Australia’s Immigration Future under a Coalition Government

A few days before the 2013 federal election, Shadow Minister for Productivity and Population and Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Scott Morrison MP addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 3 September 2013. With an easy Coalition victory predicted, and the issue of boat arrivals of asylum seekers at crisis level, the topic of Australia’s Immigration future was at the forefront of policy debate in the campaign. Scott Morrison outlined the Coalition’s approach to Immigration priorities and the reasons for its support of a strong cohort of skilled and business being part of any immigration intake. 

AUSTRALIA’S IMMIGRATION FUTURE UNDER A COALITION GOVERNMENT 

SCOTT MORRISON

Thank you very much, Gerard. It’s a great thrill to be here back at The Sydney Institute, in my home town. It’s tremendous to be here in this wonderful room, in this wonderful club. The Sydney Institute does an outstanding job under Gerard’s leadership, over so many years, providing leadership in any number of spaces within the public debate. It is always a great honour to be able to address The Sydney Institute.

I thank you all for coming out tonight to hear our thoughts on what is a subject very dear to my heart. It is one that has increasingly become so over the last four years while I’ve served as the Shadow Minister for Immigration. There are other portfolios but that is the one I suspect that people are most familiar with. It’s a job that Tony Abbott gave me some years ago and it’s been a privilege to serve with him as part of his team. As we go forth to an election, in a few days’ time, it really has been a team effort on our side of politics and a very stable team at that.

The ability to have that stability over several years in a portfolio adds greatly to the process of policy development, adds greatly to the process of preparation if we are, indeed, to be successful at the election on Saturday. Without doubt our most significant and our longest serving, certainly most successful, Immigration Minister was Philip Ruddock.  And Philip benefited from going into the 1996 Election as Shadow Minister for Immigration prior to that. So, tonight, I want to share some of our thoughts on the topic of immigration and some specifics issues in more detail.

 In 2001, Prime Minister John Howard said, “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” He said, “We will do that within the framework of the decency for which Australians have always been renowned”^[1]. He also said, “We will be compassionate, we will save lives. We will care for people but we will decide, and nobody else, who comes to this country.”  That statement, more than any other, summarises the Coalition’s view and particularly the Liberal Party’s philosophy when it comes to immigration policy in this country.

Immigration has made the Australia we know today. It has made us a stronger Australia. Australia has a well-earned reputation as arguably, and I would say, the most successful and cohesive multi-ethnic society in the world today. There are many reasons that we can be confident this will continue into the future, but we cannot take it for granted. Protecting the integrity of our immigration program is critical to our continued success, whether it is our refugee and humanitarian programs, skilled migration, student or investor visas.

But an immigration program cannot be successful without the strong support of the Australian people. The Rudd/Gillard Governments inherited a robust immigration program from the Coalition government that Australians trusted. I believe Labor has broken that trust over the last six years. I can appreciate that many Australians have lost confidence in this government’s ability to enforce our immigration laws when they see what has happened all around this country over many years.

By sharp contrast, the Howard Coalition Government ran an immigration program that Australians could have confidence in and could be proud of. And, importantly, it was a program that was based on the long held belief that migration is a nation building initiative. Robert Menzies called it the “greatest exercise in nation building for Australia that this century has seen^[2]”.  He said the Liberal Party has been at the vanguard of these efforts. And we have.

It was the Liberal Menzies Government who signed the Refugee Convention in 1954 and embraced an ambitious post war program of immigration. In 1960, it was the Liberal Party who abolished the White Australia policy from its Party Platform^[3]– five whole years before the ALP made a similar change^[4].  In its place, the party affirmed the “internationally recognised principle” of every country “having the right to decide its own immigration policy according to its own circumstances”^[5].  This sentiment was echoed by John Howard.  It was the Holt Government that actually removed the White Australia policy from our national laws^[6].

It was the Fraser Government who adopted the Galbally Report recommendations,^[7] which included the establishment of SBS, the extension of ethnic radio services, a major orientation program for new arrivals, the introduction of innovative English language instruction, boosts for the child migrant education program and the establishment of a network of migrant resource centres.^[8]

It was Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal Government that responded to a genuine regional refugee crisis, resettling an average of 8,630 Indo-Chinese refugees a year between 1 July 1975 and 30 June 1981 and in 1982^[9] and negotiated an agreement with Vietnam for an “Orderly Departure Program” to reunite families of Vietnamese refugees already in Australia in an orderly and authorised way.

It was the Fraser Government that established the offshore processing centre at Galang. In many ways, Malcolm Fraser was indeed the pioneer of the Liberal Party’s policy of offshore processing in this country. The Fraser Government established the Immigration Review Tribunal^[10], the Australian Refugee Advisory Council, the Community Refugee Settlement Scheme and the provision of social support, orientation assistance in finding employment and accommodation^[11].  The Determination of Refugee Status committee was introduced, along with the Special Humanitarian Program, which I think plays a very important role today in our thinking about these matters.

It was in 1996 that the Howard Government inherited from Labor an immigration program that lacked a clear economic rationale. It was dominated by family reunion, was bringing in many migrants depending on welfare support and was severely open to fraud^[12].  It had lost the support of the Australian people. Our longest serving Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, introduced reforms to sharpen the program’s economic focus, reduce the size of the family-reunion component and restricted new migrants’ access to welfare. Australia’s success as an immigration nation is based fundamentally on our commitment to the economic participation of migrants at all levels.  We have always valued the involvement of migrants in our economy.

The Coalition’s policies are all about restoring the proven measures and response of the Howard Government to things that worked when we were last in office. Under that program, the percentage of Australians who were concerned about immigration levels being too high almost halved, from more than two thirds to just over a third^[13].  Over the same period, our permanent immigration intake doubled. Those who had the skills to find employment were the priority of our scheme. Over the ten years to 2005/2006, unemployment for skilled migrants fell from 9% to just 3%, better than the national average^[14], and labour force participation rates were also higher.

It was a generous program. We had a proud record of welcoming people from more than 140 countries. In 2003, $100.9 million was committed over four years to improve settlement services^[15].  On our borders, the Howard Government stopped the boats while resettling about 150,000 Refugee and Humanitarian entrants. It was also a compassionate program. Over ten years, the Howard Government provided more than 52,800 offshore Special Humanitarian visas, with an average of more than 5,000 places each year. The last year, in 2011-2012, that number of places fell to just over 700^[16]. This is what you can achieve when Australians have confidence in their government to run a program with stability and integrity. Sadly, Labor has betrayed that confidence.

In abandoning the measures that we saw the Howard Government put in place, Labor inherited a solution and they’ve created a problem. Today at the Press Club, I outlined in some detail the cost of those failures, of the chaos and the cost and the tragedy that has occurred. The budget has been blown by more than $11 billion. Around 15,000 people, who are waiting in desperate places all around the world, have been denied visas that they would otherwise have got under our Special Humanitarian program because Labor handed those visas to others who have come the way we don’t want them to come. The number of those visas, as I said, fell to just 714 per year, when they were over 5,000 under the Howard Government.  We have seen more than 1,100 people perish at sea. These are the consequences of a decision taken by the Labor government to get rid of the measures that worked.

In this space, there is no decision you take that is free of moral burden when it comes to immigration and particularly on our borders. Even if a measure is motivated by compassion, even if a measure is motivated by a hope that a more compassionate outcome may result, if that is not the result and the result is 1,100 people dead and the result is 50,000 people turning up by that method, 15,000 people denied a visa then that is a heavy moral burden for any government to carry.

Frankly, if I had to choose between the burden carried by the Howard Government where there were human consequences for decisions they took, and the moral burden that this government carries today, I would much rather carry the burden of Philip Ruddock and John Howard. Because these men who were similarly motivated by compassion and a genuine humanitarian interest also understood that you’ve got to have strong rules on your borders in order to run a program of integrity and in order to protect people, often from their own ambitions and their own hopes, by taking that terrible voyage to Australia by sea.

The cornerstone of the Liberal government though was our commitment to skilled migration. Under that period of the Howard Government, we increased the level of skilled migration of the permanent program from less than 30 per cent in the Hawke/Keating Government to almost 70 per cent by the time we left office^[17]. That is why you saw the significant change in outcomes in unemployment and a whole host of other key economic measures amongst migrant communities.

Significantly, it was this economic participation that also led to the social cohesion that resulted from people participating in our economy through the opportunity of employment, through the opportunity of engagement by bringing people together and having those opportunities. It is critical that appropriate policies and strategies are in place to ensure Australia has the workforce it needs to boost productivity and secure strong economic growth into the future and immigration has an important role to play in that strategy.

The primary purpose of our immigration program is economic, not social, in our view. Immigration is an economic policy, not a welfare policy. The objective is to bring people to Australia who can add value and make a contribution. Traditionally, we have structured labour migration around our permanent program, comprising the points tested General Skilled Migration program for independent migrants, state sponsorship and the rapidly expanded employer sponsored program.

One of the Howard Government’s most significant contributions I referred to was that increase in the proportion for skilled migration. While it sits at 67.9 per cent today, it is important that we keep permanent skilled migration at those levels. That’s why the Coalition has committed, for some years, that it will never fall below two thirds under a Coalition government.

Unlike the Labor government, you will never hear a Liberal government or a Liberal politician say that migrants take Aussie jobs. We believe that if you run your immigration properly then immigration creates Aussie jobs. If you do it right, if you make sure it’s economically focused and about making a contribution and nation building, then it generates jobs. I think one of the saddest things I have seen this year was the end of the bi-partisan consensus earlier this year when the Labor government began its attacks on skilled migration with rhetoric that migrants take Aussie jobs. You won’t hear a Liberal politician say that.

The growth in skilled migration in recent years has been driven by sponsored migration which now accounts for more than half of the permanent program for skilled migration, whether by employers or under the State and regional schemes.  At the same time, independent general skilled migration has fallen from the dominant component in 2007/2008 to less than half of the total today. The shift in the composition of skilled migration is the consequence of government policy that has effectively contracted out the recruitment and settlement process for skilled migrants to businesses in the private sector.

Favouring sponsorship programs can limit the pool of unattached skilled migrants available to companies more generally in the economy to fill shortages however it does have the advantage of allowing the program to respond more directly to the express needs of businesses who have the capacity to sponsor skilled migrants. The Coalition does not oppose this shift. In fact, we are encouraging of it. However, we recognise that over-reliance on the sponsorship program can disadvantage small businesses who do not always have the capacity to engage within that sponsorship program but also can face skilled labour shortages at various times.

Another feature of the employer sponsored program is the high proportion of onshore applicants for permanent residents. Employer sponsors overwhelmingly recruit skilled migrants who are already in the country, particularly on a temporary 457 visa. The majority of employment sponsored agreements are the result of these applications. So the notion of permanent skilled migrants actually coming from somewhere else in the world one day and then moving to Australia permanently is something that is well in our past. The increasing trend now is for someone to arrive on some type of temporary visa and, having proven themselves effectively and made the choice that they’d like to stay, along with finding someone agreeing with that proposition particularly in our business sector, then they are afforded that opportunity. You could loosely describe it as a try before you buy program from both parties, from both the business and from the skilled migrant.

Professor Peter MacDonald who has been most outspoken and supportive of this major trend and shift in the way our immigration program works. The key credential of this approach is that the immigrant is someone who has served in the country for four years, worked and paid taxes and been involved in the community, with improved language skills and engagement. What better way to identify and pre-qualify someone for permanent residency in our skills program than that? This is a positive shift within our immigration program. It continues to provide a sound basis for the program to develop.  This was the notion behind Tony Abbott saying some months ago that 457 visas can provide a mainstay for the program. We want people coming to the country temporarily, proving themselves and then making an application for permanent residency.  This is a positive pathway that hands the control of the decision to a sovereign country.

So these are the things we would like to see continue. What’s important, though, is that we understand that there is a temporary labour market within Australia, whether those in the unions or the Labor Party like to admit it. There are, at any given time, around one million temporary entrants to Australia living here, and many of those have work rights. They’re students, they’re working holiday makers, they’re 457 visa holders and various elements of these program have different protections which are attached to them. There is an existing temporary labour market within Australia. The challenge, for any incoming government, is to ensure that we have the appropriate controls and processes around those programs a) to prevent against abuse b) to ensure the ongoing integrity of that program.

The answer to that is not more regulation, to tie business up in more union red tape, but to have more effective enforcement methodologies, practices and resources. But, critically, it is also about recognising that unless you can provide a proper pathway, then there is the great risk that people will find themselves in the temporary labour market illegally. There they will be subject to very serious vulnerabilities.  And we need to be aware of that. Pretending that isn’t the case, pretending that people aren’t here in that space, is a recipe for disaster.

We need to be very careful, going forward, of how we manage our temporary migrant entry into Australia. The opportunities they have and the vulnerabilities they face need to be understood. The Coalition is very mindful of that, whether they’re students, 457 holders, working holiday makers or people here on any other temporary entry capacity. We do need to find legitimate pathways, with appropriate controls, for temporary migration that prevent the abuse of programs designed for other important purposes, as well as meet the labour needs of an expanding economy, an economy that we want to see expand if we’re elected to government.

I’d like to talk briefly about Significant Investor Visas. Labor announced this program a year and a half ago and I remember it being announced. It was the same day they announced Enterprise Migration Agreements, two policies that we immediately supported. The Enterprise Migration Agreements were one of those projects Labor would announce where implementation fell away and nothing ever happened.  With the Significant Investor Visa, it’s been a similar experience.

The Significant Investor Visa was first announced to attract migrants with successful businesses and investment experience within the subclass. It was scheduled to commence in November 2012. In theory, it’s good policy. It had the potential to attract millions, if not billions, of overseas capital investment into projects that would stimulate the Australian economy and create jobs for hundreds, if not thousands, of Australians.

But, as we’ve seen so many times, a good idea has suffered in its implementation. Up to 30 April 2013, there had been 435 expressions of interest for this visa. Of these, 279 were invited to apply, and 171 primary applications were lodged^[18] But just two visas were issued in May. It’s a fairly familiar story. The first visa was granted on the 3 May 2013^[19], six months after the announcement and the second was granted in the same month. Now we support this visa; we think it’s a good plan. But once again we have seen how this government, in making a policy, failed in its implementation.

Slow program start-up, convoluted red tape, clumsy management and insufficient resources to ensure the proper assessment of applications in a timely manner are the problem. The criteria for how a Significant Investor visa should work will need attention in the years ahead. It’s been described as “vague and unnecessarily prescriptive”, creating further confusion and uncertainty in the market place. The proposed turnaround time of nine months for the Significant Investor Visa, we think, is just far too long. This is a program where people are putting $5 million into the Australian economy – but many are starting to get cold feet and looking at alternatives elsewhere.

We recognise there are significant implementation issues that are holding up the progress of this program and we would look to remedy those if elected this weekend, so Australia can remain an attractive an investment destination for those who are looking to emigrate on that program.

A Liberal government will send a clear message that we are open for business on this visa, but also put in place the assessment capacity to back that up. We will look to review the investment criteria for this program, with a view to having a more flexible approach that could see more of the investment capital attracted under that program being available to more small and medium sized businesses, including entrepreneurial start ups. Such an approach would seek also to create the possibility of a broader range of what I’d term “compliant investments”, approved in advance and parallel to the visa application process itself.

We should not simply look at this program as a way to secure $5 million by stapling a visa to the investment product. That will not be my objective.  Any $5 million invested should be the first of hundreds of millions that would flow from someone making this decision. The $5 million should be the appropriate hurdle for someone to make the decision to come. If we only look at that initial investment then I think we’ve missed the point of the entire program. That’s not where I see its future. I’m not really after their money. I’m actually after them. The people we’re seeking to attract to Australia under this visa have demonstrated their enormous entrepreneurial success. They are wealth generators and wealth generators are always welcome in Australia and that’s the message we need to send them because wealth generators are good for Australia.

We think people who create businesses, people who risk their capital, people who go out there every day and create jobs off their own effort and off their own enterprise is what we need more of in this country. This program is designed to bring people like that to Australia, high net worth individuals who will transfer their wealth over a generation. This requires the scheme to be flexible, with the residence requirements of the principal applicant needing to spend time overseas predominantly running global businesses.

Where we need to focus, though, is on the residence requirements for the secondary applicants and family members of the principal applicant. We’re looking to see these families do anchor themselves in Australia with their children going to Australian schools and universities. And taking over those businesses and moving the axis, or the centre of gravity, of their global operations to Australia provides that opportunity.

To be successful this program will require a dedicated assessment team, funded by the application fees, that has the requisite skills and experience to deal with the sophisticated financial issues associated with the application and high level checks that form part of this process. We also need to have a more sophisticated and pro-active engagement program to ensure this scheme is delivering on what we are trying to achieve. We need to be working with the business community and drawing on the contacts within our own ethnic communities in Australia to identify and target suitable applicants for the program, especially in China, India and the Middle East. Such an approach should link in with our broader trade and investment strategies in the regions.

An Immigration Minister, in many respects and particularly from an economic perspective, is a bit like a recruiter for a local sports team. It is about trying to get the people onto our team that will makes us a stronger country. Principally, that is in the area of economic participation.

That is also true in the student visa area. I don’t have the time to go into much detail here, only to say this. The international student industry is vitally important to Australia. It is critical that we provide stability for that sector over the next three to five years. There has been a lot of change, some of it necessary, some of it ham-fisted and some it causing incredible damage and costing many jobs and much investment. The industry needs a time of stability from government. It needs a time of support from government. It needs a time of outreach into our key markets around the world to ensure that they know that an Australian government is entirely supportive and backs the strong educational product that we offer in this country.

But we are not selling visas, or permanent residency under our education program. We are selling education. The Malaysian student market to Australia, which was one of the least affected by the changes in recent times, and coming out of the Colombo Plan many years ago, demonstrated that when you’re selling a good education product, and people know that’s what they’re buying, then the market can be quite resilient.

So we need to keep the focus on education. We need to keep the processing of people’s visas, in relation to student visas, as efficient as it can be and to be competitive. We should not be competing in the international education space on the type of visa that’s being offered. Frankly, if the UK, Australia, Canada, the United States and others could form some consensus on these matters, and allow us all to compete on the quality of our education product, then the Immigration ministers and secretaries from all those countries would be far happier. We should be competing on the quality of our education product which is world class.

With regard to English language testing, we need greater competition in the provision of English market testing within our visa arrangements. There are many fine organisations, which provide world class testing and a consistent standard. In Europe, the Common European Framework of Reference for Language is used, particularly in the United Kingdom, as a way of better defining the scale of English language competence.

We need to be more open-minded in how we apply our English language testing across the visa continuum. At present, there is testing for initial entry on a temporary visa, a harder test for a permanent visa and the ultimate entry requirements when it comes to citizenship.  What I would like to see, as an Immigration Minister, is English language skills improving for applicants over a period of time.

There should be multiple gateways for people to move through our pathways to citizenship. I don’t want an English language testing scheme to be used, as I fear it has been used by this government, as some sort of industrial lock out on behalf of the unions. It had been used to lock people out of various forms of visas. It should be there to help people to progress with their English language skills and create the expectation of what we want people to achieve within the scheme when they come to Australia.  If a migrant can speak English and get a job, then we know it works. They are the two most important skills that we’ve learnt over two centuries of immigration to this country.

If we focus on English language and the development of language skills and we focus on the ability of migrants to participate in our economy, we will continue to build on the enormously successful, socially cohesive, multi-ethnic society that we all celebrate in this country. If we go down another path, where these things aren’t as important, then we write a recipe for failure as we have seen in other countries, particularly in Europe and the United Kingdom in more recent times. We have something quite wonderful in Australia when it comes to our immigration program. We need to value it, we need to protect it, and we need to ensure that the systems are in place to preserve its integrity. Only then will it continue to deliver for us, for generations.

In immigration, if you get it wrong the consequences are inter-generational. If you get it right, the same is true. That’s why we want to get it right. That’s why we want to get control of our borders, to ensure our immigration program is focused on economics, not welfare. To ensure that those whom we decide can come to this country, will have the start they need to go on to become good citizens.

I’ll finish with a story, because it goes to our Refugee and Humanitarian program. I recounted it at the Press Club today. Last week, I was in Townsville where I met a woman who had migrated to Australia. Her name is Nazifeh an she was and Afghan refugee, living in Iran for 27 years. Nazifeh was a school teacher and came to Australia after applying offshore as an Afghan refugee in Iran. She arrived around mid 2005, with her four children. Her husband was able to join her two years later.

All of Nazifeh’s four children, who couldn’t speak a word of English when they arrived in Australia, went on to complete school in Townsville at the state high school. They have all studied at university; one is completing her medical degree this year, another is a pharmacist, another is involved in engineering studies and another in physiotherapy. Two years ago they bought their own home in Townsville, where I met them over morning tea. I had first met them three years ago while they were part way down that journey. For me, that’s a great Australian story of Australian compassion, of opportunity and, at the end of the day, of giving a fair go to people who are prepared to have a go.

They’re the people we want to decide to come to this country and enjoy the wonderful life that we can all share, by birth right for some, by pledge for others.  Whichever way, it’s a great thing to celebrate.

ENDNOTES 

_________

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Museum of Democracy, Old Parliament House

<http://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/2001-john-howard>

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^[2] Menzies, R. 1958 Sir Robert Menzies speaks at the opening the Citizenship Convention in Canberra on 22 January 1958, National Library of Australia recording <http://nla.gov.au/nla.oh-vn2849456>

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^[9]  Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2011 ‘Attachment D: An historical perspective of refugees and asylum seekers in Australia 1975-2011’, Supplementary Submission to the Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Immigration Detention Network September 2011, page 166-169, last accessed 16 November <http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/immigration_detention_ctte/immigration_detention/submissions.htm>

^[10] Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2010, ‘Immigration history 1976-1985’, Annual Report 2009-10; Celebrating 65 years of nation building 1945-2010, last accessed November 16 2011 <http://www.immi.gov.au/about/reports/annual/2009-10/html/65-years-of-nation-building/Immigration-history-1976-1985.htm>

^[11] Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2011 ‘Attachment D: An historical perspective of refugees and asylum seekers in Australia 1975-2011’, Prepared for the Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Immigration Detention Network August 2011, page 6, last accessed 16 November <http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/immigration_detention_ctte/immigration_detention/submissions.htm>

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^[16] DIAC Annual Report 2011-12, pg 113

<http://www.immi.gov.au/about/reports/annual/2011-12/>

^[17] Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007 ‘Migration: Permanent Additions to Australia’s Population’ in Australian Social Trends 2007, published 7 August 2007

Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2011Migration Program Statistics

^[18] Budget Estimates May 2013, Hansard page 47, Monday 27 May 2013

^[19] Minister Burke 2013 First Significant Investor visa granted, 3 May 2013

<http://www.minister.immi.gov.au/media/bo/2013/bo202683.htm>