Under the Morrison Government we have seen the biggest wave of asylum seeker applications in Australia ever – at over 100,000. Coming by air it is almost twice as big as the fourth wave under the Rudd/Gillard Governments. (more…)
Abul Rizvi
-
Immigration of Nurses and Doctors
Australia must fix the design of employer sponsored visas to make them easier, faster and cheaper to use while increasing penalties for employers who misuse these visas. (more…)
-
Home affairs misleads Senate on Djokovic case
The responses Home Affairs officials recently gave to Senate Estimates on the Department’s handling of the Novak Djokovic case were a mixture of smoke and mirrors overlaid by outright misinformation. (more…)
-
Smoke and mirrors: Afghans neglected in Australia’s humanitarian program
Far from holding out a helping hand to Afghans left stranded by the withdrawal of foreign troops, Australia has been even less generous than normal.
-
Djokovic case highlights need for change in how we check vaccination status
With international travel ramping up, changes to passenger visa checks should already be in place — and could’ve prevented the Djokovic debacle.
-
Morrison’s doubletalk exposed again in Djokovic farce
The public is white hot with anger at Djokovic’s conduct. Even so, allowing him to stay and play tennis remains the best option for the government. (more…)
-
Whether running immigration or being PM, Morrison fiddles the books
Using income tax receipts to offset departmental spending undermines good government. But that doesn’t faze this government. (more…)
-
Australia’s incoherent visa system needs urgent repair
Strong jobs growth will hinge on high levels of net migration, so the next government must act to streamline the system and fine-tune the settings.
-
Why Australia was not better prepared for the Covid pandemic
There was a significant shift in government thinking on border closures and quarantine between earlier outbreaks and the arrival of COVID-19.
-
Our migration program: many questions with no answers
Consultations with the public on immigration have been rendered meaningless, and Home Affairs appears unable to provide any detail on its plans.
-
Government’s brazen disregard for non-discriminatory migration program
By fast-tracking migration for Hong Kong passport holders, the government is abandoning its long-time non-discrimination principle.
-
Scott Morrison’s half-hearted U-turn on electric vehicles
Without the vision to invest in electric vehicles and transport technology, Australia is setting up its young people for a very limited future.
-
The overseas student and immigration nexus: Where to now?
As the government faces pressure to bring overseas students back into the country, if it wants a high-quality education sector it should be wary of those only interested in maximising student numbers and short-term profits.
-
Asylum seeker scam continues to drive down migrant workers’ rights
After sitting on the August 2021 report on asylum seekers for around a fortnight, Home Affairs Minister Alex Hawke at last allowed the report to be made public at the end of September.
-
Agriculture industry condemned to becoming a growing centre for exploitation and abuse
The Senate report on temporary migration makes many excellent recommendations, but also misses opportunities.
-
The Americanisation of Australia’s agriculture labour market
Minister Littleproud will know that like their counterparts in the USA, farmers in Australia have become increasingly accustomed to using asylum seekers and the rapidly growing cohort of unsuccessful asylum seekers for cheap and easily exploitable labour. (more…)
-
Too little, too late: Morrison’s Afghanistan failures
‘Too little, too late’ is one of the Morrison Government’s defining characteristics.
-
Dutton’s and Pezzullo’s citizenship hypocrisy
The in-coming minister’s briefing prepared by long-standing Departmental Secretary Mike Pezzullo was inevitably going to be more significant for what it didn’t highlight than what it did.
-
RBA Governor’s wages-immigration bomb and how he got it wrong.
RBA Governor Philip Lowe’s speech last week on the Labour Market and Monetary Policy set off a frenzied debate on the impact of immigration on wages. (more…)
-
An Agricultural Visa Would Change Australian Society – for the worse
After years of resisting creation of an Agricultural Visa, Prime Minister Morrison has announced we will now have an Agricultural Visa for farmworkers from the 10 ASEAN countries. This may be the final step in Australia becoming a low skill guest worker country, something we had resisted for decades.
The article below has been republished from a previous entry on Pearls and Irritations on 14 November 2018.
(more…) -
Blink and the boats will restart the Government says, but that is nonsense
The Government excuses its cruelty to the Biloela family by wrongly asserting that the boats bringing asylum seekers will start again .
Over the past 6-7 years, the Government has presided over the biggest labour trafficking scam and abuse of Australia’s asylum system in our history. As a result of that scam of asylum seekers coming by air there are currently over 27,000 unsuccessful asylum seekers living in the community. (more…)
-
Australia’s facile immigration policy debate
Australia’s immigration policy debates over the past 30 years have largely consisted of the usual suspects trotting out the usual lines.
-
People movement during Covid and emergence of a growing and permanent underclass
While Prime Minister Morrison initially told temporary entrants in Australia to go home, relatively few followed his instruction. His Government’s new message to these people is to stay and work in largely unskilled jobs. This ignores the long-term consequences of a growing and permanent underclass that will have to be dealt with after the election.
-
People movement implications of deteriorating Australia-China relations
Over the past 35 years, people movement between Australia and China increased at an extraordinary rate. The deterioration of Australia-China relations, which has now been locked in by comments about war with China by new Defence Minister Peter Dutton (as well as the ‘drums of war’ comments by his former Secretary Mike Pezzullo) and China’s indefinite suspension of the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue, will reverse that trend for the foreseeable future.
-
New Ministers Andrews/Hawke keen to make their mark on asylum seeker debate
New Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews and new Immigration Minister Alex Hawke will be keen to stamp their mark on the asylum seeker debate – a debate that has won the LNP many elections and led to the promotion of relevant ministers, including Morrison and Dutton. (more…)
-
What will Frydenberg forecast for the budget in the 2021 Intergenerational Report?
Australia’s first four Intergenerational Reports made very different long-term forecasts of Australia’s budget balance and level of government debt driven largely by different assumptions of the real rate of economic growth. What will Josh Frydenberg forecast in his 2021 Intergenerational Report after forecasting budgetary nirvana in his 2019 ten year budget plan?
-
Why won’t Morrison accept his responsibility for quarantine?
WA State Premier McGowan has again called on the Commonwealth to accept its responsibility to develop national dedicated quarantine facilities as Australia has had for much of its past. But there appears to be little to no chance of that happening. (more…)
-
Asylum policy in UK and Australia – a tale of two nations
In these two nations, the backlog of asylum applications and that of refused asylum seekers who have not departed is remarkably similar (see Table 1). But debate on the matter in the two countries is very different. (more…)
-
Proposed English language testing of Australian sponsors and partners
In the 2020 Budget, former Acting Immigration Minister Tudge announced the Government would introduce English language testing for partner visas – that is when an Australian sponsors their non-Australian partner to become an Australian permanent resident. (more…)
-
An immigration agenda for new home affairs minister Andrews
Peter Dutton’s transfer to Defence Minister and appointment of Karen Andrews as the new Home Affairs Minister provides her with an extraordinary array of Dutton inspired problems she could readily fix. (more…)