Paul McKeown

IDEAS ARE FOR INDEPENDENTS 

Immigration

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Australia's net migration was 446,000 in the 2024 financial year and 536,000 the previous year. Despite a record low birth rate our population grew by around 2.1% in the year to June 2024 to around 27 million, and is tipped to reach 30 million by 2030. There is a post COVID spike factor involved which is beginning to normalise, but regardless - these are staggering figures that Australians need to talk about.

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Here are my thoughts...

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For me, I think the reality is - we are going to get a bigger Australia whether we like it or not, but too much immigration - too quickly is a threat to the stability of our economy, our national culture, our social cohesion and our environment.

The current immigration rate is too high.

To manage proper levels of immigration into the future, we need to urgently address our appalling lack of infrastructure.

We need to build infrastructure anyway, so one idea might be to tie immigration to national infrastructure projects. In other words, if you want to come to Australia, why not come and help us build the infrastructure that will be necessary to support you, and which will help our country prosper in the long-term.

Perhaps this could be done with something like a highly incentivised 3 year 'Nation-building' visa with good earning potential when assigned to a major national infrastructure building project, and a possible fast-track citizenship for hard-working participants who complete their project placement after 3 years with a good working record.* 

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The 'Nation-building' visa could be established with a variation of visa subclass 186 (employer nominated), visa subclass 887 (skilled regional), or by opening up an entirely new visa subclass.

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The benefit of this approach would be two-fold.

1. We get the infrastructure we need for a growing Australia, and the workers needed to build it,

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and...

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2. Our new Australians would gain pride from contributing something tangible with their skills and labour and a good income to help them settle without relying on others. By helping build our infrastructure, these hard working new Australians would be literally building a meaningful connection to their new country.

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Modern Australia is a country built by hard working immigrants...so nothing really new here, we've just got to get the target focus right again.

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Of course we can't have an infrastructure based visa without infrastructure projects, so Australia needs to get its act together quickly on that front too. 

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*The current path to citizenship is 4 years.