Is Labor’s migration strategy shake-up really ‘big Australia by stealth’?

Australia’s immigration program is a mess, and the Albanese government has promised to fix it.

In her National Press Club address on Thursday, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil signalled the government’s intentions — at least in regard to skilled migration. Family migration will wait for another day.

The speech coincided with the publication of the expert review of the migration program that the minister commissioned in September, and with the release of the government’s initial response — an outline of its future migration strategy.

Labor is pushing back against the long-term shift towards temporary migration, saying that a greater emphasis on permanent residence is in the national interest. Not only does it foster social cohesion, but it also makes Australia a more attractive destination for migrants who can fill critical labour market gaps and boost productivity.

The government hopes its changes will entice young, highly skilled professionals to settle in Australia permanently. It also wants to make it easier for international students to stay on after graduation — if they have qualifications in high demand.

Together with Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, O’Neil is determined to build a migration system that is fairer, simpler and delivers better economic outcomes.

They’ve made an impressive start on the fairness front, beginning to dismantle bottlenecks and blockages that kept hundreds of thousands of visa applicants and visa holders in limbo, working through the huge backlog of unprocessed applications bequeathed to them by the Coalition. Then they started clearing the path to permanent residence for refugees on temporary protection visas, ending a decade of unconscionable cruelty.

Next, they established a straightforward route to citizenship for New Zealanders, putting them on an equal footing with other permanent residents and ensuring that, in time, they can access the full range of government services and enrol to vote.

In a new fairness measure announced on Thursday, all temporary skilled migrants will be able to seek permanent residence. In 2017, the Coalition created a two-tiered temporary skilled visa. The lower tier only permitted a stay of two years, renewable just once, meaning migrants then had to leave Australia and had no chance of settling here. The new approach doesn’t guarantee that temporary workers can stay, but it increases their opportunity to do so.

The government is also applying a filter that will prevent some temporary migrants from arriving in the first place by raising the minimum wage employers must pay if they want to sponsor a worker from overseas.

In 2013, the Coalition froze this threshold wage, known as the TSMIT, at $53,900. From July, the government will boost it by a whopping 30% to $70,000. The higher cut-off will shut out workers on lower earnings, like commercial cooks and café managers, who often feature among the top 15 occupations nominated for temporary skilled visas. Expect complaints from the hospitality sector — and from retail and agriculture — as the changes bite. Other sectors that employ temporary skilled migrants won’t be worried since they pay much higher wages.

The higher TSMIT is designed to ensure migrants bring the skills most needed to boost productivity, but it will also help advance another key government aim — reducing workplace abuse. As researcher Anna Boucher has shown, workers lower down the skill ladder are more likely to suffer underpayment. The Grattan Institute, which recommended the $70,000 threshold, says the migrants it excludes “are precisely the workers who are at greatest risk of exploitation”.  

The Home Affairs minister wants to simplify the migration program by streamlining the bewildering array of visa sub-classes, and by scrapping clumsy and ineffective systems of labour market testing and skilled occupation lists that are meant to ensure the system prioritises workers we most urgently need.

Instead, Jobs and Skills Australia will determine which skills are in short supply, based on “advice from tripartite mechanisms” (i.e., government, business and unions). O’Neil says Jobs and Skills Australia’s key task is to better integrate the migration program with education and training to ensure we build skills at home as well as bring them in from overseas.

Despite the opposition carping that Labor’s reforms amount to “big Australia by stealth”, the changes won’t necessarily increase migration. There has always been a hard ceiling on permanent migration, and while temporary migration is uncapped, numbers fluctuate with economic conditions, especially demand for labour. The latest record high numbers reflect pent-up demand, especially from international students, from when borders were closed.

Some proposals could even push migration lower. O’Neil wants to inject more “integrity” into the visa system to ensure that international students are coming here to study, not to work. If she’s serious, the government will need to rein in the “Ponzi scheme” that sees dodgy recruiters hawking low-value courses for huge commissions.

The missing piece in the puzzle is how the government plans to fill critical labour market shortages that don’t qualify as highly skilled, such as aged care assistants, meat processors and fruit pickers — roles often filled by migrants on temporary visas.

In her speech, the minister was critical of “guest worker” programs; she wants to exclude students who might be attracted as much by an Australian wage as by an Australian qualification, and she promises to end the entrenched exploitation of backpackers and other temporary visa holders.

Who then is going to fill these low-paid jobs that are dirty, dangerous and difficult?