I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. Immigration is back at the center of federal politics again. The Coalition's new leadership is arguing Australian needs lower numbers, tougher rules and a clearer cap on how many people we
bring in each year. It's a familiar conversation. At the last election, Peter Dutton tried to put a hard number on it, promising the cut migration by one hundred thousand a year, saying would help free up housing for Australians, but critics say a large cut would hit the workforce Australia relies on, including the people needed to build more homes. Abil Risvey was a senior official in the Department of Immigration from the early nineties to two thousand and seven,
when he left as Deputy Secretary. He says the argument will keep having election after election, skips the bigger question Australia's need for a long term population plan and what we want it to achieve. Today, we're bringing you an episode from the lead up to the twenty twenty five federal election with Abel Widsby on the politics or population growth. It's Sunday, March one. This episode was first published in April twenty twenty five, ad well, thanks for speaking with
me again. Pett doesn't said he wants to see one hundred thousand and fewer new migrants come to Australia each year. In the debate on Tuesday night, he said that every forty four seconds a new migrant is entering Australia.
And a person is coming in every forty four seconds into our country, and we haven't got the housing to accommodate that.
What do you make of this goal?
It depends on what he is referring to, and I assume he's referring to net overseas migration, which is the arrival of permanent and long term entrance to Australia, irrespective of these a category or citizenship, and the departure of people similarly long term or permanent. In twenty four to twenty five, the Government is forecasting net overseas migration at three hundred and thirty five thousand. It is forecasting net overseas migration in twenty five twenty six at two hundred
and sixty thousand. If mister Dutton is saying he can deliver in twenty five twenty six net overseas migration of one hundred thousand less than the government's forecast. Well, I think it is just about impossible to deliver that.
Why is that?
There are three reasons he won't do that. One, the labor market is likely to still be relatively strong, that's certainly what Treasury is forecasting, or subject to whatever mister Trump does, things may change. Two, the legislative and regulatory changes mister Dutton would need to make would probably take the whole of the financial year before he could make them. The third reason, he will encounter massive opposition to the
cuts he wants to make. Firstly from the National Party, and they've made it clear there are a range of visas they think are off limits, and secondly a range of lobby groups in the business community. I would be very surprised if mister Dutton is prepared to have a fight with both of those.
So what type of changes would he need to make to get anywhere near that target?
So one he has suggested he wants to cap student visas or the number of students. In terms of net overseas migration. In twenty three twenty four, just under fifty percent of net overseas migrants were students, So if someone wants to reduce the level of net overseas migration, if you're not talking about students, you're not not really in the.
Game, despite their presence being worth fifty billion dollars a year to the economy. The federal government now wants to legislate student caps from twenty twenty five if the legislation.
Late last year the Labor Party introduced legislation to give government the power to cap lesus Separately it's introduced or announced where it would set those caps. They were two separate actions. One is get the power, second is to
use the power. Mister Dutton denied the government that power, and so if he does win the election, the first thing he's going to have to do is go back to Parliament and say, by the way, you know that power I thought was really really really hopeless and I opposed it.
Could I have it now? Please?
Can you see him doing that.
I'm sure he'll word it, perhaps differently, but fundamentally that's what he's going to have to do.
So speaking of international students, we've heard a lot about how they are supposedly having an impact on the housing crisis, with Peter Dutton saying that the reason he wants to cut international student numbers is so that young Australians can realize the dream of owning their own home.
I want desperately to make sure that we get an opportunity for young people to believe in and achieve again the dream of ownership. There are about forty two international students coming into our country for every one student accommodation unit that's been approved, and that has had a big impact.
What's your view on the impact international students are having on the housing crisis.
Well, the first thing to be said here is very few students actually buy houses. They generally don't have the money to afford to buy a house. So what they will impact is the rental market. That's true, But the rental market they will impact will tend to be that market very close to our universities, which tend to be in the central business districts of our cities. Very few students live out in the outer suburbs and commute into
the middle of the city to study. That's not where they are concentrated.
What, in your view, has prompted this debate on international students.
Well, there's a few things worth saying here about what's happened to student numbers. Firstly, we did have a steady rise in student numbers leading up to COVID. We had something over six hundred and fifty thousand students in Australia prior to COVID, plus students who had applied onshore and were in what's known as the bridging visa backlook. So that's about the numbers before COVID. When COVID started, mister Morrison famously said, we'd like you to go home, please.
Not held here compulsorily. If they're not in a position to be able to support themselves, then there is the alternative for them to return to their home countries.
We still have quite and many did so.
The number of students in Australia fell sharply during COVID. Towards the end of COVID, governments were very worried that students wouldn't come back, so the Coalition government introduced a range of policies to encourage students to come back, such as unrestricted work rights, work as long as you like,
wherever you like, fee free applications. As a result of those changes, combined with a really really strong labor market during twenty twenty two, we had a massive boom in the number of students, and by twenty twenty three both sides of politics were worried about the huge explosion in
the number of students. It's worth saying though, that at the end or towards the second half of twenty twenty two, mister Dutton was saying the government needs to increase migration and needs to do it quickly, but he wasn't confident how quickly the Labor government could increase migration. Nine months later he was saying the Labor government has lost control of migration.
It's increased migration much too quickly.
Coming up after the break, how big should Australia be? Our population is coming up on twenty seven million now, we're projected to double that in the next eighty years. So how have passed it's approached population planning? Is this growth by design?
No?
Most governments have shied away from talking about population. They did that right through the nineties. Even though there were parliamentary committees recommending the need for a population policy, they avoided it. They didn't want to talk about population. Mister Rudd famously in two thousand and seven eight said he believed in a big Australia.
I actually believe in a big Australia. I make no apology for that. Everyone jumped all over him. That was the Big Australia movement's biggest moment.
Its founder was dislodged, his idea sent packing.
I don't believe in simply hurtling down a track to a thirty six million or forty million population.
Ever since then, no government has been keen to talk about population. Having said that, in twenty nineteen, mister Morrison introduced a very grandly titled document called the Future of Australia's Population. The problem with the document is that not once mentioned what he thought the future of Australia's population should be. He not once mentioned what future net overseas migration it should be. He never once discussed what the
fertility rate would be or life expectancy would be. How he was talking about the future of the population without mentioning any of those things is an absolute mystery to me.
Sounds like a bit of an oversight.
Well, I think it was a marketing exercise.
What were we expecting out of that document before you read it?
Able, I was hoping for a population policy, something that talked about our future population. But we didn't talk about the future population in that document at all. In fact, two months later mister Friedenberg issued his budget papers, in which you had to go to Budget Paper number three, Appendix A page about eight or nine before you got to what mister Fredenberg was forecasting was going to be our population and net overseas migration for the next four years.
He was, in in fact forecasting in that document over a four year period, the largest level of absolute population growth since a period in the nineteen sixties.
It's beyond me.
How two months ago, in March twenty nineteen, mister Morrison was talking about a population plan with no mention about population, and mister Freedenberg was talking about a back in black budget with massive increases in population forecast. But in Appendix three of Budget Paper three.
What you've been laying out of all is that politicians love talking about cutting immigration well at the same time forecasting massive population growth in budget papers to boost the economic outlook. We saw that with the coalition, So once Labor got in, what was their approach.
I was disappointed that the Labor government did not in when it commissioned the Parkinson Review, the review of Australia's migration system deliberately left out the question of immigration levels. It essentially said to mister Parkinson, we'd like you to talk about everything about migration, but just don't tell us the level. We don't want to know about the level.
We'll work that out ourselves. Frankly, it is impossible to design a migration system unless you start with the level, because if you don't have a level in mind, then you're basically just making up numbers and policies as you go along, and you don't care about.
What they add up to.
Governments think the moment you start talking about a population plan, you will be tard with the big Australia brush. Irrespective of whatever you number you forecast, you'll be saying, ah, you're big Australia.
I'm not.
And politicians love pointing at people and saying I don't believe in big Australia.
You do, and therefore you are bad. I am good.
Well, let's say hypothetically a government wanted to do this properly, to have a well thought out population and migration policy. What would that look like in your view?
A useful thing to understand in this context is that immigration mainly because it targets young people, tends to slow the rate at which we age. We age more slowly. But the second thing that is often not understood is if you've moved to a situation of zero net migration, within the next ten to fifteen years, we would experience a situation where deaths exceeded berths for the first time in our history. Now I'm not saying we can avoid the point in the future where death succeed berths, but
i would not be recommending to a government. Let's head towards that as fast as we can, and you want to use the migration program to fill skill gaps that you can't in the medium to long term fill. So, for example, there is no chance we will have enough nurses over the next ten or twenty years for all of us, including me baby boomers who are going to be desperately needing health and age care support. There is no chance we will have enough concer struction tradees over
the next decade. That's carpenter's plumbers, bricklayers, et cetera. So you've got to take that into account. The second would be what are the speed limits from an infrastructure service, delivery, housing et cetera perspective for net overseas migration, and that boils down to, okay, what is the rate at which we can develop infrastructure and housing, et cetera and service delivery and there are speed limits to those things, and
we should understand those speed limits. You also need to take into account family migration, You need to take into account our various free trade agreements, and you need to take into account whatever we're going to do from a humanitarian and refugee perspective. You've got to bring all of that together into a sensible plan.
And without a plan, that leave the question of migrations acceptable to politics.
Oh?
Absolutely absolutely, And in many ways the lack of a population plan has contributed to the Polario. Not the only thing, but it has contributed to the polarization of debate on immigration, not just in Australia but in other places.
And finally, Apple, you spent more time than probably anyone thinking about Australia's migration program. You've dedicated your life to these questions about the makeup of this country. So in your view, how big should Australia be?
That's a good question.
And I'm not sure we can ever assume that we can reach a level of population and then stabilize at that level forever. I doubt whether it's going to look like that. It's more likely to look like a curve. If you think back to your high school days, think of a parabola. So the question is where does it peak before it starts to decline, Because the period nineteen fifty to twenty fifty will be a unique period in human history. That is, the human race just exploded in
that one hundred years. We've never had population increase like that on the planet, and after twenty fifty we'll never have it again because steadily the fertility rate of all countries around the world is falling and is projected to keep falling.
Abel, thank you so much for your time.
You're most welcome, Danny.
I'm Daniel James seven Am. Will be back tomorrow with the first episode in a special three part series, The Howard Affect. Author and political commentator Amyrimikus takes us back to the Howard Years, which kicked off thirty years ago tomorrow, from John Howard's probable rise to the Prime ministership, in which he resurrected a political career many had written off, to the way he consolidated power and reshape the nation in his own image.
He was speaking to Australians who felt they had been left behind. Howard Cell was going, Oh, I'm not actually selling you anything. I'm just pointing out that you are right to feel discomforted by all of this. And while he was doing that, while he was started waging a
lot of these culture wars. At the same time he was winding back union power, he was winding back government regulations, he was winding back government support and all of these other things that people had relied on for community, for organizing, for being able to actually get ahead. He presented all of this to the Australian people in a way where they felt he was speaking for them, even when what he was doing was essentially setting them up for failure.
What he did was set us up for generations of inequality, division and and put us backwards, not only on the world stage, but also domestically.
See you there,