Is it true? Have successive Australian governments had no strategy for immigration for more than 20 years?

Matt Thistlethwaite, the federal assistant minister for immigration, made that claim recently.

"For many decades, Australia hasn't had a migration plan. We haven't had a migration strategy," he said.

"As a result, Australia's migration policies have lacked direction and purpose.

"Migration's been unresponsive to Australia's needs. It has provided marginal economic benefit and hasn't enhanced labour productivity.

"It has been concentrated in capital cities, creating some social tension, and skills shortages have persisted despite steady flows of new arrivals with needed skills and competencies."

Mr Thistlethwaite made those assertions in a speech to the Sydney Institute last month.

I wrote about it last week. In that piece, I also noted his explanation for why he thinks Australia hasn't had a long-term immigration strategy for decades.

Mr Thistlethwaite argues it's because our post-war bipartisanship on immigration seemed to evaporate in the 1990s after "some civic leaders" stoked fear and division about it for political gain.

"As a result, governments were reluctant to put in place a strategy for migration so that we could plan for the levels of migration required for our nation and the supports that were needed to settle new arrivals, so that they could make a productive contribution to our economy," he said.

But is it true that Australia hasn't had an immigration strategy for decades?

Let's look at that claim more closely. 

The historic shift in strategy for immigration

Associate professor Chris Wright is an expert on industrial relations. In 2014, he published a really interesting paper on this topic.

It noted how Australia's immigration policies evolved from strict (and racially discriminatory) protectionist controls in the early 1900s, to an expansionary immigration program from 1945 to 1972, to a slow deterioration of political consensus with rising political tensions through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Then it detailed how the Coalition government of John Howard (in office from March 1996 to November 2007) significantly relaxed work visa regulations to meet its economic objectives in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

That's the period of time Mr Thistlethwaite referred to when he said Australia stopped having an immigration strategy and plan.

So let's have a look at it.

As Dr Wright showed in his paper, the Howard government reduced Australia's permanent immigration intake a little in its early years, but by the time it left office in 2007 it had lifted the overall immigration intake to record levels.

Its policies led to an increase in the main permanent and temporary work visa categories from 162,564 in 1995-96 to 439,518 in 2007-08.

See the graph below from his paper.

Why did it lift immigration so much during its 11-year reign?

It wanted to address a number of economic challenges.

Higher immigration to meet economic challenges

One of those challenges was widespread skills and labour shortages.

The shortages were especially apparent in parts of Australia centred on the mining sector, which experienced a major boom in the early 2000s.

"Employers struggled to train or recruit the skilled labour that was needed for the mining sector to expand," Dr Wright said in his paper.

"As firms recruited workers from elsewhere in Australia to fill vacancies created by the mining boom, skills shortages emerged across the rest of the economy.

"Ministers were subject to 'fierce' lobbying from employer groups and state governments for policies that would address these shortfalls, such as expanding the skilled immigration visa intake," he said.

The emergence of new opportunities was another challenge.

One such opportunity was tertiary education, which was becoming an increasingly important area for trade for Australia's economy. Its export value increased by more than double from 2001-02 to 2005-06.

"Because other nations were also realising the export potential of tertiary education, the Australian government believed it needed to find innovative ways of attracting international students, including through the incentive of a prospective skilled visa upon graduation," Dr Wright said.

"The various reforms that awarded concessions to skilled visa applicants with Australian tertiary qualifications reflected the Howard government's objective to strengthen the pathway between student visas and skilled visas."

A third major challenge related to population.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s there were growing concerns in Australia about the country's falling birth rate, and future population decline, with repeated calls to boost immigration.

Treasury officials suggested the government could "slow the process" of population aging by attracting more skilled and young migrants to Australia.

A 'major recalibration' of the permanent migration program

But how did the Howard government increase Australia's immigration intake to record levels without a backlash from voters?

As Dr Wright points out, the year the Coalition came to power (in 1996) there were high levels of public support for lower immigration.

At the time, Australia was still recovering from the early '90s recession. The unemployment rate was 8.4 per cent.

Pauline Hanson, the populist independent candidate from Queensland, had just been elected to parliament, and a large number of voters agreed with her view that there should be a short-term freeze on immigration.

Dr Wright said the Howard government distanced itself from Hanson initially.

But it also claimed the former Labor government had skewed the immigration program toward family visas to maximise electoral support from migrant communities.

Philip Ruddock (immigration minister from 1996 to 2003) argued Labor had left the program out of balance, with family migration growing significantly under its watch at the expense of skill categories that bring "substantial economic benefit to the country."

"The Coalition used this argument to justify a major recalibration of the permanent immigration program," Dr Wright said.

"New regulations were introduced that made it much harder for the relatives of Australian citizens and residents to gain family visas.

"Related reforms included the restriction of migrant access to welfare benefits and the defunding of government multiculturalism programs.

"Its reforms centred upon revising the immigration selection criteria to prioritise skilled visa applicants most likely to make a net positive contribution to the Australian economy and to make it easier for these applicants to obtain visas."

In an interview for Dr Wright's research, Mr Ruddock said improving "the quality of migration" was aimed at improving public confidence in Australia's immigration program, which then allowed the immigration intake to be increased as necessary.

And increased it was.

The Coalition's most significant reforms to visa categories included:

• A rapid increase in temporary work visa schemes, through the creation of the Temporary Business (Long Stay) ("Sub-class 457") visa in 1996. That allowed employers to sponsor workers on a Subclass 457 visa for a period of three months to four years, after which time the visa could be renewed. Subsequent reforms weakened, and then removed, the employer obligation to "test" the labour market (i.e. advertise vacancies locally) before sponsoring an applicant on a Subclass 457 visa.
• Major reforms to the Working Holiday temporary visa scheme through the removal of working restrictions for applicants and the loosening of restrictions for employers in regional industries seeking to engage visa holders.
• The expansion of the Independent (non-sponsored) permanent skilled visa in 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2007 by granting concessions to applicants with qualifications obtained from Australian tertiary institutions or with work experience in Australia relating to skilled occupations in short supply.

"These changes had the combined effect of making it easier for skilled applicants and much harder for family applicants to gain visas, which was consistent with the preferences of the wider community," Dr Wright said.

You can see the growth in the different visa categories in the graphic below from his paper.

A de-facto low-skilled immigration policy?

Where did those reforms to the immigration system lead?

The decision to dramatically increase the number of temporary visas coincided with Australia's record run of uninterrupted economic growth.

The new system was also upheld by successive Labor and Liberal governments (who made various 'improvements' to it through the years).

But it had consequences.

In 2017, Dr Wright published another paper, with his colleague Stephen Clibborn, that looked at some of them.

It had the title, "Back Door, Side Door, or Front Door: An Emerging De-Factor Low-Skilled Immigration Policy in Australia."

It explained why, despite the pretence of Australia's official high-skilled immigration policy regime, there was evidence that 'side doors' and 'back doors' to lower-skilled segments of the labour market had become features of Australia's contemporary policy landscape in recent decades. 

In 2020, they published another paper.

It had the title, "A guest-worker state? The declining power and agency of migrant labour in Australia."

It explained why Australia's modern labour immigration policy now resembled a guest-worker regime where migrants' rights were restricted, their ability to bargain with their employers for decent working conditions was limited, and their power to pursue the opportunities available to citizens and permanent residents was diminished.

"In contrast to recent assessments that Australia's temporary visa system is working effectively, our analysis indicates that it is failing to protect temporary migrants at work," they explained.

But that may be a topic for another week.

For today's purposes, and to wrap things up quickly, let's return to Mr Thistlethwaite's argument.

As Dr Wright's research shows, it's not correct to say Australia hasn't had an immigration strategy in recent decades.

The strategy's been obvious. It had a lot of thought put into it.

But Mr Thistlethwaite's claim that we haven't had proper long-term planning, in the sense that federal and state governments work together to determine long-term immigration levels and needs, based on our ability to house everyone, with adequate infrastructure, where migrant workers' skills will be put to proper use (instead of atrophying from neglect, in low paying jobs), is a different matter.

Is he on solid ground with that one?