KERRY O’BRIEN: On immigration, the Budget reveals an extra 31,000 skilled migrants coming into Australia in the next year. 190,000 migrants all together. That’s permanent. And another 100,000 a year on temporary work visas. Nearly 300,000 people to process and to settle within a year. Your Immigration Minister Chris Evans has flagged, ‘a great national debate’ on immigration over the next few years, he says the system is creaking at the moment, needs an urgent, serious overhaul, because it is based on a model that is out of date. Does Senator Evans reflect your thinking on this issue?
PM: Well Senator Evans’ conclusion, including the increase in the skilled migration component by some 30,000 plus, comes obviously out of the Cabinet deliberation. We have had this matter through cabinet on many occasions. And what are we are responding to, the fact that our predecessors didn’t have a skills policy. We arrived in Government with the highest inflation rate in 16 years, a skills shortage and infrastructure bottlenecks. What do you do about it?
Well, you produce a responsible budget for the long term to deal with the inflation challenge. Secondly, on skills policy, you invest in education, skills and training. But that doesn’t deal with the immediate challenge, so you up your skilled migration. And thirdly, as we have done today with the announcement on Infrastructure Australia, you begin to act on infrastructure bottlenecks. We have a systematic response to the problems that we have been given.
KERRY O’BRIEN: Yeah. But the issue I am talking about, isn’t so much the 31,000. I am talking about his comments that the system is creaking at the moment, needs an urgent, this is the whole immigration system, needs an urgent serious overhaul because it is based on a model that is out of date. Does he reflect your thinking on that?
PM: Well, when we are trying to deal with, this is where I am sure Chris is coming from, when we are trying to deal with the overall skills demands of the economy, I think what he is saying and certainly what we are saying as a Government is, it has been a long, long time since a Government nationally has projected ahead and said, in a years time, two years time, three years time, ten years time, what will be the aggregate skills demands for the economy, and broadly and what sectors. And, how do we actually mesh our education, skills and training system with that on the one hand, with our migration program on the other. It has not been done in a sufficiently long term, structured, planned way up until now. And we think it is time it was highly done that way. Is the immigration department up to that task at present? That’s where he is probably saying it is creaking and groaning at the seams because a lot is being asked of it, including answering questions which haven’t been put to it for quite some time.
KERRY O’BRIEN: Well just on that point, the department, as we will all remember, that will be overseeing nearly 300,000 migrants coming through just next year. It is not so long ago that the department was shredded by the Palmer report as dysfunctional after all those refugee scandals. Are you confident that the department is up to managing those sorts of numbers?
PM: Well, it takes a while to turn around the Queen Mary. As I said in five months you can’t fix the problems of more than a decade, but we know that the economy needs this sort of support. Therefore, we’ll do the best we can with the machinery of state that we have been handed. It is going to be tough. But I have looked at the response from the industry groups across the country. In WA, right across the Master Builders Association and the Australian Industry Group and others, they have applauded the measure that we have introduced.
I notice also, immigration numbers have increased quite significantly under the previous government. That has occurred of course, with our bipartisan support, as I assume this expansion would occur with their bipartisan support as well.
