A government proposal to stop permanent migrants from settling in Australia’s largest urban centers represents the latest salvo in an increasingly politicized debate on immigration and the country’s future as a multicultural melting pot.Alan Tudge, the federal minister overseeing cities, urban infrastructure and population issues, floated the idea of relocating migrants as a way of easing growth pressures on Sydney, Melbourne and south-eastern Queensland, which attracted almost 90% of new settlers in 2017.
“We are working on measures to have more new arrivals go to the smaller states and regions and require them to be there for at least a few years,” Tudge said, adding that the objective was to “match the skills of new migrants with the skill shortages in rural and regional Australia.”
Tudge suggested that visa conditions could apply for as many as 45% of permanent migrants, equivalent to about 70,000 arrivals on 2017 levels. Demographers, however, have already dismissed the proposal as unworkable and a misguided policy option.
Asians, who accounted for 56% of Australia’s migrant intake in 2016-17, would be among those worst affected by such a policy if implemented. Most tend to live close to family and cultural networks in either Sydney or Melbourne.
There were 58,232 permanent settlers from southern and central Asia over that period — mostly Indians, Iraqis and Syrians — 37,235 from northeast Asia (mainly from China) and 31,488 Southeast Asians (the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Myanmar).
The fact that Tudge unveiled the plan in a speech to members of the ruling Liberal Party at the conservative Menzies Research Center suggests it was more of a political statement than a serious policy shift.
The party’s right wing wants to curb migration and Liberal leaders are trying to mend rifts caused by the August dumping of Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister.
Other cabinet ministers have not publicly backed the plan, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison was scathing of such relocation strategies when they were suggested by the then-Labor Party government in 2010.
“So to hold out some false hope that this problem’s going to be solved because a population minister is going to fantastically move people around … is I think unfair to the Australian people to suggest that that is a realistic option, certainly in the short or medium term,” he said.