Dutton’s migration cuts to cost $34b: Grattan

Julie Hare

Peter Dutton’s signature plan to solve housing affordability by slashing migration to 2000 levels would bring down rents and house prices by just 4 per cent to 6 per cent over a decade, according to analysis by the Grattan Institute.

But the drastic migration cuts would also stop 135,000 additional skilled workers entering the country over four years, and cost the budget $34 billion over their lifetime, the think tank says.

The modelling shows that every permanent skilled visa holder contributes about $250,000 to the budget over their lifetime, with taxation takes far higher than the social, medical and other benefits they receive back.

And that’s after accounting for the budgetary cost of extra spending on infrastructure and services to accommodate a larger population, according to the analysis by Brendan Coates and Trent Wiltshire.

‘‘Reducing skilled migration by 135,000 over the next four years alone would cost Australian government budgets $34 billion in lost taxes – net of the services they draw – over those skilled migrants’ lifetimes in Australia,’’ the analysis reads.

‘‘But if the permanent migration were to remain at 160,000 a year in the long term, compared to the 185,000 intake adopted by the Albanese government for 2024-25, the long-term costs would be far larger.’’

Grattan estimates keeping migration at that rate for 30 years would cost the budget as much as $211 billion in today’s dollars.