Stop the visa hop: inside Labor’s migration crackdown
Nothing makes Labor politicians sweat like an immigration controversy – and now the federal government has come up with a crackdown to bring migration numbers down in the attempt to appease the right, while trying not to alienate the left. Will it work? And what problem are we trying to solve, anyway?
Read more about this story at theaustralian.com.au and see the video by subscribing to our YouTube channel.
Revealed: Labor to target students, visitor visas in migration crackdown
Commentary by Geoff Chambers: Can Labor pull off its ‘tough on immigration’ act?
This episode of The Front is presented by Claire Harvey, produced by Kristen Amiet and edited by Joshua Burton. Our team includes Lia Tsamoglou, Tiffany Dimmack, and Jasper Leak, who also composed our music.
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Speaker 1: From The Australian, here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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Speaker 1: flash flooding disaster in Nepal and Tibet. Nothing makes Labor
Speaker 1: politicians sweat like an immigration controversy. And now the federal
Speaker 1: government has come up with a crackdown to bring migration
Speaker 1: numbers down in the attempt to appease the right while
Speaker 1: trying not to alienate the left.
Speaker 2: Will it work?
Speaker 1: And what problem are we trying to solve anyway? That's
Speaker 1: today's story. Geoff Chambers is the Australian's political editor and
Speaker 1: he's been writing about a concept that I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: of before. Geoff, what is visa hopping?
Speaker 2: Well, visa hopping is a very common trend.
Speaker 3: That over the last two decades, we've seen a bit
Speaker 3: of a cottage industry emerge amongst migration agents and such.
Speaker 3: And the advice that is given is that if you're
Speaker 3: here on a temporary visa, or if you're here as
Speaker 3: an international student, there are avenues and pathways to remain
Speaker 3: in the country and quite often remain in Australia indefinitely.
Speaker 3: And what they do is basically hop from one type
Speaker 3: of visa to another. And we've seen this a lot
Speaker 3: in the international education, higher education, VET, English language sectors,
Speaker 3: where you're going to see a person that's arrived here
Speaker 3: from abroad do one course, and then they're going to
Speaker 3: move to another course and seek a different visa. And
Speaker 3: this is a big issue because They're doing this here
Speaker 3: in Australia onshore. Quite often under these student visas, you
Speaker 3: can bring family members out here. So they're looking to
Speaker 3: have a longer life and a longer time in Australia.
Speaker 3: But when we've currently got about 700,000 international students in
Speaker 3: the country, that becomes a bit of an issue. And
Speaker 3: few countries, Western countries, actually allow this onshore application. So
Speaker 3: I think it would make a difference if you can say, okay, look,
Speaker 3: We're very open to you making that application, but you
Speaker 3: do have to go home and you do have to
Speaker 3: make that new pitch as to why you want to
Speaker 3: continue your various courses here in Australia.
Speaker 1: This is part of a crackdown, a looming crackdown that
Speaker 1: you've revealed that the Labor government is now working up
Speaker 1: and it's all about getting net overseas migration down. Labor
Speaker 1: has been trying to get the net overseas migration down
Speaker 1: for quite a while now and.
Speaker 2: It's really struggling.
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 1: Is visa hopping the reason?
Speaker 3: I think the reason is to get the NOM down
Speaker 3: requires some pretty extreme and drastic decisions.
Speaker 2: One is in the enforcement.
Speaker 3: So if you do have illegal overstays, you're going to
Speaker 3: have to make that call that they're going to have
Speaker 3: to go to a detention centre and then they're going
Speaker 3: to have to get deported. And that is something that
Speaker 3: has happened under Labor, but the argument is they haven't
Speaker 3: gone as hard as they possibly could. I like to
Speaker 3: go back after the 2022 election when Claire O'Neill is
Speaker 3: the then Home Affairs Minister tasked Martin Parkinson, former PMC
Speaker 3: and Treasury Secretary, to do Labor's big migration review. And
Speaker 3: the purpose of that really was to say, oh, the
Speaker 3: coalition over a decade did such a bad job.
Speaker 2: Here are all the problems.
Speaker 3: So what Martin Parkinson did was he actually, in fact,
Speaker 3: identified what needs to be done. And Labor, for the
Speaker 3: last three and a half years almost now, haven't really
Speaker 3: followed through. So they're now in the process of trying
Speaker 3: to do that because they understand that. that the optics
Speaker 3: for a Labor government in particular to look like they're
Speaker 3: not on top of immigration and on top of borders,
Speaker 3: this is becoming problematic as we see the rise of
Speaker 3: One Nation and both the Labor Party and Anthony Albanese's
Speaker 3: personal standings go down post-Bondi terrorist attack. And as everyone's
Speaker 3: sort of doing it tough in this cost of living environment.
Speaker 1: It's a really interesting philosophical one for Labor, isn't it?
Speaker 1: The big argument for many years in Australia has been
Speaker 1: that higher levels of migration improve our Labor productivity. We
Speaker 1: bring in the kind of skilled workers who have the
Speaker 1: initiative to get themselves here in the first place. They
Speaker 1: contribute to Australia. They make this country better. And especially now,
Speaker 1: our fertility rate is.
Speaker 2: Low and falling.
Speaker 1: We're not replacing ourselves in the numbers that we need
Speaker 1: to sustain our economy into the future. you could take
Speaker 1: a pretty cynical view and say Labor still holds that view,
Speaker 1: but is prepared to sacrifice it because they're worried about
Speaker 1: One Nation. Is it as simple as that right now,
Speaker 1: or is there a bigger shift going on within Labor?
Speaker 3: The economic impacts of substantially lowering the net overseas migration figure,
Speaker 3: which some people argue is not the figure that should
Speaker 3: actually be looked at because the NOM looks at everything
Speaker 3: that's coming in and out of the country, any visitors,
Speaker 3: any Australians that are coming in and out. So It's
Speaker 3: actually quite hard to get that number down significantly. You'd
Speaker 3: have to do some pretty drastic things to get to
Speaker 3: that point. I think that Anthony Albanese has intervened. He
Speaker 3: clearly was concerned about what happened to Keir Starmer over
Speaker 3: in the UK, who, you know, obviously has been replaced.
Speaker 1: So Keir Starmer's small boats record is officially worse than
Speaker 1: any of his predecessors as Prime Minister.
Speaker 3: And Anthony Albanese and Tony Burke have now changed their
Speaker 3: views on things like Operation Sovereign Borders, boat turnbacks, the
Speaker 3: use of Nauru. All of these are important, but there
Speaker 3: is a bigger issue at play, and that is the
Speaker 3: impacts of this huge post-pandemic record migration levels on things
Speaker 3: like community infrastructure and transport and jobs and all the
Speaker 3: rest of it. So they've got that on one side,
Speaker 3: and then they've got the economic ramifications on the other side.
Speaker 3: And if you're Jim Chalmers, You're already delivering deficits. You're
Speaker 3: already swimming in a sea of debt. He can't really
Speaker 3: do with some significant cut to migration. And as you say,
Speaker 3: around population, the birth rate is down. So we are
Speaker 3: very heavily reliant on those immigration flows to have the
Speaker 3: people to do cleaning jobs, cooking jobs, all those types
Speaker 3: of those jobs that potentially Australians don't want to do.
Speaker 2: So you've got these two things at force.
Speaker 3: And then you've got a Labor Party who obviously, 2007
Speaker 3: to 2013, under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, lost control
Speaker 3: of the borders. And Anthony Albanese and a bunch of people,
Speaker 3: including Tony Burke and Chris Bowen, who were immigration ministers
Speaker 3: during those governments, they know full well what the fallout
Speaker 3: is if you can't get that narrative right.
Speaker 2: We are seeing too many drownings. We are seeing too
Speaker 2: many sinkings, too many innocent people being lost at sea.
Speaker 3: The alternative script, which probably prompted a postponing of Tony
Speaker 3: Burke's announcement of the so-called immigration crackdown, are those people
Speaker 3: that are worried about their left base, are worried about
Speaker 3: people who think that Labor are being mean and being
Speaker 3: like Donald Trump and going too hard or following one
Speaker 3: nation and the coalition down a rabbit hole. So you've
Speaker 3: got those competing pressures at play. But at the very least,
Speaker 3: while Labor might optically want some people to think that
Speaker 3: this is going to be a really forceful crackdown around
Speaker 3: visas and immigration, it might be more of a feather
Speaker 3: duster than a big stick. I think Anthony Albanese has said, look, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is a guy that did pretty well amongst diaspora
Speaker 3: communities in the last two elections. he's saying now, look,
Speaker 3: let's just hit our targets. I think we've got to
Speaker 3: at least hit our targets, but we don't have to
Speaker 3: go substantial. We don't have to follow the other guys
Speaker 3: and go substantially lower, but we do have to hit
Speaker 3: our targets, guys.
Speaker 1: That would bring the norm to 220 odd thousand people
Speaker 1: a year. The coalition is saying it should be more
Speaker 1: like 180,000, but One Nation got itself tangled up. Pauline
Speaker 1: Hanson says it should be 130, but then other members
Speaker 1: of One Nation pointed out quite rightly, I think, that
Speaker 1: if you include the people who we need to work
Speaker 1: in our aged care homes, as you said, Jeff, to
Speaker 1: clean our offices, to pick the fruit that Australians apparently
Speaker 1: don't want to pick, it would be much higher than that.
Speaker 1: It would be more like 180,000 people. That's the alternative
Speaker 1: for Labor, isn't it? It's just holding the line and
Speaker 1: hoping that that becomes obvious to Australians. Most Australians have
Speaker 1: never even heard of the norm, though. Pauline Hanson will
Speaker 1: keep saying migration is too high and that's why you
Speaker 1: can't get a house.
Speaker 4: Why are you using mass migration to paper over your
Speaker 4: abysmal economic management, disregarding the call from millions of Australians
Speaker 4: to stop it due to their standard of living being destroyed?
Speaker 1: So if Labor doesn't actually bring the number down any
Speaker 1: further than its current target, how does it answer that criticism?
Speaker 2: Well, they're the incumbents, aren't they?
Speaker 3: So they're two terms in and they're going to be
Speaker 3: gunning for a third election either late next year or
Speaker 3: in 2028. And it very much squarely lays on them
Speaker 3: in terms of how they manage the immigration system. And
Speaker 3: I think for both Labor and the coalition when they
Speaker 3: were in power, this discussion about what skills do we
Speaker 3: need in this country?
Speaker 2: What are the skills priorities? Who are the type of
Speaker 2: people that we need here? I don't think the work's
Speaker 2: ever been done properly.
Speaker 3: And both my parties are promising that they will try
Speaker 3: and get that right. It is really complex to get
Speaker 3: that right because the needs change year to year. Depends
Speaker 3: on what region of Australia. It depends on the appetite
Speaker 3: of who we're trying to attract. Are we trying to
Speaker 3: attract high-level tech type of people, which I think we
Speaker 3: probably should. And I think there'll probably be some exceptions
Speaker 3: and carve-outs for postgraduate research and trying to attract the
Speaker 3: best and the brightest. But it's that sort of underlay
Speaker 3: under the economy, sort of, you know, the care economies,
Speaker 3: you know, as Australia gets older and as those workforces
Speaker 3: get bigger, where are we going to get those people from?
Speaker 1: It's a tool of our soft diplomacy too, isn't it,
Speaker 1: in the Pacific? The Palms Labor Scheme that brings Pacific
Speaker 1: Island workers here to do things like pick fruit, seasonal work.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is Australia's kind of signature policy in
Speaker 1: the region to say, we care about you, we're going
Speaker 1: to help you bring money home to your own economies.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's been such a success and it's bipartisan support.
Speaker 3: And even One Nation people who are familiar with the
Speaker 3: regions and who talk to the farmers are understand that
Speaker 3: it's crucial and really important. And we've seen stories recently
Speaker 3: about the long-term trajectory of Australia's agricultural production and output.
Speaker 3: And it's quite frightening to see where that might go
Speaker 3: if we don't get that mix right. It's really fascinating,
Speaker 3: the politics in this, because I think One Nation, the
Speaker 3: Coalition and Labor ultimately have to explain what the impacts
Speaker 3: will be from their various targets. But I certainly think
Speaker 3: it's easier for One Nation and Pauline Hanson to basically,
Speaker 3: you know, she can move positions, it seems, and at
Speaker 3: this point in the cycle, get away with it.
Speaker 4: Your skilled list includes occupations such as dog handler, hairdresser, gardener,
Speaker 4: golfer and migration agent. Minister, why is your government flooding
Speaker 4: Australia with 80% of unskilled migration?
Speaker 1: Coming up, is lowering migration just a band-aid for our
Speaker 1: homegrown housing crisis? Geoff, Pauline Hanson's big rallying cry is
Speaker 1: that immigration is causing the housing crisis. The counterpoint to
Speaker 1: that is housing is bound up in red tape, lack
Speaker 1: of supply and other factors. Labor would say it's working
Speaker 1: on that with the big budget reforms that have been
Speaker 1: very controversial. What do you think? Is immigration becoming the
Speaker 1: scapegoat for the housing situation when it's not really to blame?
Speaker 2: I think it has become that, absolutely.
Speaker 3: And ironically, it was the coalition and Peter Dutton that
Speaker 3: put this, and probably before him, even under the Morrison government,
Speaker 3: that made that tie, that link between migration and housing.
Speaker 2: And it's actually, it's slipped up the coalition. Labor struggles because.
Speaker 3: They've made these huge promises on targets for housing supply
Speaker 3: and cutting red tape and all.
Speaker 2: The rest of it.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't seem to be anywhere near the trajectory
Speaker 3: that they require. So they naturally will come under pressure.
Speaker 3: And if people can't buy a house or if there's
Speaker 3: issues in the housing market, they're going to look for
Speaker 3: something to blame. And you do have Pauline Hanson then
Speaker 3: saying people can't get housing because immigration is out of control.
Speaker 3: And I think the out of control narrative, whether it's
Speaker 3: the public service is out of control, they're hiring too much.
Speaker 2: Spending's out of control.
Speaker 3: I think it's a fairly common theme where if people
Speaker 3: are struggling in a cost of living crisis, in a
Speaker 3: housing crisis, and they don't know who to blame and
Speaker 3: they're going to get told it's the government's fault, it's
Speaker 3: the major party's fault because they've let you down. I
Speaker 3: think that is why One Nation is gaining so much traction.
Speaker 1: Geoff Chambers is The Australian's political editor. You can check
Speaker 1: out his work anytime at theaustralian.com.au.