| "To see some of the reporting about Tony Burke's National Press Club address on Thursday, you might be led to believe that the government is going to do something about migration. But beneath all the talk is one basic truth – which is that, far from the migration reset Australia desperately needs, the minister responsible for migration announced that … the government is sticking to the migration numbers it had previously committed to. Hours later, the IPA's Deputy Executive Director Daniel Wild wrote this piece for the AFR. This is some of what he had to say: |
| The biggest promise Burke made was to make precisely zero changes to Australia's net overseas migration intake in terms of its size. Instead, his modest changes are designed to simply meet the massive migration intake already committed in the government's budget. Of course, Burke reeled out the old trope that cutting immigration will "trash the economy". That is exactly the type of self-serving, economically illiterate bleating you would expect from the pro-migration business lobby. The reality is Australia is already in an economic recession on a per capita basis, which is a better measure of living standards than headline GDP, which mass migration advocates cite. More people makes for a bigger economy, but with a smaller share allocated to each person. Australia used to be relatively small and relatively rich. Over the past few years, we have become much bigger, and average Australians have become tangibly poorer. |
| The very same day, the IPA separately highlighted new data from the ABS that showed the gates are still wide open, with net overseas migration in the first three months of the year tipping over 100,000 – more than four times the average quarterly intake from 1945-2007. This is the system that Burke and the federal government has overseen for four years now, and the fact that the minister failed to outline a genuine attempt to get the system under control belies the fact that the National Press Club address was just another political exercise. Thank you for your support, Morgan Begg |
Institute of Public affairs"