On Sunday’s ABC Insiders, shadow immigration minister Dan Tehan started to lay the groundwork for a political argument about immigration, while saying, of course, that the details will be released in time for the next election campaign.
But the numbers are already coming down from the 400,000-500,000-a-year catch-up intake since the pandemic, so it’s hard to see how that would fly.
In any case, visas are currently issued to satisfy the staffing needs of the health care industries as well as the solvency needs of the universities given insufficient government support, which is unlikely to change with the recent release of the Australian Universities Accord Panel’s report.
Could the level of immigration ever be matched to housing approvals multiplied by 2.5 (the average number of people per house)? Or could the capacity of residential construction be expanded in some way, perhaps by not building new coal mines?
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2024/03/04/alan-kohler-cost-of-living-housing
so the Libs will have a new policy on immigration before the next election? Good..... then we can measure how well this is a change from the policy under Morrison.
or is Tehan just makin' it up.
