Source : Perth Now news
Tony Burke says the Coalition’s plan to virtually eliminate bridging visas would require “billions and billions of dollars” and a massive ramping up of detention capacity.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor pledged this week to bring about the biggest cuts to migration in Australia’s history, including by slashing 650,000 temporary visas and all but eliminate bridging visas by requiring temporary visa holders to leave Australia to apply for new visas.
The Coalition has since sought to clarify that there would be carve-outs for certain sections, such as aged care and construction.
Mr Taylor said he was “confident” the migration plan would be “budget neutral”, although told the ABC on Sunday that they had requested analysis from the Parliamentary Budget Office but that the body was “constrained”.
“In terms of analysis, there are limitations on what the parliamentary Office can do because of its legislation,” he said.
“It cannot model directly Labor’s policies so we had to give it assumptions to work with.
“That is a constraint, but as we approach the election, we won’t have that constraint.”
Mr Taylor claimed the PBO could not conduct analysis “on current Labor policies” and that the “policy keeps changing”.
“They have to do it versus a baseline and the baseline is Labor’s policy,” he said
“Labor has changed its policy since the budget, it changes its policy in a text to an ABC journalist.”
However, Mr Burke on Sunday questioned whether that plan would require significant spending.
“If the Coalition are saying they’re going to massively ramp up, beyond what we’re doing in terms of the detention capacity in Australia, then they need to let us know how many beds, how many compliance officers and where the new detention centres are going,” the Home Affairs Minister told News24.
“Because those sorts of numbers that they’re talking about, we are talking billions and billions of dollars.
“I suspect it’s a part of their plan that they haven’t explained.”
Nationals leader Matt Canavan said Mr Burke’s comments were “absurd”.
He said the Coalition would focus on visa classes that have “blown out”, including bridging visas, temporary graduate visas, and student visas.
“We’ll fix that system by requiring people who want a new visa to go offshore or go back to their home country and apply for that visa,” Senator Canavan told News24.
“And that will rapidly reduce those numbers.”
Senator Canavan later clashed with host Andrew Clennell over whether the Coalition’s proposal would result in negative net migration.
He said the “population of visa holders of this country fall under our policies”.
“They’ll fall back to broadly the levels they were before Covid.”
He sought to draw a distinction with the net overseas migration figure, which is people who have been in Australia for 12 of the past 16 months and has been widely pointed to in the debate over migration.
“So, you can get a positive net overseas migration figure while still seeing a declining amount, a net negative number,” he said.
Mr Burke defended Labor’s own pledge to return to pre-2015 migration enforcement arrangements, which has been compared by the Greens to ICE in the United States.
“The big change is … you get a behavioural change because people realise pretty quickly if they don’t leave then the detention network is now being used for overstays as well,” he said.
“ … for every person you detain, more than six people voluntarily depart.”
Joyce ‘unwell’
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce was due to appear on News24 on Sunday.
However, host Andrew Clennell said his team had reached out to say about an hour before the program to inform them that he would not appear.
Mr Clannell was later informed Mr Joyce was “unwell”.
Mr Joyce appeared on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC Australia) in Brisbane.
Senator Canavan said it was “unfortunate” Mr Joyce was not appearing to answer questions about One Nation’s migration policy.
“I had all these questions here,” Clannell said.
“I’ve got a few, too,” Senator Canavan replied.
Speaking earlier, Mr Burke also noted no one would be appearing to answer questions about One Nation’s own migration policies.
All three parties have pledged to reduce migrations, with One Nation pledging to effective bring about net negative migration for a period of time.
‘How on earth’
Mr Burke agreed total migration numbers needed “to come down”.
However, he said the Opposition’s proposal would lead to less aged care workers, construction workers, and doctors.
“How on earth that’s meant to help Australia?” he said.
Mr Burke said the number of people “visa hopping” from places such as the UK, whereby they use the appeals system and then protection claims to continue their stay in Australia, was not in “massive, overwhelming numbers”.
“But it’s just wrong, and it’s something that we should legislate to be able to fix,” he said.
“I’ve had no indication from the Opposition that they’re back at the table.”
