Immigration Numbers: Prime Minister’s Position

Rudd Defends Budget
Kerry O’Brien: On immigration, the Budget reveals an extra 31,000 skilled migrants coming into Australia in the next year. 190,000 migrants altogether. That’s permanent. And another 100,000 a year on temporary work visas, nearly 300,000 to process and settle within a year. Your Immigration Minister Chris Evans has flagged “a great national debate” on immigration over the next few years. He says the system’s creaking at the moment, needs an urgent serious overhaul because it’s based on a model out of date.

Does Senator Evans reflect your thinking on this issue?

Kevin Rudd: Well, Senator Evan’s conclusion including the increase and the skills migration component by some 30,000 plus comes out of Cabinet deliberation. We’ve had this matter through Cabinet on many occasions. And what are we responding to? The fact our predecessors didn’t have a skills policy. We arrived in Government with the highest inflation rate in 16 years, a skills shortage and infrastructure bottlenecks. What do you do about it? Well you produce a responsible Budget for the long term to deal with the inflation challenge. Secondly on skills policy you invest in education, skills and training, but that doesn’t deal with the immediate challenge, so you up your skilled migration. And thirdly as we’ve done today with the announcement on Infrastructure Australia, you begin to act on infrastructure bottlenecks. We have a systematic response to the problems we’ve been given.

Kerry O’Brien: But the issue I’m talking about isn’t so much the 31,000. I’m talking about his comments that the system is creaking at the moment, this is the whole immigration system, needs a serious overhaul because it’s based on a model out of date. Does he reflect your thinking on that?

Kevin Rudd: Well, when we’re trying to deal with, this is where I’m sure Chris is coming from. When we’re trying to deal with the overall skills demand on the economy, I think what he’s saying and certainly what we’re saying as a Government is it’s been a long time since government nationally has projected ahead and said in a years time, two years time, three years time, ten years time, what will be the aggregate demands on the economy and broadly in what sectors, how do we mesh our skills and training sector with our migration program on the other. It’s not been done in a sufficiently long term structured planned way up until now and it’s time it was done that way. Is the Immigration Department up to that task at present? And that’s where he’s probably saying it’s creaking and groaning at the seams because a lot has been asked of it, including answering questions that haven’t been put to it for quite some time.

Kerry O’Brien: Well, just on that point, the department as we’ll all remember that will be overseeing nearly 3,000 migrants coming through just next year, it’s not so long ago the department was shredded by the Palmer Report as dysfunctional after all those refugee scandals. Are you confident the department is up to managing those sorts of numbers?

Kevin Rudd: It takes a while to turn around the ‘Queen Mary’. As I’ve said, in five months you can’t fix the problems of more than a decade but, you know, we know that the economy needs this sort of support. Therefore, we’ll do the best we can with the machinery of State that we’ve been handed. It’s going to be tough, but I’ve looked at the response from the industry groups across the country, in WA, right across the Master Builders’ Association, the Australian Industry Group and others. They’ve applauded the measure that we’ve introduced. I noticed also immigration numbers have increased significantly under the previous government. That’s occurred, of course, with our bipartisan support, as I assume this expansion would occur with their bipartisan support, as well.

Kerry O’Brien: Kevin Rudd thanks for talking with us.

Kevin Rudd: Thanks, Kerry.-Taken from The 7.30 Report, 19 May, 2008