ANU Migration Hub – immigration gaslighter of the year

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.