One of the justifications for the Albanese government running the biggest immigration program in the nation’s history was that Australia needed to “catch-up” on immigration supposedly “lost” over the pandemic.
For example, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said in March that record immigration was “a welcome indicator of the ongoing recovery from the pandemic and a reminder of the critical role migration plays in our economy, but also shows that we still have a long way to go to fill the gap in our workforce left by the pandemic”.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers followed up saying that “even with this big bounce in net overseas migration, we still haven’t caught up with what we lost in Covid”.
