure of the intake, has hovered between 150,000 and 300,000 for decades, but in 2022-23 it reached 518,090.
More than any other, that figure ignited the political brawl. It didn’t help that it coincided with an extremely tight rental market.
Experts tend to agree the rental crisis was caused by our long-term failure to build enough houses, but that the added competition, especially from international students in cities, made the short-term problem worse.
Prior to the surge, politicians were openly agitating for temporary migrants to return – Peter Dutton himself was urging the government to boost the intake in late 2022, at a time when businesses were scrambling to fill labour shortages. Back then, the fear was that the pre-pandemic numbers would never return.
But when they did, the narrative changed and both sides of politics began to talk about cutting numbers.
Talk is one thing – an actual cut is surprisingly difficult. That’s because the government has next to no control over any of the main temporary entry streams. In each of the big programs, entry simply depends on whether you meet the eligibility criteria.
Students can come so long as an institution wants them, workers in certain occupations can come so long as an employer wants them (and jumps through the right hoops).
The government does set the permanent intake, but since most permanent visas go to people who are already in the country that is barely relevant – in fact, there is some evidence lower permanent numbers encourage more temporary entrants.
All of that means the government can hope the numbers will come down – its budget projects the net intake will fall to about 350,000 this year, and 260,000 next year – but this is more of a guess than a plan, and the same goes for any net migration target the Coalition sets.
That is, unless caps of some sort are introduced. That is something both parties are now contemplating for international students. Amid the din of budget week, the government quietly announced it would pursue institution-by-institution caps. In his budget reply, Peter Dutton also committed to a cap, which looks more likely to be a single nationwide cap.
The university sector has warned against torpedoing one of Australia’s most successful export industries. But amid the short-term political pressure over housing, both major parties appear to have made the political calculation that the cost is worthwhile.
A not-so particular set of skills
But temporary workers is a tougher task.
In 2022, a government-led review suggested there was a policy justification for reining in temporary work visas.
It identified a rise in temporary workers who were not filling a clear workforce need and had no prospect of permanent residence, but were staying for prolonged, precarious stints.
Labour exploitation and housing insecurity often followed, a state of ‘permanent temporariness’ which could also be seen among graduated international students.
To address this, the government wants to establish a ‘streamlined’ worker visa process, identifying permanent skilled workers quickly, but making sure temporary workers have temporary stays, and are admitted only when they fill a need.
There are to be three streams – valuable high-income earners (above $135,000) get in regardless of their job, middle-income earners get in if they have desirable skills, and low earners get in if they do ‘essential’ work such as in aged care.
These details of all these streams are still a little fuzzy, especially the last one.
But the early steps have shown how tricky it can be. In April, government agency Jobs and Skills Australia quietly released a consultation draft of the sorts of occupations that might be eligible for the middle-income skills list.
That list left off many of the most popular occupations for temporary workers, including chefs and IT workers. Puzzlingly, it also left off construction workers despite a well-documented shortage.
The Grattan Institute’s Trent Wiltshire told the ABC this was an inevitable pitfall of trying to filter by occupation, a process always prone to political influence-peddling – for example, the main limit on the entry of construction workers has been the persistent lobbying of the construction union.
Grattan has argued an approach based strictly on incomes – effectively, let employers decide which migrants are valuable enough to let in – would produce a better result.
But Ryan Edwards, a migration expert at the Australian National University, doubted that this approach would help either, warning any cap at all would “fundamentally change everything we know about how people come in… That’s something I would be very worried about.”
That suggests a difficult path ahead if the government wants to land its policy plan – and it is rapidly running out of time, especially given ministers Andrew Giles and Clare O’Neil have their hands full with immigration detention-related matters.
The Coalition’s plans are even less clear. Various Coalition frontbenchers have said slightly different things about whether the Coalition has a temporary migration target and how exactly it would be achieved other than by cutting international students.
But getting to a level like 160,000 net migration, as floated by Peter Dutton last week, would presumably require some trimming of temporary worker visas.
Asked at the National Press Club whether how Australia would then fill labour shortages in construction, agriculture or care, Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor said he was confident that those needs could be filled at home, such as by encouraging more pensioners back into the workforce.
But retirees aren’t especially likely to build houses or pick strawberries, and the Coalition has its own political interests to contend with, not least the Nationals whose farming constituents often depend on temporary workers and backpackers.
In the long run, we’re almost all migrants
All of that suggests a wide gap between political rhetoric and policy.
But there is an even wider gap between politics and policy in the short-term and consideration of the long-term benefits of migration.
Dr Edwards said there was a mountain of evidence that the societal benefits of migration were more than just a political platitude.
“There’s a pretty serious consensus out there amongst experts that migration is a very powerful way to increase global economic wellbeing,” he said.
“And the nice thing about it is that it happens for the migrants themselves, which we don’t focus on enough, but also the host country and the origin country. Everyone wins over the long-term and the gains are huge.”
That view has been echoed by Treasury, the Productivity Commission, the Grattan Institute and others.
There is some evidence of short-term negative consequences from migration on local populations. In particular, international research suggests the short-term migrant intake can push up rental prices.
And in the US there is evidence low-skilled migrants can push down wages in low-skill jobs, although overall wages are unchanged – suggesting locals generally move on to better-paying jobs.
Australian research is more limited, but suggests no negative effect of migration on wages, and only a contribution to house prices.
And over the long-term, migrants boost living standards across the board.
“Migration adds to both supply and demand in an economy, [so] you get to a higher new equilibrium,” Dr Edwards said.
“Regardless of who the migrants are, just by having more you benefit because you don’t need twice the resources to sustain that population. You also have a larger customer base. There’s all kinds of benefits that come from size.
“That’s why people move from country to city, it’s exactly the same argument there as the argument internationally… There’s also international evidence that shows migrants add to productivity, because more people means more ideas.”
Dr Edwards warned against letting short-term concerns about housing distract from this long-term benefit. “I think it’s a risky game for politicians to play.”
Similar sentiment is almost universal among migration experts. And politicians on both sides of politics are also happy to agree that migration has long-run benefits.
But as on many issues, the politics can tend to focus on the short-term.
And Peter Dutton was this week squarely focused on the present.
“I just say to Australians, are you better off today than you were two years ago?”
“I absolutely celebrate every day our great migration story in this country, and I want to see international students come to Australia. But it needs to be done in a managed way. I want a better Australia, not Anthony Albanese’s bigger Australia.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Queensland Labor Premier Steven Miles. And while Mr Chalmers called it “dark”, the PM’s first instinct on Monday was to insist that the government was “dealing” with the problem rather than seeking to deny there was one.
So far, clarity is lacking about how this will solidify into policy proposals. But all signs point to an election debate grounded in short-term anxieties, but which may have long-term reverberations.
