Australia’s left-wing Labor government has admitted that mass immigration has created social problems while not benefiting Australians, after bringing in a record number of foreigners since the last election.
Federal Assistant Minister for Immigration Matt Thistlethwaite made admission in a speech to the policy forum The Sydney Institute last month where he noted that a recent review of the migration system found that there were “too many – 1.8 million – temporary migrants” in the country.
Immigration had also failed to improve productivity or solve so-called skills shortages, and conversely had led to drops in qualified apprentices and trainees in key sectors, Mr Thistletwaite said.
“Migration has been unresponsive to Australia’s needs; it has provided marginal economic benefit and has not enhanced labour productivity,” he said.
“It has been concentrated on capital cities, creating some social tension and skills shortages have persisted despite steady flows of new arrivals within needed skills and competencies.
“The reliance on labour migration to solve our skills gaps led to under investment in vocational education with commensurate falls in apprentices and trainees in key sectors, particularly services, which are vital to our standard of living with an ageing population.
“For the last decade it appears that immigration was not benefiting Australians as it had in the past.”
Mr Thistlethwaite went on to announce that Labor’s new Migration Strategy would bring immigration back to “sustainable levels”, his comments coming at the same time as official statistics showed that the government’s own migration forecasts has been dwarfed by the actual numbers.
The assistant minister also claimed that Australia has not had a migration strategy for “many decades”, but an ABC News analysis found that successive Labor and Coalition governments have deliberately increased immigration as part of an “obvious” strategy with “a lot of thought put into it”.
The analysis found that immigration was first lifted to record levels by John Howard due to visa reforms benefiting “skilled” immigrants that actually created “side and backdoors” to lower-skilled workers.
Labor originally set a net overseas migration target of 315,000 for the 2023-24 financial year after promising to bring down the number of immigrants, but revised it to 375,000 in December and then again to 395,000 during this year’s Budget.
But figures from as early as July showed that net overseas migration was already at 445,510 with one month left to go, while the latest ABS figures confirmed it was at 388,000 after just nine months.
For the coming years Labor has set a net overseas migration target of 260,000 in 2024/25, 255,000 the year after that, and 235,000 in 2026-27 and 2027-28, according to treasury papers.
Even if these numbers are achieved it would mean a total net intake of almost 2 million between 2022 and 2028, more than the population of South Australia.
Header image: Matt Thistlethwaite panders to minority groups at a multicultural festival last year, left, while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese does the same, right (Facebook)
