Peter Dutton’s promise to cut permanent migration by 45,000 is unreachable and just another ploy to secure votes in time for the upcoming election, writes Dr Abul Rizvi.
NOW THAT HE has walked back his promise to reduce net migration to 160,000, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is leaning heavily on his promise to reduce the permanent migration program by 45,000. It was a centrepiece of his recent speech kicking off the informal 2025 election campaign.
Leaving aside the fact a 45,000 cut in permanent migration would have only a marginal impact on net migration and a negative impact on the budget, delivering that cut won’t happen either. As I said on 7.30, the arithmetic doesn’t work.
The current migration program has been set at 185,000 (see Table 1). Peter Dutton proposes to reduce that to 140,000 while maintaining a two-thirds to one-third balance favouring the skill stream over the family stream.
(Data source: DHA. Note, above doesn’t include 3,000 places for the new Pacific Engagement Visa.)
Family stream and partners
Starting with the family stream, it may be possible for Dutton to severely cut back on the parent category reducing it to around 1,000 (a cut of 7,500). There is currently a parent backlog of well over 100,000 and waiting times are approaching 30 years. Many applicants die while waiting in the queue. Because of that, Dutton will not publicly admit he would cut back severely on parent places before the Election but that would be the easiest cut for him to make afterwards.
Cutting partners would be much more difficult because S85 and S87 of the Migration Act require that partner and dependent children visas be managed on a demand-driven basis.
Indeed, the Department of Home Affairs now proudly boasts it manages partner visas on a demand-driven basis (even though that is not currently the case). Without a dramatic change in the composition of the Senate, that Migration Act requirement is unlikely to change.
The partner visa application backlog grew from 27,900 at the end of 2009-10 to 96,361 at end 2019-20 as former PM Scott Morrison and then Dutton illegally restricted partner visas. Allowing the partner visa application backlog to grow like that is clearly not managing partner visa applications on a demand-driven basis.
(Data source: DHA)
Andrews and Hawke suddenly increased the number of partner places from 37,118 in 2019-20 to 72,376 in 2020-21 to avoid criticism by the auditor-general. New partner visa applications during the pandemic remained low, enabling Andrews and Hawke to reduce the partner visa application backlog to 56,168 at end 2021-22.
Since international borders re-opened, new partner visa applications increased to 51,800 in 2022-23 and 65,160 in 2023-24. But the Labor Government has illegally restricted places for partners at around 40,500 per annum. That meant the backlog at end 2023-24 had grown to 75,060.
If annual partner visa applications continue at around 65,000 (and likely much higher) in 2024-25 and partner visa places remain at around 40,500, that backlog may well be at a new record approaching 100,000.
In 2025-26, either the Labor Government or a new Dutton government will have no choice but to allocate more places to partner visas. An appeal to the High Court on this issue, or another auditor-general investigation, would leave both major parties and the Department red-faced and forced to clear the partner visa application backlog. Better to voluntarily reduce the backlog before the matter goes to the High Court or the auditor-general.
An allocation in 2025-26 of at least 75,000 partner places may be necessary to avoid a successful legal challenge. After adjusting for a 7,500 cut in parent visa places, whoever is in government would be faced with increasing the family stream by around 27,000 places not reducing it. A Labor government that is reluctant to make major cuts to the parent category would be faced with even bigger challenges.
Implications for the skill stream
For Dutton’s promised migration program cut to 140,000, the larger family stream would mean having to cut the skill stream from 132,200 to 60,200.
Leaving aside the economic and budgetary consequences of that (large offsetting savings would need to be found to satisfy budget rules), the challenges to cutting the skill stream to that degree include:
- The Nationals will not allow Dutton to make any reductions to the Regional visa where demand continues to rise. At least 33,000 places would be needed for that visa to avoid a fight with the Nationals.
- The permanent employer-sponsored visa has never been capped in Australian history. Demand for that visa continues to rise as the stock of temporary employer-sponsored visas, the major feeder group to the permanent employer-sponsored category, is now approaching 200,000. If the labour market remains strong, much more than the current 44,000 places would be needed to avoid a major backlash from just about every business lobby group.
- While Dutton could buy a fight with all state governments and try to cut the 33,000 places in the state-nominated categories, that would be a very ugly fight as state governments use that visa to attract key skills they need, particularly in health and aged care, teaching and construction.
- The skilled independent category has already been reduced in size significantly from 30,375 in 2023-24 to 16,900 in 2024-25. A further major reduction could be made but noting that the biggest occupation in the skilled independent category in 2023-24 by far were registered nurses. That may limit how far Dutton is prepared to cut.
Finally, Dutton has said he wants to significantly increase the migration of construction tradies. How he will do that is not clear but an increase of at least 5,000 to 10,000 places would be needed to satisfy the relevant lobby groups such as the Master Builders Association which is arguing the current shortage is around 100,000.
Taken together, it is clear there is no chance Dutton can reduce the migration program to 140,000 as promised. It seems Dutton not only plucked his now abandoned net migration figure of 160,000 out of thin air but he hasn’t done any analysis underlying his migration program target of 140,000 either.
Perhaps all of that was just for electioneering purposes.
Dr Abul Rizvi is an Independent Australia columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.
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