Mad Albo’s Indian deluge pumps Giant Australia

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In her recent National Press Club address following the release of the Migration Review, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil declared that Labor was not delivering a ‘Big Australia’:

“I’m not someone who advocates for a big Australia in this conversation. What’s really important to me is that we’ve got these big national problems facing our country and we’re not getting the right people here through the migration system to help us address them”.

“So, the focus of this task is not about more people. It’s not about a bigger program”.

Then the federal budget released its net overseas migration (NOM) and population projections, which forecast an unprecedented 1.5 million NOM over five years and a population increase of 2.18 million – equivalent to five Canberra’s or one Perth.

As reported by MB, the Australia-India Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement was signed last week by Prime Minister Albanese and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi.

The goal of the agreement is to facilitate the movement of students, academics, and professionals between the two nations.

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The deal does not include any restrictions on the number of visas available, thereby making it impossible to keep Australia’s migrant intake at a sustainable level.

The Agreement provides for five-year student visas with no limit on the number of Indian students who can study in Australia.

Indian graduates of Australian higher education institutions will be permitted to work for up to eight years without the need for visa sponsorship.

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The Talented Early Professionals Scheme will allow 3,000 of India’s “top” graduates and early-career professionals to work and live in Australia for up to two years before being eligible to apply for a permanent skilled visa.

Spouses will have unrestricted work rights, and Indians will be allowed to obtain three-month guest visas for family or business purposes with no numerical restrictions.

This new migration agreement comes on top of the recently signed Mechanism for Mutual Recognition of Qualifications, which requires Australia to recognise Indian vocational and university graduates to be “holding the comparable AQF qualification for the purposes of admission to higher education”.

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It also requires Australia to recognise Indian vocational and university graduates to “to be holding comparable Australian qualifications for the purposes of general employment, where such qualifications are required”.

Thus, these agreements are an open door policy for Indians coming to Australia.

Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) president, Jenny Goldie, notes “these measures only lower the bar for less skilled people, non-genuine students and those who don’t find jobs in skilled areas, to fill up migration quotas”.

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“They’ll generate more cries of skills shortages and higher immigration”.

“The whole Agreement is going to lead to massive population growth in Australia. At a minimum, it places a diplomatic barrier in the way of any future contraction of immigration to sustainable levels”.

Goldie also argues that the two migration agreements are undemocratic, will erode our sovereignty, and will exacerbate the rental shortage and environmental degradation.

“Australians were not consulted about this gifting of our sovereignty, with only peanuts in return. Even now the text of the agreement has not been made public”.

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“We need a consistent policy across all nationalities”, says Ms Goldie.

“We are anticipating 400,000 net overseas migration (NOM) this financial year and 315,000 in the next. This is more than three times the twentieth century average”.

“This is bad enough but the Australia-India Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement only makes matters worse”.

Goldie is 100% correct.

Young Australians will be priced out of rental homes and jobs by Indians willing to work for lower wages, while capital city infrastructure will strain under the crush of thousands more people.

These agreements will augment already record-breaking levels of immigration, with worrying implications for the jobs and housing markets.

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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.