Researchers are calling for reform to Australia's much-debated permanent migration program. New research from Australian National University's Migration Hub found only 12% of places are going to offshore skilled entrants. Peter McDonald is a demographer and is the lead author of the report.
00:03The mass migration argument is very misplaced.
00:08Between 2023 and 2024, net overseas migration fell by 190,000 in one year, just in one year.
00:18And it's well and truly on the way down.
00:21We had mass migration, it's true, for a couple of years following COVID,
00:25because the borders had been closed and large numbers of people came in when the borders were open.
00:31But it's not an issue anymore. That's the wrong issue.
00:35The issue at the moment is the structure of the program.
00:38OK, let's talk about this. That's the permanent migration program.
00:41It is intended to bring new skills to Australia to match the needs.
00:46Is that happening? What has your report found around that?
00:50Well, we found that new skills are coming from temporary migrants, not from permanent migrants.
00:54As you said before, the number of new permanent migrants, skilled migrants coming into Australia is only around 12,000 in a year, which is very, very small.
01:09When we see the permanent migration program stated at 185,000, a lot of people think that's 185,000 new skilled workers coming into Australia.
01:19But that is not the case. About 60% of the permanent migration program is the families of Australian citizens or the families of skilled migrants, most of whom are already in Australia working.
01:34So they're not new skills. And so the growth that we've seen over the last few years in skilled labour in Australia has been dominated by temporary migrants.
01:45And that includes students, working holidaymakers. So not just the temporary skilled workers, but other categories of temporary migrants.
01:54Of the skilled migrants, what roles are they filling? And are they filling the needs that we need here in Australia?
02:01Well, we've seen, for example, the building industry talk about a shortage of 130,000 housing construction workers.
02:12And in the last year for which we have statistics, the permanent program brought in about 160 housing construction workers, almost nothing.
02:25The temporary program at present is bringing in quite a lot of building workers, about 5,000.
02:33But employers will be looking to make those people permanent in the longer term.
02:38And there's a structural problem that there's huge backlogs in the employer-sponsored migration, permanent migration program.
02:49But also huge backlogs for partners of Australian citizens in the family stream.
02:56And we're suggesting that to overcome these problems, we need to separate out the family stream from the skilled stream.
03:05The family stream is growing demand because young Australians travel the world and lots of temporary migrants come to Australia and fall in love with Australians.
03:16So there's a huge demand. And when the two are linked together, the skilled and the family, the government argues,
03:24well, if we give more visas to partners of Australian citizens, that means fewer skilled migrants.
03:31But it doesn't have to be that way. They can be separated out.
03:34And in fact, the law says, the Migration Act, Section 87, that partners of Australian citizens have a right to permanent residence in Australia.
03:44And so the government after government has been breaking the law by capping the number of partners of Australian citizens.
03:51They also pay a very large fee. The people now waiting to get permanent residence who are partners of Australian citizens have paid about $1 billion in fees without getting the result that they are entitled to by the law.
04:10So, Peter, is that the area of greatest reform that you see currently to the system by separating out the family stream with the skill stream?
04:18Or are there other areas that you would like to see reform to?
04:21Well, yeah, I think if we do that, then we can put greater focus on the skill stream.
04:28It'll overcome the partner problem.
04:31But it will also allow us to focus more precisely on the skill stream, to look at what we're actually doing.
04:39Because at the moment, it's, you know, people are kind of fooled that we're bringing in 185,000 skilled workers every year when we're not.
04:48and they and they say press lunch when they're back.
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