CIS slams Coalition’s migrants to the bush gimmick

[Decentralisation] could prove to be misguided, ineffectual and create more problems than it solves… [T]he government can’t magically move thousands of jobs from Sydney and Melbourne to Tamworth and Bendigo overnight…

We should also not forget there are already incentives for skilled migrants to settle outside the major cities. Australia has a specific category of employer-sponsored visa for regional areas… Moreover, the government has a number of measures in place to make it easier for regional employers to sponsor skilled migrants; including fee waivers and priority processing for visas.

As a consequence of this system, Australia’s regional migration intake is already substantial. Last year, regional and state-specific visas jointly accounted for 36,000 or nearly 30 per cent of the total permanent, skilled migration intake.

But if the government’s objective is to ease the population burden on Sydney and Melbourne, there is no guarantee that offering more incentives for migrants to settle in regional locations will have lasting effects.

It is one thing to offer permanent residency conditional on regional settlement; it is another thing to ensure that migrants remain there for the long-term.

…many migrants demonstrate a strong preference for living in the major cities; often because they are accustomed to large cities or because their families and compatriots are based there.

Without infringing people’s right to freedom of movement, it is difficult to see how the government could impose binding conditions on where migrants permanently settle in Australia…

And some parts of regional Australia are not necessarily better equipped than the major cities to absorb high levels of migration. We often hear concerns about shortages of health and medical services. Many rural areas also suffer from a lack of transport and communications infrastructure.

There are also sensitivities around bringing skilled migrants into regional areas that suffer from high local unemployment…

Regardless of government policies to facilitate regional migration, many migrants are likely to continue congregating in Sydney and Melbourne.

Too right. Australia has tried decentralisation for more than a century without any success (other than the construction of Canberra).

Instead, the immigration program has become more centralised that ever, with 94% of migrants last financial year settling in the cities, and 86% settling in just Sydney and Melbourne alone.

The shifting the bulk of Australia’s migrant intake to the regions is also unrealistic. Short of erecting ‘migrant proof fences’ and electronic tags, how can decentralisation of migrants be achieved in practice when it has failed so dismally in the past? And how will these regions cope with significantly larger populations? The federal government is unlikely to fund the infrastructure and services necessary, thus will they end up similarly crush-loaded as Sydney and Melbourne.

Let’s be honest: this is a desperate smokescreen to distract the electorate from the major issue: that Australia’s immigration program is simply too large – at roughly triple the historical average – in addition to being too concentrated into Sydney and Melbourne.

This turbo-charged intake has also lost the community’s support, with the five most recent opinion polls all show majority support for lowering immigration:

• Australian Population Research Institute: 54% want lower immigration;
• Newspoll: 56% want lower immigration;
• Essential: 54% believe Australia’s population is growing too fast and 64% believe immigration is too high;
• Lowy: 54% of people think the total number of migrants coming to Australia each year is too high; and
• Newspoll: 74% of voters support the Turnbull government’s cut of more than 10% to the annual permanent migrant intake to 163,000 last financial year.