ANU Migration Hub – immigration gaslighter of the year

"First of its kind in this region", ANU Migration Hub is led by Aotearoa expat Alan Gamlen. Itconvenes leading experts to "share knowledge, collect evidence, question assumptions, and inform solutions to major challenges concerning the movement of people."

It's a migration lobby, right?

Scarcely an orphan, among the shoals of pro-migration "stakeholders" inside Australian politics and bureaucracy, states and cities, industry and developers, media, universities and unions, think tanks and interest groups.

Like its troubled federal "research university" parent, the Hub enjoys good access, to Canberra corridors of government and officialdom. Including Home Affairs.

Australian immigration has gone off the charts since 2022, as the "Friday the Thirteenth" December 2024 ABS release now reconfirms. Nearly one million in net-migration, in two years flat. Almost doubling, the lofty two-year mark posted by Kevin "Big Australia" Rudd.

In Hub world, what's happened looks quite different. After five years of "disruption", the pandemic may have left a lingering "shortfall" in immigration.

And "contrary to claims of record-high migration, Australia is still far from catching up to the levels of migration that, in the pre-pandemic world, we expected to have had by now."

The brief itself

The Hub policy brief of 4 December is pitched as "evidence-based" expertise for Australia. It's called When will migration levels return to 'normal'? The answer seems too obvious – never – but let's try not to jump the gun.

Author Gamlen claims to adduce the three "main Australian methods being used to define normal [migration]". His first method uses June 2019 as the immigration baseline, while the second adopts a 2020 Treasury scenario, and the third extrapolates the 2013-19 trend.

Employing these three methods, he claims a net-migration "shortfall" via the pandemic of 445,000 ranging to 508,000, and a "rebound to date [March 2024]" of 340,000-425,000. Plus, a "projected remaining rebound [to March 2025]" of 86,000-132,000.

Under the third method, the author expects to see migration to return to "normal" by early to mid 2025. By then "Australia will have accumulated a net-migration shortfall of 82,000 [508,000 – (340,000 + 86,000)] over five-plus years of pandemic disruption". Under the first and second methods, the shortfall becomes a small "excess".

Disliking the net migration (arrivals minus departures) measure, he also resorts to the (deservedly) less common measure of total migration (arrivals plus departures).

Cumulatively, in the "five and a half" years since the pandemic hit, "total" migration is estimated as 1.2 million less, than the same period prior. Therefore, Australia is said to have experienced "less migration since the onset of the pandemic", not more.

The brief expresses no firm view, as to what Australia's "normal" levels of migration should be in the future. That "normal", however, should be informed by "facts, not fear or misinformation". Hmm.

Unpacking the brief

The author asserts to be deploying the "main methods" used to define normal migration.

Yet the long-term average of net migration, from federation to date, is only about 80,000 annually.

However, the "Big Australia" years from 2006-2019, before COVID hit, were our most intensive net migration ever. Averaging about 225,000 annually. Prior to 2007, we'd never once topped 200,000.

The selective use of high benchmarks from within this 2006-2019 period creates a false impression of "normal" migration.

Coming through COVID, net migration (December 2024updates) for 2019-20 was 193,000, then negative 85,000 in 2020-21, plus 204,000 in 2021-22, 536,000 in 2022-23, and 446,000 in 2023-24.

Whatever migration scenarios or projections Treasury may have had, these actual numbers don't quite square with the author's shortfall-and-rebound. The actual "shortfall" is small, the "rebound" very large.

Using 225,000 as a (high) yardstick, the only major "shortfall" event was the COVID year 2020-21 itself. But the Coalition topped 200,000 – an immense 290,000 turnaround – the following year.

Adding up the numbers just above, the 2019-24 ABS aggregate is nearly 1,300,000, for an annual average of nearly 260,000. Even though this average includes the entire COVID migration-freeze, it's already comfortablyhigher than the 2006-2019 average. Hard to see much "shortfall" in there.

The Hub portrayal looks distorted. More so, when broadcast as-is by government ABC and other pro-immigration media.

In 2024-25, Labor's actual net-migration outcome will probably nudge 375,000-400,000, as compared with their misleading (Treasury) estimate of 260,000.

Over Labor's whole term of 2022-25, net migration will accumulate easily our biggest three-year streak in history, something close to 1.5 million. Nearly doubling Rudd's herculean three-year effort. Surely, wiping any "shortfall", had there ever been one in the first place.

Yet the author dilutes the record-high migration down to a mere "claim". ABS stats aren't claims - they're a primary source. Neither are we "far from" catching up on "lost" migration. We've more than caught up.

Also, the assertion of "less [total] migration since the onset of the pandemic" is misleading.

As above, net migration for the 2019-2024 period is nearly 1,300,000. Net migration for the five years prior was "only" about 1,130,000.

The later period, despite its inclusion of COVID, has greater not lesser migration. But here's the thing. Both periods have pushed migration way too high. It's a side-argument about nothing much.

And net - not "total" - migration remains as our more useful indicator of ongoing immigration volumes and the impact on our ongoing infrastructure and service requirements.

The author, however, deprecates it. For ABC purposes, he garbled it as a "derivative of a basket of a bunch of different things…not a useful way to track migrant numbers".

Similarly, another new Hub "Insight" by ex-ANU immigration advocate Peter McDonald nukes net-migration as "slippery". Beguiling the Home Affairs officials and media, that the Albanese net-migration figures might just be more about lower "departures " than higher arrivals.

Forty seasons of ABS stats would appear to indicate otherwise.

Touch wood, net migration, though imperfect and subject to revisions, still appeals as the least disreputable and most serviceable measure. It's what's used in ABS/Treasury immigration/population estimates. Net migration + natural increase = Population growth.

Sure, the UN and big OECD nations may define net migration in slightly different terms.

But at least, the net figures allow academic and laypersons alike, to compare Australia's immigration momentum to that of other advanced nations, on broadly similar terms. To find, it's remarkably high at present, around 1.6% or more of population. The figure for the OECD bloc is 0.5% or less.

Among major wealthy nations, only Canada has had crazier levels of immigration. They claim to be cutting sharply. Their "progressive" leader (for 9 ½ years) appears to enjoy about as much credibility as ours (2 ½).

Earlier this year, the author had made an unabashed pitch for a "Migration Research Institute", supposedly for "reliable" information. Reliably favouring a high-immigration menu, more like it, whilst denouncing counterviews as "myths, misinformation, moral panic".

Likewise, in this brief he insinuates "normal" migration should be defined by "facts, not fear or misinformation". Yet he himself is no slouch at misinformation. Check the straw men in this article.

If facts be sought, "normal" migration looks like roughly 80,000. Indeed, were this complainant to suit himself, and check our 20^th century, or 20^th century peace-years, normal is only about 50,000-60,000.

"Normal" is not 225,000, nor 260,000, and certainly not 446,000. These rapid accelerations are of very recent origin. To spin them as anything like "normal" is not good historical practice. It's more like disappearing the first century of federation.

The beefy 21^st century migration numbers, though now baked into Treasury's misnamed "intergenerational" reports, have never been endorsed by voters. Who, in many surveys during and since COVID, still favour lower levels of migration .

It seems a low blow, for an entitled ANU academic to mock voters' legitimate (that is, standard-of-living) immigration concerns as ignorant fears .

The wrap

Finally, the author re-configures the COVID migration-disruption as if it created fascinating, oscillating, "ripple effects or shockwaves". Like, one more red herring.

Australia's post-2022 immigration (also temporary-visa) numbers are sky high – even when compared with Big Australia. Having regard for a judicious spirit of research and comment, it seems reprehensible, for the Hub to disappear this as if it's not even happening at all.

Few other notable migration-mavens (hi Abul Rizvi ) would go quite this far.

This brief, despite its expertise, is also gaslighting us. It's a pseudo-scientific variation on the "sensible conversation" meme, so beloved of our politicians and ABC (hi Laura Tingle).

That meme is always code for the higher people deciding on high migration. It would never allow the lower people to decide for low migration.