00:01This is really, interestingly, kind of a solution in search of a problem. It responds to a well
00:10known international stereotype that migrants lays around on benefits, which is false. Migrants
00:19are in fact net contributors fiscally. They contribute more in taxes than they consume
00:26and benefits. One reason for that is that the temporary migrant population, which is a large
00:34and growing portion of the migration system, is not entitled to welfare or NDIS or any substantial
00:43benefits, despite the fact that they pay taxes to fund those entitlements. The coalition's
00:50proposal, so far as it looks now, of course we're still waiting for the budget reply speech,
00:57is about cracking down on the entitlements that permanent residents have as compared with
01:05Australian citizens. Those two sets of entitlements are very close. The permanent residents are
01:12people who, many of them have already spent a probationary period here on a temporary visa
01:18in Australia, gaining local skills and experience. Australia needs them in the workforce. Australia
01:26wants them to integrate and keep doing their jobs well and become part of the community.
01:32Taking away their entitlements is probably not the right thing to do if we care about those
01:38things, about integration, social cohesion and productivity, people doing their job well.
01:42You can become entitled after three years essentially to apply. It can take any time upward of that
01:51and for a lot of people it takes a lot longer because everyone goes on a different temporary
01:57visa pathway before they get to it. You can apply directly from abroad, but that's actually now,
02:04in contrast with the earlier periods, the minority of people in the permanent program. The majority of
02:10people who come through the permanent program now are already on shore and they go through this
02:15pathway of being on a temporary visa for a while. The permanent program has been capped and stable
02:23for a long time to the extent that we have issues with volatility in migration and the migration system.
02:31The problems are largely located within the temporary migration program which has metastasized over recent
02:38decades. And those people who really aren't entitled to social benefits. So this is really not solving any
02:47existing problem. In principle a good idea to link migration population growth to planning,
02:55but there are a few caveats around how this particular proposal looks to be aiming at that.
03:04One is we need to be careful to understand that planning is more than just housing and we also need
03:13to be
03:13careful not to overstate the relationship between migration and house price growth and housing cost growth.
03:22So housing costs, the housing crisis, clearly a major puzzle in Australia and across the OECD in fact,
03:31at the moment it certainly matters a big puzzle, but migration is a small piece of it. Migration contributes
03:39to both demand for housing, new people needing housing, but it also contributes to the supply of housing
03:48through primarily labour across the supply chain that delivers housing. So those two things kind of cancel
03:55each other out. And that means that it's really the other factors, the other pieces of the housing puzzle
04:01that really matter and need to be addressed. Migration is a pretty small part of it and targeting that to,
04:08you know, overemphasizing the role of migration in housing is kind of a red herring. And then the other
04:14problem is there's mixed reports at the moment about how the coalition is proposing to go about making
04:21this more direct link between migration and housing policy. Some reports from senior journalists have
04:30said that in line with leaked policies a few weeks ago, they're aiming at a net migration target.
04:38There's been some people in the know are saying that that's not in fact the case, they're not going
04:42to propose a net migration target. We'll see what Angus Taylor says in his budget reply speech tonight.
04:48If they do propose a net migration target, that's not a good idea. The international consensus is that
04:55net migration targets don't work. They can't work. That's because about half of net migration is
05:02departures. It's people leaving, which no liberal democracy has any business controlling. So
05:09net migration is a policy. It is not a policy lever. It's an accounting outcome. So it's not a good
05:15way to
05:15deal with the problem.
05:177 Sorry you I haven't seen that.
05:187
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