After Monday’s damning audit from Infrastructure Australia, which warned of intractable infrastructure bottlenecks and rising costs, and claimed that $40 billion in annual infrastructure spending was needed as Australia’s population balloons to a projected to 31.4 million people by 2031, the government announced that it would launch a ‘powerful inquiry’ into Australia’s immigration program.
The announcement of this inquiry suggested the Coalition would consider further cuts to Australia’s immigration program, but this has been quickly hosed by the chair of the committee, Liberal MP Julian Leeser. He has explicitly ruled-out cutting migrant numbers and will instead look to shift migrants to the regions. From The Guardian:
“It is not about the total number. I think we have had a long debate about how many people we should have in this country, what we haven’t had enough discussion on is where they should go.”
