Labor announces new immigration policy, essentially the same as its old immigration policy. By Peter van Onselen in The Daily Mail.
Tony Burke finally made it to the National Press Club this afternoon, to unveil Labor’s long awaited immigration reforms. …
It was that such a modest collection of measures took six weeks of cabinet warfare, political panic and public humiliation to finally produce. …
Denies mass immigration:
Burke got stuck into the idea that Australia is a mass migration country, dismissing the notion as ‘absurd’. …
A stunning graph shows just how much Australia’s population has grown compared to other nations:
Why? Because of mass migration. … And in the last quarter of a century it has accelerated the population well beyond the infrastructure capabilities to cope with it.
To suggest otherwise, as Burke did, is utterly absurd, and makes it harder to trust everything else he had to say today. …
Labor’s not cutting immigration significantly:
Burke’s plan is essentially a plan to meet the existing plan. Labor already forecast that net overseas migration would fall from around 300,000 to 225,000 by 2027-28. The measures announced on Thursday are designed to ensure reality finally conforms with that Treasury forecast. …
The permanent migration program remains at 185,000. The humanitarian intake remains at 20,000 (according to sources, Burke wanted to lower it but Prime Minister Albanese overruled him).
International student numbers are largely untouched. And the net overseas migration forecast of 225,000 hasn’t been lowered one little bit. …
Burke has merely announced regulatory changes designed to stop Labor overshooting its own target yet again. …
Skills or left-voters? One of these priorities is obviously a joke:
Australia is supposedly importing skills to fill shortages, yet doctors, engineers and other qualified professionals are driving Ubers or working in jobs that make little use of their expertise because recognition and licensing systems are slow, expensive and completely fragmented. …
More than 250,000 permanent migrants with qualifications in regulated professions are estimated to be working beneath their skill levels. Think about that. The economic cost has been put at around $9 billion annually.
Interesting:
“Africa (excl. South Africa)” includes Zimbabwe.
hat-tip Stephen Neil