Source : Perth Now news
Making cuts to the migration system isn’t like clear felling a forest.
A government can’t simply move in with the bulldozers and wipe out entire programs without leaving a massive bare patch in the economy.
It is more like bonsai.
It’s a difficult and detailed process of snipping leaves judiciously and training branches to precise heights to create a neat overall canopy without killing the roots.
Hacking down an entire forest is quick and easy. It earns instant applause from voters who are angry about the changing character of the landscape.
But there is a cost to the broader eco-system. A big cost.
Take One Nation’s proposal to cut a deep swathe through international student numbers.
It is the biggest single component of the party’s promise to produce net-negative migration for three years in order to reset the system towards a long-term intake of 130,000 people a year.
Pauline Hanson promises to cut the number of international student visas from 590,000 to 350,000.
She is also promising to slash the companion class of temporary graduate visas from 230,000 to just 40,000.
That’s 430,000 fewer total student arrivals — a reduction of 55 per cent — in just three years.
It is an extreme cut that would have extreme economic and social consequences.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that international education contributed about $54 billion to the economy last year.
That makes it the fourth-largest export contributor to the economy, behind iron ore, coal and gas.
The contribution roughly breaks down to around $24 billion in tuition fees and about $30 billion in taxes, housing, food and services.
Pauline Hanson’s cuts to that sector alone would cost Australia $30 billion a year in lost revenue.
That is equivalent to the entire annual interest bill on Australia’s national debt.
It is a massive number that economists say would immediately send the Australian economy spiralling into a deep recession, shuttering businesses, devastating local communities, particularly in the regions, and throwing tens of thousands of Australians out of their jobs and their homes.
And that’s why Hanson and Barnaby Joyce this week dismissed the considered analysis of these economists as irrelevant.
“Do you trust these economists? What they come out and say? Because I don’t,” said Hanson.
“What I’m doing is implementing the will of the people.”
If that’s true, then Hanson’s greater responsibility might be to save the people from themselves.
Their “will” is apparently to clearfell a large section of the economy and destroy their own jobs and livelihoods in the doing.
And the cost isn’t just economic.
Another quick calculation proves that.
Lyn Tran, a professor at Deakin University’s School of Education, wrote in The Conversation this week that 88 per cent of international graduate students work in industries like IT, health, aged care, retail and hospitality.
The proportion of international undergraduates who work is a little lower at 64 per cent, most in hospitality, retail, cleaning and residential care.
The cuts Hanson is promising would punt 354,000 international students from the workforce in areas like aged care that are crying out for additional labour — not less.
Then there are the family reunion visas of dependent spouses, de factos, children and some parents that are attached to the primary visas of international students.
They number around 74,000, which is about a third of the total family reunion cohort.
Some of them also work in hospitality and health and care industries.
Hanson would scrap all those visas and the government would also severely restrict them.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas bravely posed during his recent election campaign: “Who’s going to feed you and bathe you and wipe your bum when you’re 90?”
Hanson calls all this criticism “smoke and mirrors”.
She accuses Labor of lying to the people to conceal a hidden agenda, one apparently designed to bring in more migrants that are likely to thank it with their votes.
Her agenda, though, appears clear. And that is its biggest problem.
Once the forest is cleared, what will people think as they survey the cost, the loss and the emptiness and wonder what they have gained?
