As ballyhooed , you'd think Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil's Migration Strategy was epic reform. It's a limp report, of procedural tweaks.
Meanwhile Albanese was bugling the real strategy – the lie that migration would be "halved" – via his pet media chooks and immigration influencers.
What's in the strategy
In the Strategy, O'Neil and Immigration Minister Giles assert immigration is "broken" with "insufficient regard" for housing and infrastructure. They've done "extensive consultation" to get it back to "normal".
Advertisement
Their idea of "consultation" is donors and stakeholders, like the select 146 of Jobs and Skills Summit.
They disdain ordinary Australians, who consistently oppose mega-migration. Cynically, their "normal" is the pre-COVID 220,000-plus. Nothing like the truthful long-term average of about 80,000 per annum.
Absurdly, 100 pages of "Strategy" ignores net migration – the driver of our relentless population growth.
Under fibbing Albanese, said migration has topped 500,000. Maybe "falling " to 375,000, in 2023-24.
Yet O'Neil's Strategy is a turgid "roadmap" of eight "actions" under an anodyne "vision".
Which will "raise living standards…ensure a fair go…build stronger communities". Orwellian doublespeak.
Advertisement
O'Neil's potholed "roadmap" derives from her dodgy Migration Review. Here are her top-five pettifogging "actions":
Targeting temporary skilled migration.
Government had already raised the wage threshold for temp "skilled" migrants to a puny $70,000.
Now they're introducing "Skills in Demand" Visas, Specialist and Core Skills "Pathways", a "tripartite" approach to skills needs, a "modernised" accreditation pathway.
Discuss in our Forums
See what other readers are saying about this article!
Click here to read & post comments.
13 posts so far.