Former Home Affairs Minister-turned-Housing Minister, Clare O’Neil, regularly lamented that Australia’s migration system was too temporary and held the nation back.
“Today, really for the first time in our modern history, our uncapped, unplanned temporary program is the centrepiece and driver of our migration system. This simple fact is the source of huge problems”, O’Neil bemoaned in February 2023.
“In 2007, we had about one million temporary migrants in Australia, excluding visitor and transit visas. Today that number is 1.9 million”.
