Australia’s Opposition leader Peter Dutton has boasted that he was responsible for record numbers of immigrants after making a private pledge to bring back a controversial visa allowing wealthy foreigners to buy permanent residency.
Mr Dutton made the migration comments after a lunar new year event in the Chinese immigrant-dominated Melbourne suburb of Box Hill, where both he and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to contribute hundreds of thousands in taxpayer funds to the event, sparking a furious backlash online.
On the same day, it was revealed by Nine Newspapers that Mr Dutton told a Chinese migration agent he would likely bring back the ‘significant investor visa’ – nicknamed the “golden visa” by rich Chinese – which requires $5 million in investment but has no language, age or education requirements.
Labor got rid of the visa, which granted automatic permanent residency despite only requiring 40 days per year in Australia, in January last year, saying it was vulnerable to exploitation by corrupt foreign officials, criminals and spies and “prone to fraud”.
“The investment visa provides an opportunity for people to invest capital, that’s exactly what we want from our migrant program,” he said when asked about the pledge.
“As Immigration Minister, I brought in a record number of people through different visa programs and we did it in a responsible way.”
Mr Dutton was Minister for Immigration and Border Protection between 2014 and 2018, during which period annual net overseas migration increased from 182,350 to 252,220. The current Labor government has since ramped that up to 536,000 in 2022/23, and 446,000 in the financial year ending June 30, 2024.
Last month he backtracked on a promise to nearly halve immigration if elected, and said the Coalition would reveal their policies after the election, which will be held in May at the latest.
The Liberal Party leader’s “golden visa” promise came at a Liberal Party fundraiser in the Sydney electorate of Bennelong, where candidate Scott Yung is trying to win over the seats large Chinese population.
Migration agent Sandra Li, who told Nine she paid for the fundraising dinner but did not make a donation, told Mr Dutton her customers were asking her when the visa was coming back in a video she shared on Chinese social media platform Red Note.
“I think we’ll bring it back,” he replied.
“Whether we do it before the election, or look at a different design for it – we’ll have to consider all that.”
By 2020, 88.5% of golden visas granted since 2012 were to citizens of China and Hong Kong, including the family members of applicants. Members of the Cambodian regime also took advantage of the visa.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said after scrapping the visa that it was a way of “effectively buying your way into the country”. She said that those granted the visa had a net negative impact on the budget, and the visa was therefore “actually costing us on average for each person”.
“These are people who are generally coming in at quite a late stage of their life, often at the end of their business career, and coming into Australia to settle down and retire,” she told Sky News in January 2024.
In the electorate of Bennelong, in Sydney’s north, Chinese was the largest ancestry group at the time of the 2021 Census on 28.8%, while just 15.5% gave Australian as their ancestry. A majority of residents were born overseas and spoke a language other than English as home.
In the suburb of Box Hill, where Saturday’s event was held, Chinese immigrants are even more dominant, with the same number saying that were of Australian ancestry as in Bennelong, compared to 39% whose background was Chinese. 23.5% of the suburb’s population was born in China, along with 5% in Malaysia, and 2.2% in Hong Kong.
Since 2022 about 2 million immigrants have arrived in Australia, most from India but closely followed by those from China. The massive surge occurred despite repeated polls showing a majority of Australians want immigration cut.
The lunar new year event was hosted by the Asian Business Association of Whitehorse and its title sponsor, Chinese immigrant-owned property developer Golden Age Group. Other sponsors include the Victorian government-owned Suburban Rail Loop, and taxpayer-funded pro-multiculturalism TV channel SBS.
Header image: Left, Sandra Li and Peter Dutton (Red Note). Right, Peter Dutton at the lunar new year event (Facebook).
