Tom Elliott:
Our next guest is Deputy Executive Director at the Institute of Public Affairs, Daniel Wild, good morning.
Daniel Wild:
Morning, Tom.
Tom Elliott:
I was quite shocked when I got your press release yesterday. I mean, I assumed perhaps stupidly that there was some honesty up in Canberra and that immigration levels in the current year were being cut, but that’s not really happening, is it?
Daniel Wild:
No, it’s not. The official data comes out every month from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and it paints a picture that the numbers are still going up. As you’ve outlined, almost half a million came into our country over the 12 months to May 2026, which is the most recent data that we have on record. Now, the reason this is a problem as you’ve been discussing is the government wants to keep bringing in more people for a few reasons. One is yes, it makes the budget bottom line look a bit better. Yes, it makes the economy look a bit bigger than it otherwise would be. You’ve got more people coming in, spending more money and so on. But here’s the real problem, Tom. The costs of this are hidden. You mentioned congestion as one example, how do you put a number on congestion? But there’s also things like getting access to a doctor’s appointment, getting into a local school, getting into your local childcare centre and things like this.
So the costs of the migration programme are diffused across our society. They’re very hard to measure. The benefits are concentrated to a small group of people and organisations. So there’s the government, but also universities. Universities get a big benefit from foreign students. And so there’s a lot of pressure to bring in more people, but not a lot of pressure to cut it back.
Tom Elliott:
Yeah. And also the centrepiece of the budget a couple of months ago was we want to make housing more affordable for first home buyers, which looks in the short term as though that might be happening. But again, over the long term, if you’re still bringing in half a million migrants a year, then the pressure on housing, both to buy a house or to rent a house is immense.
Daniel Wild:
Well, it’s supply and demand, as you’d know better than anyone else. And the number one cause of the housing shortage on the demand side has been mass migration. Obviously, if you don’t have the houses built before people come, then you’re going to have higher prices. And this is something I don’t get. If you want to have a big migration programme, okay, let’s have that debate. I don’t agree with it, but other people do. Let’s have the debate. But everybody agrees that let’s get the infrastructure in first. So if you know as a government that you are going to issue half a million visas, then why don’t you get the houses built first before people come into the country?
Tom Elliott:
Because it’s interesting, if you go back, God, it’s almost 20 years now when Kevin Rudd was elected, Kevin 07. I mean, he actually at least came out and said, “I’m in favour of a big Australia.” And he got people like Hugh Jackman and other celebrities to do things on whiteboards to suggest what we might do to achieve that. But I mean, at least he came out and said, “I believe in a big Australia.” Now he got shot down on that a few years later and his own party axed him. But the government’s own figures about how many houses we have to build a year, we’re not meeting the targets. We’re missing it by around 20%. So they say they want to help first home buyers by changing the tax arrangements to property, but then they keep bringing in half a million new people a year and the two things are at odds with each other.
Daniel Wild:
Well, they are at odds. And you’ve also got this classic issue here, which is the differences between the federal and the state governments because the federal government gets all the benefits of migration. The state governments incur a lot of the costs, right, because health, education and a lot of issues related to housing are state government responsibility. So you’ve got that issue that plays up with a lot of policies in our country. I also want to draw your attention to another point here, Tom, that’s related to the house building, which is that some people will say, “Well, okay, I understand that migrants that come need a house, but don’t we need the skilled migrants to come to build the houses to start with?” And I would say, “Well, yeah, that’s true to an extent. But when you look at the numbers, and I was shocked when I saw this, when you actually look at what is counted as a skilled migrant or who is counted as a skilled migrant, less than 46% of those who are issued with skilled visas are actually those who have skills.
Now, why is that? Well, it’s because if you’re a doctor who comes in, you have a skilled visa. Tick. Yeah, got that. But if you’re the spouse of the doctor, you’re also counted as having a skilled requirement. Now, I’m not saying let’s not have family reunification, because if you want skilled people to come, they’ve got to be able to bring their families. I’ve got that, but let’s not pretend that they’re skilled. So when the government says it’s running a skilled migration programme, it’s not. It’s running a chain migration programme based on family reunification.
Tom Elliott:
Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you, Daniel. Daniel Wild there from the Institute of Public Affairs.
This transcript with Daniel Wild talking on Mornings with Tom Elliott 3AW from 15 July 2026 has been edited for clarity.
