Immigration

In his Citizenship Day address to the National Press Club, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke offered aspiring immigrants what he called “a relatively simple proposition”: “If you want to come on a temporary basis to Australia, apply for a temporary visa.

Several Australian journalists and economists have claimed this week that One Nation’s sensible proposal to reduce the stock of temporary migrants back to pre-pandemic levels would create skills shortages and worsen population ageing.

As the debate surrounding the right level of migration into Australia continues to be one of the defining issues of this parliamentary term, there continues to be vast differences in opinion on the impact of immigration on wages growth between various policymakers.

Defenders of mass migration often argue that Australia’s ‘skilled’ immigration system boosts the nation’s productivity because migrants are more skilled than locals and earn higher incomes.

Australia needs a fresh start for its immigration programs.

As the debate over the right level of net overseas migration into Australia continues in the halls of power in Canberra, a modicum of the reality of migration enforcement has come to the forefront in the media.

The ABC The ABC, as critics like to point out, comes to us through an entirely different mindset.

In May, the Migrant Justice Institute released a report revealing that Australia has a systemic, economy‑wide architecture of migrant worker exploitation, with nearly two-thirds of migrant employees being underpaid.

Melbourne’s population has already expanded by around 2 million people (roughly 57%) this century, from around 3.5 million in 2000 to 5.5 million currently.

Australia has experienced the biggest migration boom in the nation’s history. According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data, 1,100 net migrants per day landed in the first 3.5 years of the Albanese government.

I reported last week on The Age newspaper’s interactive tool showing what Melbourne will look like when its population soars beyond 10 million.

The business lobby, policymakers, and the federal government have long argued that Australia needs to run a mass immigration program to overcome future skills shortages.

The stars are aligning for immigration cuts.

Below is a chart based on Education.gov.au data that shows the share of student enrolments by course: As you can see, the most popular course choice for international students is commerce, which accounted for 34.3% of enrolments in 2024, compared with 14.2% of domestic enrolments.

People often wonder just how long a “temporary” immigrant can legally stay in Australia.

Simon Kuestenmacher, dubbed the “Stats Guy”, is a well-known immigration shill.

The Teal federal member for Wentworth (covering Sydney’s wealthy eastern suburbs), Allegra Spender, has consistently advocated mass migration while also contradictorily demanding lower carbon emissions (for example, see here and here).

For decades, net permanent and long-term (NPLT) arrivals data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) provided a strong, reliable leading indicator of the direction of net overseas migration (NOM).

By Dr Cameron Murray People simply assume an older population means more economic dependants.

In September 2024, Matt Thistlethwaite, the federal assistant minister for immigration, told the Sydney Institute that “for many decades Australia hasn’t had a migration plan” and that “Australia’s migration policies have lacked direction and purpose”.

Graduate (485) visas have been the second-fastest-growing category of temporary visas since Labor came to office in mid-2022.