I've had a bit over a week to decompress from the mania of Budget week. It's the biggest week of political news all year, and it always throws up so much that quite significant developments can get less attention than they would on any other week.

One development I thought was significant last week was the return of migration as a controversial political issue. Migration was a key theme of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton's reply speech and a feature of the Opposition's language throughout the week. I use that as a launching-off point in this week's edition for a closer look at our migration system.

In his reply to last week’s Federal Budget, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton offered a scathing assessment of the Albanese Government’s migration policies:

“The Government is proposing to bring in almost 6,000 people per week, which will make a bad situation worse… It’s the biggest migration surge in our country’s history.”

A few weeks earlier, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil was equally critical of her opponents:

“Our migration system is suffering from a decade of genuinely breathtaking neglect… [it] has become dominated by a very large, poorly designed, temporary program, which is not delivering the skills we need [and creating] the essential ingredients for exploitation of migrant workers.”

Migration has often been a hot-button political issue in Australia and based on what we’re hearing out of Canberra, it appears to be heating up again.

What are the facts behind Australia’s migration program? Here’s a closer look.

Australia is often called a ‘migrant nation’. Today, nearly half of Australians have a parent born overseas.

Permanent migration program

Sitting behind this figure are millions of unique migrant stories, but for policy purposes they can be broadly split into three categories: ‘humanitarian’ (e.g. refugees), ‘family reunion’ and ‘skilled’, which collectively make up Australia’s ‘permanent’ migration program.

This last category - skilled - is the biggest. It refers to migrants who are approved for permanent residency because they have some qualification or ability deemed useful to Australia’s economy. The overall number of permanent migrants each year is ‘capped’ by the Government – 195,000 this financial year and 190,000 in the next.

Temporary migration program

Alongside Australia’s permanent migration program is a much bigger temporary migration program. Last financial year, over 2 million temporary visas were granted. About half of these are tourists. There are roughly 250,000 international students, 100,000 working holidaymakers (‘backpackers’), and 300,000 under special arrangements for New Zealanders (who will soon have a path to citizenship). There is also a temporary skilled migration program, which has a similar rationale to the permanent one.

The Federal Government has declared it wants to change Australia’s migration system in two main ways: by increasing (and simplifying) the focus on skills and reducing reliance on temporary migration.

While the Government hasn’t announced the specifics of this plan, a recent independent review of the system, which the Government has broadly endorsed, points to the likely direction.

It identifies two key problems with skilled migration – we are not doing enough to identify and attract people with the desired skills, and we are not doing enough to clamp down on temporary migrants who are staying in Australia but do not have those desired skills.

The review is likely to be good news for some – for example, high-performing international students, for whom it recommends easier pathways to permanency.

For others, it may mean a shorter stay, and the Government has already taken steps to this effect. International students who are not on a permanent pathway will have their allowed hours of work reduced in July, and the income requirement for new temporary skilled arrivals will be raised.

If the Government might say it is focused on the ‘quality’ of the migration program, the Opposition has begun to focus on the quantity, which brings its own set of questions – what effect do migrants have on domestic pressures like employment, housing, or livability?

Over the long term, the evidence is fairly unambiguous: migration has significantly benefited Australia’s economy and standard of living. Here’s a summary from a report produced by Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs in 2018, under then-Treasurer Scott Morrison and then-Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton:

“Migrants deliver an economic dividend for Australia due to current policy settings which favour migrants of working age who have skills to contribute… this, in turn, increases Australia’s GDP and GDP per person, with positive flow-on effects for living standards.”

When it comes to the issue of housing, infrastructure, the environment or congestion, the report noted migrants were not the cause of these issues, but a growing population could “heighten existing pressures”.

Those pressures are very high already, especially in the rental market. A recent report by a government housing body, which I wrote about in a previous edition of this newsletter, listed the post-pandemic return of migration as a key contributor to the rental affordability crisis.

This is not the same as characterising the rental crisis as a migration issue – that same report noted the root cause of the crisis was a long-running shortage of homes for rent.

However, growing strain on the rental market is likely to exacerbate the migration debate.

Yesterday, journalist Stan Grant announced he would be stepping away from hosting Q+A and writing columns for the ABC following “relentless racial filth” directed at him on social media.

Grant, a Wiradjuri man, said he was not stepping back because of the racism itself but because of the way Australian media has responded to it.

“I take time out because we have shown again that our history – our hard truth – is too big, too fragile, too precious for the media. The media sees only battle lines, not bridges. It sees only politics… I want no part of it. I want to find a place of grace far from the stench of media.”

In a year where the political debate about First Nations issues is more heated than ever, I found these words a powerful reminder of the toll that can take. I encourage you to read Stan’s full statement here.

The post-payday adrenaline - that temporary bliss of not checking your bank balance as carefully as you know you should - is always followed by the seemingly inevitable: a scramble to stretch the dwindling remainder to the next payday.

Up’s Pay Day feature is designed with exactly this in mind. It factors in all the bills, rent, or other regular expenses you’ve got coming up and gives you a ‘spendable balance’ to put those numbers in context. With your bills taken care of you’re left to relax and wait for Pay Day to roll in again. Now that makes for a happy Saturday.

Use code TDA10 for $10 on sign-up!