Abul Rizvi: Australia won’t meet immigration forecasts for a decade

Abul Rizvi – former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration and one of the architects of Australia’s faux ‘skilled’ migration program – has again warned that Australia won’t meet its lofty net migration targets for a decade:

Even before the coronavirus hit, net migration was lower than government forecasts. In the 2019 budget, the government forecast a migration number of around 270,000 per annum between 2019 and 2022.

Now, the coronavirus means that those 2019 forecasts “will not go within a cooee of being met,” Rizvi said. “We’re out of the ballpark here. You may as well just put them in the rubbish bin.”

And, Rizvi said, even if the coronavirus disappears and international borders re-open, Australia is unlikely to get anywhere near the 270,000 figure for the rest of the decade because of its weakened economy.

“I don’t think, during the decade of the 2020s under current policy settings, there is any chance of us getting back to above 200,000 net migration,” he said.

Last month, Rizvi projected that net overseas migration (NOM) would average only 174,800 this decade:

Table 1 provides a forecast of net overseas migration for the decade of the 2020s assuming current policy settings are maintained for the whole decade…

Net overseas migration during the past decade averaged 215,706 per annum…

Net migration averaging around 175,000 per annum plus a fertility rate of around 1.65 babies per woman, would result in Australia’s projected population growth rate falling sharply compared to that assumed in the 2019 ten year plan.

It would also lead to a sharp acceleration in population ageing.

As I pointed out last month, annual NOM of 174,800 would be historically high. It would be higher than any NOM recorded in Australia before 2006 and more than double the post-Federation average of around 75,000:

It would also be well within Peter McDonald’s spurious “optimal” immigration intake for Australia of between 160,000 and 210,000 per year (see here and here).

Abul Rizvi’s claim that 175,000 NOM would “lead to a sharp acceleration in population ageing” is Ponzi demography and is easily debunked.

First, importing more migrants to solve ageing is the equivalent of ‘can-kick economics’, because today’s migrants will also grow old, thus creating further ageing problems in 40 year’s time. Some will also bring in older family members.

Second, Rizvi has ignored the increasing labour force participation by older Australians:

Since the mid-2000s, the labour force participation rate of over-65s has more than doubled. There is obviously further scope for increases in participation given older Australians are remaining healthier for longer, as well as the legislated lift in Australia’s pension eligibility age to 67 by 2023.

Finally, the ABS’ own demographic projections show that immigration is next to useless in ‘younging’ Australia’s population. That is, if we apply a more realistic definition for the working aged population of 19 to 70 (given more kids are staying in school and older Australians are working longer), then running annual net overseas migration (NOM) of 200,000 to 280,000 delivers only a 3% improvement in the dependency ratio by 2101 than zero NOM:

This tiny ‘benefit’ will only be transitory and comes at the expense of adding 150% to 200% more people to Australia’s population versus zero NOM:

Such a massive increase in population will obviously take a massive toll on Australia’s natural environment and general liveability.

Sure, a bigger population enriches some people like property developers disproportionately, but it comes with great, largely hidden public costs, such as congestion of public infrastructure and facilities paid for by existing residents. That is, the benefits of immigration are often privatised and the costs are often socialised.

Indeed, the mass immigration program has lost public support because it has been so badly managed over the last 15 years.

Detailed counter-arguments to Abul Rizvi’s population ageing claims are articulated in the research paper Three Economic Myths about Ageing: Participation, Immigration and Infrastructure, which was authored by Dr Cameron Murray and I and commissioned by Sustainable Australia.