Macquarie Private Bank founder and executive chairman of fund manager Atlas Advisors, Guy Hedley, has demanded that the Morrison Government open the immigration floodgates to wealthy Chinese. From The Australian:
The Morrison government needs to resuscitate the visa scheme designed to lure wealthy Chinese investors… The SIV program grants people who invest $5 million in specific categories a four-year visa, which can then be converted to permanent residency…
“Under the original program the government was granting about 60 visas a month, but after 2015 it just dried up to about 10 a month,” he told The Australian…
“There were about 200 fund managers providing solutions under the original SIV program; now there’s half a dozen of us left”…
Mr Hedley said the appetite of Chinese investors for the visas remained undiminished. “The government needs to understand these investors are hugely wealthy, incredibly connected and can be hugely influential once they settle in Australia.”
May I remind Guy Hedley that the Productivity Commission (PC) explicitly called for the abolition of the Significant Investor Visa (SIV) in its 2016 Migrant Intake Australia report, noting they are likely to be used as pathways for money laundering:
Because there are no English-language requirements for the Significant Investor Visa and Premium Investor Visa, and no upper age limits, it is likely that these immigrants will generate less favourable social impacts than other immigrants. Further, compared to other visa streams, investor visas are prone to misuse and fraud. Concerns about visa fraud played a part in the Canadian Government’s decision in 2014 to scrap its investor visa scheme…
There is a risk that SIV and PIV might be used as a pathway for investing ‘dirty money’ in Australia, an issue that has been raised for other similar schemes (Sumption and Hooper 2014)…
Overall, the case for retaining the Significant Investor Visa and Premium Investor Visa streams is weak and the Government should abolish these visas.
Does Guy Hedley really want to create a system whereby Australian Citizenship is up for sale to anyone with enough money to pay, and where few questions are asked, there’s no rigorous background checks on the persons or the source of their money, there’s no requirement to speak English, and there’s no requirement to work or contribute to society?
Let’s hope the Morrison Government heeds the PC’s advice and ignores vested interests like Guy Hedley.
