Immigration

It’s a Sunday and I can’t finish the lawn with a bit of moisture about.  Someone flips an article by Abul Rizvi into play, and foolishly I read it.  Doc Rizvi is slagging off the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) for a release about immigration.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reports that international education is Australia’s fourth-largest export, earning the country $51 billion in 2024.

The latest rental data from Cotality suggests that Australia’s rental market has tightened.

A new study, entitled “Perverse policy incentives and inferior economic outcomes” has exposed the failings of Australia’s migration system, particularly the student visa system.

Alan Kohler is one of the few ABC journalists willing to openly and honestly discuss Australia’s immigration system, which is the fundamental driver of the nation’s world-beating population growth.

Under a series of agreements reached between the Australian and New Zealand governments, Kiwis can relocate to Australia and reside there indefinitely using the Special Category Visa (SCV).

When Clare O’Neil was Australia’s Home Affairs Minister, she regularly lamented that Australia’s migration system was too temporary and was holding the nation back.

In decades now long passed, the issue of migration was largely one of practical considerations, defined by questions such as: How many new arrivals per year is viable?

In the debate surrounding immigration levels and population growth more broadly, the status quo is often described as normal, as if it were simply part of the natural order of things.

Last week saw Australia’s housing minister, Clare O’Neil, launch a propaganda campaign to distract voters from Labor’s housing failures.

I reported on Thursday how New Zealand’s rental growth has plummeted in response to the sharp decline in net overseas migration, which fell to only 10,628 in the year to August 2025, down from a decade average of 49,000.

In the debate surrounding Australian migration levels, the issue of New Zealanders coming to Australia under the bilateral agreement between the two nations is often brought up.

By Ross Elliott, cross-posted from The Pulse: A million people generate a lot of demand for things.

Recently, the level of migration has been a major source of controversy.

While the level of migration remains a hotly contested issue, from the nation’s halls of power to backyard BBQ debates, for the longest time, migration conceptually was considered a positive by a majority of the public.

Former senior immigration department bureaucrat Abul Rizvi posted an article in Independent Australia where he explained how the Albanese government secretly increased the permanent migrant intake well above the official published level. Rizvi showed how Labor “has significantly increased the size of permanent migration compared to the situation pre-pandemic (see Table 3)”.

This week, two polls were released showing that Australians overwhelmingly want significantly lower immigration.

While there are an increasing number of issues where the views and sensibilities of the public are entirely at odds with those of the political class, one issue arguably stands out where the perspectives of politicians and the electorate are in two entirely different postcodes: immigration.

Australia has the second-largest concentration of international students in the world, behind the tiny nation of Luxembourg.

The latest batch of rental data from Cotality and SQM Research suggests that Australia’s rental market has tightened.

It is critical to understand Australia’s immigration policy in a historical context. During the first 60 years following World War II, Australia’s net overseas migration (NOM) averaged 90,000 per year, with only two years exceeding 150,000.