Morrison Government’s visa cuts a giant lie

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Peta Credlin, who served as chief-of-staff to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, penned an insightful article in the Daily Telegraph exposing the Morrison Government’s purported 30,000 cut in Australia’s migrant intake as a lie:

…buried amid commitments of a 30,000 a year cut in our permanent migrant intake is a change that all but guarantees record levels of immigration will continue.

Almost entirely unremarked in Cities Minister Alan Tudge’s speech last week was his announcement of a new National Population Centre, based in the Treasury, rather than the Immigration department…

Treasury are the original ‘Big Australia’ zealots.

Federally, immigration is used to boost the budget — like a giant Ponzi scheme. To the Treasury boffins, more people means a larger economy and more tax revenue for the Feds, and it’s then up to the states to build the roads, schools, hospitals and housing to cope, or not cope, as congestion in our big cities shows…

Indeed, one of the reasons why immigration seems only to go up, never down, regardless of domestic economic circumstances, is Treasury’s belief that it’s always good for the economy, even if our cities are full of Indian accountants and Chinese computer programmers driving Ubers.

The myth that Australia’s immigration programme is bringing the world’s most highly skilled people to Australia is a story for another day. Right now, the fact that our immigration numbers are high by OECD standards, and we’ve now handed the power over to Treasury who want it even higher, deserves attention. Particularly when the Morrison Government claims it’s serious about a population plan.

Peta Credlin is, of course, 100% correct. Basing the National Population Centre out of Treasury is a policy smokescreen that ensures immigration will remain turbo-charged. The best we can hope for is symbolic changes made at the margin to give voters the impression that the problem is being handled.

That said, one only needs to look at the immigration data to understand that the Morrison Government’s immigration cuts are a lie.

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Yesterday’s monthly overseas arrivals and departures figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed that net long-term arrivals continue to grow, hitting 300,000 in the year to August – nearly double the 43-year average of 156,000:

As we already know, there is a very strong correlation between the ABS’ monthly long-term arrivals data and its quarterly net overseas migration (NOM) data, which is only current to March 2019:

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Therefore, Australia is facing an increase in its official NOM beyond 250,000 when the June figures are released in December, with further increases to come thereafter.

Nobody should be surprised by this, given the April Federal Budget explicitly projected increasing NOM over the four year forward estimates:

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The Federal Budget also projected that New South Wales’ (read Sydney’s) and Victoria’s (read Melbourne’s) populations would balloon by around 600,000 and 650,000 respectively over the next four years, thus maintaining their current extreme pace of population growth:

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No matter which way you cut it, the Morrison Government’s purported visa cuts are a ginormous lie. Migrants are officially projected to continue flooding into Australia, squeezing quality of life from our major cities.

About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.