Late last month, Treasurer Jim Chalmers blatantly lied to Australians by claiming that the nation’s record migrant intake, which is driving the nation’s rental crisis, is not a government policy:
“The migration numbers are recovering. That’s not a government target or policy. That’s the demand-driven part of the program. It largely reflects the fact that international students are coming back quicker and people on tourist visas as well. That’s why we’re seeing these slightly higher numbers”.
“But a bit of perspective… Even with this recovery in the migration numbers the last year or so, and expecting it continue for another year or two, we still haven’t filled the gaps left by Covid”.
“We’re still behind where we thought we’d be in terms of migration and population a few years ago. So that’s an important part of perspective”.
“But the other thing is, even as our population grows in the future, in the Intergenerational Report, it’s actually going to grow slower over the next 40 years than it has been growing to this point. Population growth is slowing”.
Jim Chalmers’ claims are contradicted by the deliberate policy actions taken by his government to increase the volume of migrant arrivals into Australia. These policies include:
- Increasing the permanent migrant intake by 30,000 to 190,000.
- Increasing the number of humanitarian visas from 13,750 to 20,000.
- Extending graduate post-study visas by two years in order to increase the appeal of student visas.
- Committing $42 million and hiring an extra 400 employees to eliminate the fictitious “one million visa backlog” and rubber stamping as many visa applications as possible.
- Accepting 66,000 “pandemic event visas” as opposed to rejecting them.
- Putting offshore visa applications ahead of domestic ones.
- Signing immigration accords with India, which provide automatic five-year student visas and eight-year work permits to Indians.
- Removing the Genuine Student Test requirement from visa applications, facilitating permanent residency for overseas students.
Labor’s deliberate migration policy changes have accelerated arrivals into Australia, delivering Australia’s largest net overseas migration (NOM) on record and the worst rental crisis in modern history:
Late last week, immigration minister Andrew Giles contradicted Treasurer Jim Chalmers by boasting on Twitter that Labor has “cut the visa backlog almost in half”. As you can see, Giles’ Tweet immediately followed another saying that “Australia needs more houses”:
In turn, Giles has effectively boasted about causing the rental crisis by turbo-charging housing demand by rubber stamping record numbers of visas.
Hilariously. Giles made exactly the same boast about nearly halving the visa backlog in December 2022:
“We were left with almost 1 million visas in the department in-tray in June, and we haven’t wasted a day in cleaning up the mess, waste and mismanagement left by a decade of the former Liberal Government”, Giles said in December
“By ramping up processing in the Department of Home Affairs and hiring over 400 extra staff, I’m proud to say that we have now processed over 4 million visas since coming to Government”.
Thus, it sounds like this fake “visa backlog” will be the excuse used to continue flooding Australia with record numbers of migrants.
It is worth remembering that in November 2022, Indian migration agents paid $1,000 to attend a dinner with Andrew Giles where they raised concerns about visa policies:
According to Facebook posts by two guests at the $1000-a-head night, the migration agents and Indian community advocates lobbied Giles about visa delays, parental visa issues and broad difficulties in dealing with immigration.
Giles and Labor have clearly kowtowed to their demands, throwing open the visa floodgates and throwing Australian renters onto the streets.
What a pack of lying sell-outs.
