Trent Nikolic:
It is time for the Treasury of Common Sense. Now, I usually have a chat with Leith van Onselen, but as I said earlier in the show when I spoke to Peter van Onselen, Leith is away. Today, I’ll be joined by Adam Creighton, the chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs, he’s on the line now. Adam, great to be with you.
Adam Creighton:
Good morning, great to be here.
Trent Nikolic:
You’ve written a piece in The Australian about the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Australia, it’s titled, How Labour Exploits the Economic Myth of Skilled Migrants. What can you make of Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan’s greeting of the leader?
Adam Creighton:
Well, look, it just reminds me of quite often you see Australian politicians have to grovel or cosy up to foreign leaders when there’s a large number of their former citizens in Australia, because obviously they would like to get their votes. And there were 40,000 Indian Australians at Marvel Stadium, I think last night or the night before, and of course Jacinta Allan was there and she gave a speech. And I don’t blame her, but it’s just a strange thing when you have some foreign leaders, whether it’s a Chinese leader or Indian leader or whatever, come to Australia, and our leaders have to grovel to them for domestic political considerations, and I think that’s unfortunate. And there’s a lot of polling that shows that foreign born citizens tend to vote more for the Labour Party than for the coalition. And so, I argued in that column, somewhat controversial column, that there is a powerful incentive for some political parties, maybe the Labour Party to increase immigration just to stay in office ultimately.
Trent Nikolic:
Yeah. A few people have said it, Adam, and you’re right, sometimes it’s unpopular, but without even delving into the angle of being a conspiracy theorist, it’s a hard one to argue, isn’t it? Because it makes sense and it adds up.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Look, that’s certainly right. And just a few months ago, I was at a dinner in Brisbane, and someone who’s very well-connected to Brisbane City Council, which is the biggest council of course in Australia, they were telling me that the federal government had been putting pressure on the council to speed up citizenship ceremonies. And I just though, oh my gosh, that’s very interesting, and if you’re cynical like me, maybe the government would like more voters.
Trent Nikolic:
Because Samaras, who I’ve spoken to before, one of Labor’s most prominent political strategists, pointed out this week that in Victoria, the birthplace has become one of the sharpest predictors of the Labour vote, and among Australian-born voters, Labour sits on 24%, among voters born overseas, it’s 35%, that 11 point gap is the firewall that you’re talking about.
Adam Creighton:
That’s exactly right.
Trent Nikolic:
And note that that’s 35 with the UK included, which means it’s higher within non-English speaking background cohorts, Kos explained.
Adam Creighton:
Yes. Look, certainly that’s true. So, that’s a massive difference in primary votes, something like 11 or 12 percentage points, and as you pointed out in that quote, for foreigners not from the UK, it’s even higher again. So, some cynical people, I would say, that the Labour Party therefore has a strong interest to increase those sorts of people in Australia because ultimately they will be able to vote. Certainly in the first instance they can’t, but eventually they will be able to.
Trent Nikolic:
Yes. That’s absolutely right. And they’ll remember what it was that brought them here in the first place.
Adam Creighton:
Exactly-
Trent Nikolic:
It follows then and it’s no wonder that the premier boasted of how proud she was that Victoria’s home to the largest Indian diaspora in the country, at 370,000 strong, she’s keen to emphasise that one.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Yeah, certainly that’s true. And those figures are just massive.
Trent Nikolic:
Yeah.
Adam Creighton:
Well, I think just recently the number of Indians in the country has overtaken the number from the UK, I think it’s now 950,000 Indians, which is a very large share of the population. And look, I’m not blaming those people at all, of course you’d want to come to Australia, it’s a wonderful place, but from the perspective of the Australians who are born here, it’s not necessarily so great. For instance, how can the government properly set a foreign policy for Australia if it’s got to be nice to foreign leaders from various countries?
Trent Nikolic:
Yeah, it doesn’t really add up that part of it. And I think the other thing I wanted to get your thoughts on is our leaders spend a lot of time talking about immigration policy, and how much of a spectacular success it is, but I think if our immigration programme was delivering the economic benefits repeatedly promised by governments of both sides of the ledger, the evidence increasingly suggests otherwise. So, things like Tony Burke saying economically we need migration, we need the skills, he’s also extolled the virtues of the nation’s well targeted immigration programme, but it turns out that oft repeated claim has been a gigantic misconception for years.
Adam Creighton:
Yes, look, that’s true, and probably I’d go even further and say it’s a fraud actually on the Australian people, because we hear constantly from politicians, Tony Burke, the prime minister, the previous ministers before him, that we’re running a skilled immigration programme, all the time, we’re only bringing in skilled-
Trent Nikolic:
Emphasis on skilled. Yeah, exactly.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, that’s right, they always talk about skills. But the reality is when you go into the detail, it turns out that only one third of the permanent migration programme, which is about 180,000 a year, so only one third of that are actually skilled people, all the rest are family independents of those people. So, the vast majority of people coming into Australia on permanent visas are not in fact skilled, they were never assessed for their skills. So, I think that would shock most people, it certainly shocked me actually, and I’m someone who follows these things. I only found out recently that the number of skilled people is actually a minority of those people who get permanent visas.
Trent Nikolic:
Yeah, I covered that on The Morning Show this week, and like you, Adam, I was shocked by the percentage that were not skilled. That’s a staggering number.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, look, it certainly is, and the government says that this program’s there to fill shortages, but actually the ABS produces various series on job vacancies in certain occupations, and actually there are far more shortages than there were three or four years ago. So, if the programme was working, then there’d be fewer shortages, right? But they’re not. And we’ve had something like one and a half million people have come in in not a long time ago, and clearly it’s not filling shortages.
Trent Nikolic:
Adam, based on what we were saying before the break, given the influx of immigration, and given the lack of jobs that have actually been taken up in skilled sectors, you can hardly wonder, and I’m getting bowled over by the commentary on this from listeners, you can hardly wonder that Australian living standards have begun to rapidly decline.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, certainly that’s true. Look, in the last five years or so, Australia’s economic performance has been very, very bad, and I think you can certainly say with confidence that part of that reason is that we’ve just had this huge influx of immigration, and many without skills, and of course, ultimately that drags down per person economic growth. And indeed, 10 of the last 15 quarters, so basically in two thirds of the last few years, per person economic growth has gone backwards, which is the worst performance Australia’s had for many, many decades, and I think it’s pretty clear why that’s the case, right? Because you can only build a certain number of houses per year, certain number of apartments, but the rate of immigration is far greater than that.
Trent Nikolic:
I often say, Adam, that one of the great benefits we’ve got here in Australia is that we can look to other parts of the world, and we can see things that are working, not working, and we can preempt what’s going to happen. I’m fascinated that if you look at some half dozen European nations, including Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland, that have introduced voluntary financial incentives for some migrants to return home, surely that’s a window into where we might be heading.
Adam Creighton:
Yes. Look, that’s exactly right. The governments of some of those countries that you just mentioned, they’ve done big studies that look at the economic benefit or cost of a migration from various parts of the world, and some of the studies are pretty damning, they conclude that certain classes of migrants, they don’t add value to society.
Trent Nikolic:
Yeah.
Adam Creighton:
In fact, quite the contrary. And so, those governments, those citizens, they’ve fed up, and now there are programmes to pay, I think in some cases, something like five to $10,000 to immigrants to go home. So, basically it’s like a bribe, if you like, please go home. And look, I think people here are very, very angry, I think that explains the rise of One Nation massively, and it’s just the level of immigration, which is frankly the highest in the OECD as a proportion of our population. It’s not sustainable.
Trent Nikolic:
It’s not sustainable. I’ve, like you, looked through the list of skilled migration, what we’d call categories, I guess, I looked through it this week when we were reporting on it, some of the stuff that’s on there is complete nonsense. So, for example, they’ve listed an auctioneer on there, there’s an actor on there for argument’s sake. First of all, how could anyone justify that? And secondly, why aren’t we just looking at the list going, right, there’s 30 things on there that just need to be taken out immediately?
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, look, certainly that’s right. I mean, just from first principles, the idea that bureaucrats in Canberra can actually know what occupations we need or not is pretty silly really, I mean, that’s what the free market is for, that’s what free wages are for. If there’s a shortage, then the wages will be higher. If there’s not a shortage, then it’s the opposite, that’s just basic free market principles. But yes, you’re quite right, the range of occupations are just absurd. I mean, the favourite for me is we’re supposed to have a housing supply crisis, as you know, but tradesmen are not on the list. And indeed, there’s a class of visa called temporary skilled visa, I think there’s about 230,000 people on it, well, there’s only 3% of those people that have trade skills.
Trent Nikolic:
Crazy. Crazy.
Adam Creighton:
Isn’t that incredible? It’s madness.
Trent Nikolic:
Yeah. Crazy. The other thing I get asked a lot on the open line, Adam, that I’m seeing here now as well is I guess backed up by what I’m about to say, but only half of skilled migrants were still working in the occupation they nominated one year after they applied for their visa.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Well, that just goes to the earlier point that the idea that the government can know where their skills are necessary is just absurd. And of course, also not just skills, but I mean in some cases people say they have skills in something, but they don’t actually have skills in something, and therefore they end up working in some other area. I mean, certainly that’s true of the foreign students that come to our universities, they often study fancy degrees and so forth, but it’s actually very rarely that they end up working in those fields, quite often they end up Uber drivers, so to speak, which I think-
Trent Nikolic:
Well, I’ve got that here. Yeah, I’ve got things like people saying Uber drivers must be a skill, taxi driving must be a skill. Because we speak to, if you’re out moving around as we do, you speak to a lot of people who have got a skill from another part of the world, and they’re Uber driving and you think, how did that happen?
Adam Creighton:
Yes. Yeah. Well, that’s right, it just goes to show we don’t have shortages in the first place in these skilled areas, we don’t actually need these people, but again, I mean, we can’t blame the people for wanting to come here from-
Trent Nikolic:
Not at all.
Adam Creighton:
… from poor countries.
Trent Nikolic:
Not at all.
Adam Creighton:
It’s great for them, but surely it’s the government’s obligation to think about the people that were born here first, not those born in other countries.
Trent Nikolic:
I’ve got a message here from Greg saying, “Trent, I never understood how you could have a skilled migrant scheme in inverted commas when a lot of the people coming over here are for a university education to start with.” That’s a fair point as well.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Trent Nikolic:
Yeah.
Adam Creighton:
No, that’s exactly right. I mean, the reality is some of our universities, now half the students are actually foreign students, which is a crazy fraction that most other countries do not have.
Trent Nikolic:
I think part of the concern as well, Adam, is that the interest of big business in the higher education sector, which obviously profit from ever larger immigration, as we just said there, they appear to have overwhelmed the national interest. And this goes to the point that you just made there, which first and foremost is that the government should govern for the people in the country before bringing others in.
Adam Creighton:
Yes. Look, certainly that’s right. The big business lobby, obviously they just want more customers, so they have a huge self-interest in having a high immigration rate, you can say that about the home building sector, certainly the tertiary education sector, that’s probably the one that profits the most. And so, you’ll always hear arguments about how wonderful the tertiary sector is, and that they need foreign students to fund research, et cetera, et cetera, but these are very self-interested arguments. And of course the other argument I make in that piece is that the Labour Party in particular, but many political parties can actually benefit from high immigration if those people tend to vote for them, that’s just the reality of life.
Trent Nikolic:
Yeah. I’ve got a message here from John saying he’s had to have two different sets of tradesmen come back to his house to spend a lot of time fixing up dramas after so-called tradesmen from overseas did the work in the first place.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Well, I’ve actually personally had the same experience in my apartment in Melbourne, I had it painted and then had to get someone else to do it.
Trent Nikolic:
Yeah. Do it again. One thing I wanted to get your thoughts on before I let you go, Adam, as well, one other thing is just this IMF report that I saw this week about the Albanese government being hit with more grim news on the state of the economy, they’ve predicted further slowdown in growth, and that does not look good for the next medium term, I guess, range in Australia.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, certainly that’s true. Look, I mean, we talked earlier about Australia’s economic performance, it’s very, very bad, but I think something worth mentioning is the rate of inflation in Australia. And it’s extremely depressing that it’s basically the highest rate in the developed world now, at about 4% for core inflation, and that’s just totally unacceptable. I mean, many people sadly don’t really understand what inflation is, but it’s basically reducing the purchasing power of wages and salaries by 4% every year, that’s the rate at the moment. And that’s an extremely high rate when you’ve got higher taxes already, the cost of living crisis, and at the same time you’ve got the high rate of inflation. So, the IMF, the OECD, various agencies are now saying that the reserve bank should lift rates even further interest rates to try to slash inflation. And so, you’re going to have that probably happen over the next year or so.
And at the same time, you’ve got the changes to the tax system, the capital gains tax rates, and I think these two things will conspire to see a fairly significant fall in dwelling prices, which is good of course for people who don’t own, but if the prices fall too fast, then there could be a recession.
Trent Nikolic:
Yeah. I think the other thing that fascinates me about all of this, and we see it on the text line constantly, is that there’s no aspiration left in Australia, Adam. After the budget, just the sense of despair from speaking to average people, people I know who own small and medium businesses, real estate agents, tradies, they’re saying there’s absolutely nothing left that’s aspirational about this country based on the way the government wants to govern.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah, certainly that’s true. Look, I mean, if you look at various consumer confidence indices, like the ANZ One is very famous, going back to the ’70s, it’s now at the lowest level ever basically, in 50 years. So, people are anxious, they realise that the whole economy is basically built on mass immigration, and it’s highly likely in the next few years that that is going to be cut because of the political pushback, and when that happens, there’s nothing else to drive economic growth.
Trent Nikolic:
Yeah. Adam, great to speak to you, mate, thank you so much.
Adam Creighton:
Thanks very much for having me.
Trent Nikolic:
That’s Adam Creighton, Institute of Public Affairs chief economist with the Treasury of Common Sense, a lot of you agreeing with everything that Adam had to say there, it’s very simple plain analysis that sums it up exactly like it is.
This transcript with Adam Creighton talking on 2GB Weekend Mornings with Trent Nikolic from 11 July 2026 has been edited for clarity.
