The Point Live: Labor migration plan to be announced, family visas, overstayers targeted. As it happened.

Usually we would keep the blog open and try and pretend there is anyone still interested in anything political at the dying hours of the last day of the sitting, but honestly – we have one gloriously flawed life and spending another minute looking at this parliament today is not the way anyone should be spending it.

So go look at a flower. Call a friend. Rewatch Archer. Eat something. Pat a cat. Enjoy all the memes dunking on Ed Sheeran – whatever little bit of joy you can squeeze in before the sun sets and the evening labours take over.

Thank you to everyone who has joined us this week – it is such a shock to see so many of you with us each week and we are truly grateful for each and every visit. Parliament doesn’t return until 12 October – so we all get a three week break from this particular madness, but there will be plenty of issues to keep cover, which The Point will. You have the Intergenerational report, the RBA rates decision and AI – as well as every other existential issue threatening our existence – and we’ll be all over all of it.

Until then – take care of you. Ax

Well, just about. Anthony Albanese has taken a dixer on his trip to America which starts tomorrow.

And we know that this is what he wants to end the sitting on.

Indeed, global uncertainty and conflict overseas is putting Australians under real pressure. And that’s why I’ll always show up to shape a better future for Australia to have a say in these forums. Tomorrow, I will travel to the United States. It will be an opportunity to talk our nation up, showing the world everything we have to offer. On Saturday, I will have meetings in San Francisco, including with Tim Cook, the head of Apple, and other meetings will take place in the United States with the private sector, including obviously representing Australia at the United Nations General Assembly, along with the Foreign Minister. I’ll be working with our partners as well to build on the record which has seen now 20 countries since we announced our social media ban for under-16s, engage in action themselves. And, of course, also as has been raised a number of times now during this question time, it is important that we have dialogue about governance arrangements with regard to artificial intelligence. Making sure that we have the economic and security benefit that is can come with AI, but doing it in a way that protects Australia’s national interests. Now do that, we have to be engaged with our friends in the United States, because the two big countries that are engaged, of course, are the United States and China in what is this extraordinary emerging technology that will change the way that society functions over our lifetime, but over the next decade. If we don’t get this right in the next few years, it can getaway from us, and we need to make sure that doesn’t occur.

 When Australia’s oversea, we also represent our region, the Pacific family. And there will be engagement with them about issues including, of course, climate change, which is the number one issue for our Pacific family. And also, talking about the opportunities which are there, given that Australia has the resources, technology and the people to drive the world’s clean energy trainings, including the critical minerals and rare earths that we have, and we’ll be discussing with… I’ll be discussing with our American friends the agreement that was put in place by myself and President Trump, and how that is progressing. While there, I’ll also launch our bid for a seat on the UN Security Council.

It is vital that as a middle power, Australia play its role. We are respected around the world. The biggest challenges that Australia faces are global ones, and that’s why us having a say at the UN Security Council table is very much in Australia’s national interest. 

And on that note, Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the notice paper.

Well just about. Anthony Albanese is asked by Kate Chaney:

Q: This week the leader AI developers have publicly agreed that AI is developing faster than our ability to control it. The Australian AI safety institute is our front-line defence against these risks to test models, support our regulators and work with international partners. We invest only $8 million a year in the institute, half of 1 per cent of what we invest in biosecurity. In light of growing public concern, will you commit to increasing the funding for the AI safety institute?

Albanese:

We do want more of a stake in where AI is made and how it is made. We want more Australian companies and global companies developing AI here, on our terms, in our interests.

That is how we will have influence over these issues.

As I said,s at Sydney university, in the speech I gave there, we want to make sure that the creativity, created by our writers and our musicians is actually valued and that they have some control. If we do not participate in this process we will not have any control. We won’t have a say, which is why we have prioritised this as an issue. 

We created the AI safety institute in November 2025, and I table the media release from Dr Andrew Charlton and Tim Ayres, establishment of Australia AI safety institute. That was an important organisation which is working closely with partner institutes in the UK and Canada. It’s also working very closely with the Australian Signals Directorate and you would have seen the comments by Abigail, from the – from ASD this week as well, who has also warned of some of the risks which are there.

This institute will provide our agencies and security experts with up-to-date information and testing to respond to emerging risks. AI’s safety is a whole of government responsibility but that’s also why we will be legislating for Australian standards on AI. And all of that will be fed into the process through the committee, chaired by the member nor Maribyrnong, and I encourage all members to really participate in this. We want to make sure that we follow best practice.

It’s just been established – it’s just been established, less than one year ago, and we don’t make funding decisions made through ERC and budge process. So, we think that we want to make sure this follows best practice, AI safety and security standards. We want to make sure that it works in ways that ensure Australian creatives are in control of and retain ownership of their work and payment and we want to make sure that data — data centres used for AI training aren’t pushing up energy bills, impacting water resources or being built without meaningful community engagement.

Gee, I wonder why the Coalition isn’t connecting with voters?

Tony Pasin asks:

My question is to the Prime Minister. Did the Prime Minister provide Reece Muldoon with a reference for his Australia Day ambassadorial role?

Albanese:

No.

It seems like it. And also, that would make sense. But we are on to day three of this now.

Q: Prime Minister was asked twice whether he provided a reference for his foul-mouthed friend Rhys Muldoon. The Prime Minister refused to answer the question. Has the Prime Minister ever provided Rhys Muldoon with a reference?

Albanese:

Mr Muldoon’s comments were completely unacceptable, as I have said. I’m advised that Mr Muldoon has been an Australia Day Ambassador since 2014. It’s clearly not appropriate for that to occur. And as I have said I wasn’t aware of his comments until they were raised in the media. Neither was Senator Dowling. Senator Dowling took immediate action and that is appropriate.

Which means that probably, yes, at some point Albanese gave a reference. But honestly – he’s been sacked. What is the end game here? The planet is burning, genocide is being normalised and there are actual issues in the world and Australia which have never received this sort of attention – and its for something which has been addressed.

Anika Wells takes a dixer so she can speak on the digital duty of care proposals:

Today is Alannah and Madeleine day, a way and day that marks both an unfathomable tragedy in the loss of two beautiful young lives in Port Arthur and it also celebrates their legacy, the Alannah and mad sin Foundation which 30 years later continues to fight for the right of children to be free from violence, trauma and abuse.

The Prime Minister is the patron of the Alannah and mad sin Foundation and I recently had the pleasure of joining class 5MM at Everton Park state school to try out some of the new modules of the foundation’s eSmart program which these students helped to develop.

This program teaches school children how to be safe and how to treat others well online. The Albanese government is proud to support this program with $6 million worth of funding. Because the world has changed.

Bullying has moved online and into group chats and online games and Snapchat or text messages and it can be relentless, following children home and into their bedrooms on the weekend.

More than half of Australian children have now experienced cyberbullying online and the rates are liar among First Nations children, children who are gender or sexually diverse or children with disability. That means for most Australian families, at least one child has now experienced cyberbullying, whether that’s through hurtful words, viral lies, humiliating or fake photos or being told online to hurt or kill themselves.

Online harms have real world consequences. And the Albanese government understands this and the Alannah and Madeleine Foundation CEO, who joined us last week to announce our draft digital duty of care knows this. Mia, and Emma and Wayne, whose children were lost because of what they experienced online, they know in, and at the heart of the Albanese government’s digital duty of care is the right for children to live their lives free from abuse, harm, trauma and violence online.

Digital platforms will have to satisfy the eSafety Commissioner that the tools and features that our kids are using are safe. A they will have to apply basic safety standards just as we have for kids toys, cars, food. This means detecting cyber bullying and abuse, this means stopping it before it happens. The digital duty of care has three goals.

One, protecting kids online. Two, getting illegal content off platforms and, three, giving Australians more choice over what they see online. I urge the Opposition to tell us what it would take to support this bill and act with the urgency our children

Barnaby Joyce has obviously put a lot of effort into this question:

Q: How much have we spent thus far on green hydrogen projects?

Chris Bowen:

If I heard the honourable member correctly to confirm, he’s asked how many has been spent on green hydrogen. I just wanted to make sure. There are a number of government programs withery relevant, some of which were announced by the previous government and some of which have been announced by us.

Some of the hydrogen hubs that were announced by the previous government have not proceeded I’m happy to get the honourable member further details on that.

Importantly, the government’s policy for a green hydrogen production tax credit and the hydrogen shed staff are only paid on production, that was an important part of the design of the policy for green hydrogen is not being produced there is no money being paid for it. 

The other expenditure the honourable member might be referring to is the support for Fortescue’s green hydrogen manufacturing plant in Gladstone which was run under the industry department and was initiated under the previous government of which the honourable member was Deputy Prime Minister. 

Given the honourable member asked me about green hydrogen, it is relevant to say that as I said before, I still have the view that green hydrogen has a role to play in industrial decarbonise It’s taking longer than was predict at few years ago.

The Opposition criticised me for saying that it could provide $50 billion in additional GDP by 2050. The member for Wannon has criticise for that. I want to give credit where it’s due. I stand on the shoulder of giants because my predecessor as Minister for Energy, the member for Hume, said, on 1 – 8 occasions that hydrogen would be responsible for $50 billion of additional GDP by 2050.

There is a point of order which is not a point of order and Bowen continues:

Indeed, as I have indicatedabout.the two government policies are hydrogen head start and the production tax credit which are only paid on production and no payments have been made because none has been produced. I will get the honourable member more information about the hydrogen hub because some are proceeding and some haven’t been proceeding.

On green hydrogen as has been the case that governments have invested in green hydrogen. For example, my predecessor, as Minister for Energy said, ‘Green hydrogen, which is made from renewables, we expected to be getting down to the $2 mark in the 20 pos so we’re investing heavily in this’ Said the member for Hume when he had my Jo. Green hydrogen has received support from both governments, that is the case and I table the 8 occasions on which the member for Hume said that hydrogen could boost GDP by 2050 which is exactly what I said. Which is what the Opposition has criticised me for.

Michael McCormack asks Matt Keogh (who remains the veterans affairs minister but who knows for how much longer)

The minister has been forced into many backflips – on recognition of Defence Force personnel, funding for the Invictus Games, travel for the force of Victoria Cross, and now to scrap the cap on veteran allied health services. Will the minister apologise to veterans and their families after putting them through months of mental anguish and stress caused by his plan for cruel cuts or will he just resign?

Keogh:

Of course we take our solemn obligation as a government to look after those who currently serve and those who have served our nation in our nation’s uniform in our Defence Force and their families incredibly seriously. 

That’s why we have been so committed to implementing the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide.

As part of trying to improve access to allied healthcare and remove burden on veterans, we brought forward a package of measures to improve access to allied health, improving the fees paid to allied health practitioners so they would provide better service to our veteran community where they were withdrawing service and also removing a cycle and replacing that with request with a threshold. 

As part of that we also committed and did engage with the ex-service organisations, with veterans, with families. I undertook that, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs undertook that. Which meetings to colleaguings also engaged with their veterans community and we committed to listen, and we did. And we heard. We have responded O as part of that, we are not proceeding with the threshold.

But we are also ensuring that we are increasing that access to allied healthcare by maintaining that increase in fees so that allied health professionals will continue to service our veteran community, which is so vitally important. In doing that, we have also taken a considered approach, engaging and listening and making sure that we can deliver on those royal commission recommendations. That’s what we have been able to secure in the Senate today with the passage of important legislation to itchment and support 40 recommendations of the royal commission.

Berries and Cream has held it together so he can ask Jim Chalmers a question at the halfway point:

Q: Labor legend Bill Kelty has declared the Treasurer’s economic model a failure and Labor’s own backbench are leaking against him saying Australians aren’t buying the Treasurer’s spin. Now the Australian Financial Review reports the Treasurer has switched back to using the 30-year average from the 20-year average for productivity in order to pump up his numbers with cooking the books the only answer to Australia’s economic crisis, how many more chances does the Prime Minister intend to give his failing Treasurer?

This is very amusing given the numbers the Coalition and IPA are cooking up to talk migration.

Chalmers:

They’ve got a lot of nerve asking about productivity assumptions given they presided over the weakest decade for productively growth in the last 60 years. The weakest decade for productivity growth in the last 60 years was the decade that they presided over and their budgets weren’t worth the paper they were written on because they deliberately kept productivity assumptions at 1.5 per cent. The June quarter of 2022, the quarter that they left office was the weakest quarter for productivity in over 40 years.

They’ve got a lot of nerve asking about productivity. They did nothing about productivity in their wasted decade of missed opportunities in office. The assumption in the budget and the assumption in the intergenerational report is set by Treasury based op all the available data here and abroad and it is a long run assumption.

It’s not common to constantly change long run assumptions. One of the first things I did as Treasurer was to get rid of the coalition’s dodgy productivity assumption and make it more realistic on the advice of the Treasury department. I accepted their advice to downgrade the long run assumption to 1.2 per cent. As I said, they’re not changed frequently.

While productivity growth has been weak for the last couple of decades there are some potential upsides including from artificial intelligence. The productivity assumption is consistent with international forecasts. The UK uses 1.5. The US uses 1.4. New Zealand uses of 0 — 0.9 and we’re in the middle of those assumptions.

The Treasury changed the transition path from two years to five years, recognising the how volatile short term movements can be. More broadly, as I said, this country has had a productivity challenge not for the last couple of years but for the last couple of decades and that’s why this government, more than our predecessors over there, takes this productivity challenge seriously. We take responsibility for trying to turn it around over time.

That’s why the budget had the broadest and biggest productivity agenda of any budget in recent decades. An McAdam general da which is about approvals being faster, about working with the federation, foreign investment reform. All of the agenda that the Prime Minister ran through on AI and the technological revolution, all of the important ways set out in the intergenerational report on Monday that we can try and turn this productivity performance around. To finish where I started. Of all of the people that I would take advice on, on productivity, those opposite would not be anywhere near the top of the list.

The Greens have responded to the Labor migration cut announcements, calling it a return to the Abbott era (speaking of – remember when they were going to allow Dutton to send out Border Security to check people’s visas in the streets? And then the reaction was so swift they had to cancel it? Good times.)

From the Greens statement:

Immigration Minister Tony Burke’s delayed migration announcement is an incoherent mess seeking to take Australia back to the Abbott era in a race to the bottom with One Nation. 

Labor is opening new detention centres across the country and recruiting hundreds of Border Force compliance officers, to force people into these places. This will mean hundreds of people held in privately run prisons, despite committing no crime and facing no court. 

The government already has extensive powers over visas. They have chosen to use them to keep hundreds of thousands of people on temporary visas for years, and deny people a fast and fair process. 

Minister Bourke has made it clear he only wants to work with the Liberals to take Australia back to the days of Tony Abbott. This uniparty is the exact reason politics on immigration has shifted to the right and allowed space for One Nation. 

The Minister talked about ‘speeding up processing’ of visas, but this Labor government has overseen a significant blow out in wait times. Partner visas wait times have doubled in recent years to 40 months, parent visas are now 30 years. None of the changes he has offered will address this. The only mention of family visas was making it harder for families to unite. 

The Greens do not want people waiting for a humanitarian visa for 9 years or 3 years for a partner visa. If the Government wants to pass legislation that genuinely improves our immigration system including fixing wait times, the Greens are here to offer a pathway.

If the Labor Government wants a fair and fast processing of family and protection visas the Greens are here. That means fully funding Home Affairs processing to get over the significant backlogs, it means ensuring there are trusted funded legal bodies that assist with migration applications acting as an initial triage, to make the fair and timely decisions on visas needed.

Greg Jericho

Angus Taylor opening Question Time with:

Under Labor, 1100 people have arrived in Australia everyday. That’s a new person arriving in Australia every 78 seconds. Labor is in denial. Why were there no cuts to immigration today?

Just in case you’re wondering where the LNP get’s its research from, that 1,100 figures came verbatim from a media release from the IPA and Angus just worked out the 78 secs amount because wow that is amazing!

Problem is the figures the IPA are using is the March quarter net overseas migration figure.

The March quarter is always the quarter that has the biggest number – because of uni students starting the year:

In the March quarter net overseas migration was 101,000 that does work out at around 1,100 a day.

But that number is the lowest March quarter since the pandemic.

And it we instead used the annual number, which is 292,100. That works out at 800 a day or one every 107 seconds.

It is probably worth noting that three months ago when the last lot of figures were released, the IPA did not refer to the quarterly figures but used the annual figures.

Back in the chamber and Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown asks:

Prime Minister, Anthropic plans to build a giant data centre in the western downs, potentially increasing Queensland’s energy use by 25 per cent, the equivalent usage of 1.5 million homes, therefore pushing up power prices – will you legislate requirements for data centres to build renewable infrastructure at least equal to their energy In the meantime, will you place a moratorium on data centre approvals?

Anthony Albanese (a reminder that investment does not equal Australian control – or even benefit)

I thank the member for Ryan for her question. And it goes to artificial intelligence and its impact in local communities, something that has caused an issue around the world. It must be said. We think that there is enormous benefit to come from artificial intelligence in areas such as health care, health provision, doing analysis to make a difference, benefits in education, potentially benefit as well in productivity but that doesn’t meant that there are not risks which need to be mitt dated which is why aI announced that we would legislate for Australian standards to make sure the artificial intelligence works in our national interests. 

This was raised as well at our National Cabinet meeting and it was agreed there that we would progress the legislation which, because of the corporations’ power, the Commonwealth will have power to legislate to ensure that the suggestion that’s made that it would increase power prices, that it won’t do that. That it will need renewables if there is surplus energy in gas, for example, in some areas then we would allow that to be used on the proviso that it does not put pressure on the system and therefore put pressure on prices that ordinary Australians are paying a. Why is that important? That’s important because you need social licence for these institutions. 

We’re working constructively to make sure that that social licence is available, is absolutely critical. We have said very clearly that we must shape AI or it will shape us. Areas such as sovereign capability, our capacity to provide for the defence and security of Australia is absolutely essential.

The idea that we must say we’ll have a moratorium on new technology, which is one option that has been put forward, I know, by the Greens political party, what I want to do is not have a moratorium. I want us to be at the forefront of shaping it in our national interests. Because this is a technology that is happening. You can engage in ChatGPT or any of these facilities right now.

It is having an impact. That is why we can’t afford to sit on the sideline because if we sit on the sideline we won’t have any impact on how this rolls out. Next week, at the United Nations, I expect that this will be a major topic of conversation on the way.

Tomorrow night I leave and arrive on the same night because of the way that it works in San Francisco, four meetings to take place but I’ll engage constructively and I would encourage all of the Parliament to engage with the committee, chaired by the member for Maribyrnong, deputy chaired by Senator Duniam in the other place, and engage constructively .

This is not a partisan issue, this is one which really requires the national interest to be first and foremost.

Speaking of being depressingly accurate…

We hate it when we are right on thing like this. But that doesn’t mean the fight ends.

Kevin Hogan gets the next question which means Berries and Cream has been sidelined. Interesting.

Q:  There were no cuts to immigration today yet the Prime Minister blew a $7 billion black hole in your budget with a single text to an ABC journalist. Labor is in denil and gas lighting the public on. How can Australians trust anything Labor says on this and the effects of migration on the budget?

Jim Chalmers takes this one:

I think they assume that the Shadow Treasurer would be thrown out by now, Mr Speaker.

When it comes to migration, Mr Speaker, as the Minister for Home Affairs just said, migration is a force for good in our communities, in our country, in our economy, as long as it’s properly managed and the announcement that the Minister made today at the National Press Club, and the series of important steps that we are taking, is all about ensuring that our migration system is robust and that it delivers in our national interest, including in our national economic interest, Mr Speaker.

I pay tribute to the Minister for the work that he has done… ..leading this policy development and also the wonderful job that he did at the National Press Club today laying out our policy.

The difference between this side of the House and that side of the House…is our migration policy is determined by cabinet ministers in the cabinet room.

The Liberal Party’s migration policy is determined by One Nation in the cockpit of a plane donated by a billionaire.

That’s the difference. Between this side of the House and that side of the House.

If you look at the migration numbers that came out today, today there were new numbers on net overseas migration, and what it showed is that net overseas migration on our watch has nearly halved from its peak.

We expect it to fall further, Mr Speaker. If you look at the net overseas migration numbers that came out at 11:30 today, what they show is that we are ahead of schedule, ahead of forecast, when it comes to getting the net overseas migration number down to more normal levels.

We understand, even if those opposite don’t want to front up to this, Mr Speaker, when we came to office net overseas migration was surging. And a lot of the key indicators in the housing market were falling and we are turning that around. The net overseas migration numbers show that that is the case, and the policies announced by the Home Affairs Minister earlier today are all about ensuring that we continue to manage the program in a responsible way in the interests of our people and in the interests of their economy.

Matt Grudnoff

The opposition housing spokesman Andrew Bragg has claimed in a media release that new population figures released today show that the migration program is not keeping up with new housing supply.

Let’s fact check this by looking the latest numbers.

Over the last year according to the latest population figures released today, the population has increased by 393,000. At the current average number of people per home of 2.433, the number of homes we need to house this increase in population is 380,000.

But according to ABS the number of homes over the last year has increased by 393,000. That’s 13,000 more than required.

And smash me down and call me avocado – the first questions are on migration – but more bullshit numbers.

Angus Taylor:

Under Labor, 1100 people have arrived in Australia everyday. That’s a new person arriving in Australia every 78 seconds. Labor is in denial. Why were there no cuts to immigration?

This is an IPA talking point and I am getting people to check but this looks like old numbers. We’ll get back to you on that.

Tony Burke:

I’m asked about the announcement today by the Leader of the Opposition.

That was the final part of the question, was about why we have made the announcements the way we have, and in particular why the numbers that we’re talking about, are the numbers that are in the budget, in referring to the term cuts, the member opposite is wanting to say that cuts should be – we should go deeper than what the numbers are projected in the budget.

Let me say this to the Leader of the Opposition, as I said to the National Press Club today – if you make cuts too deep too hard in the immigration system, you trash the Australian economy.

I say to the member opposite has he listened to his own backbenchers as they’ve been calling for working holidaymakers?

Has he listened to the Farmers’ Federation and others as they’ve been saying they don’t have enough workers or does he fall for this argument that maybe it’s only the regions and not the cities?

Does he understand in any way the fact that if you’re trying to build houses and housing is something that we need, we also have skills shortages, we also have skills shortages. In Sydney and Melbourne, two-thirds of the plaster is essential for new housing are borne overseas.

Does he understand that the people who have jobs at our universities, funded by international education, are Australian citizens with real jobs? Does he understand that the people who work there have real jobs?

Does he understand that the small businesses that exist off the back of international education also are people with real jobs?

Australia does need, we do need, to tempt interest rate of migration to give housing a chance to catch up. We do need to do that.We do need to do that, but what we must never do and what no responsible party of government should ever call to do is to say they will leave Australian businesses without the skills they need to make their businesses run.

That they will leave Australian farmers without the skills that they need to be able to deal with the next harvest.

That those opposite would be able to have a situation where for industries like law enforcement, like resources, like our teachers, like construction, we are proudly a nation that has been built on immigration. Absolutely proudly. What we need to make sure is the system is managed as effectively as possible. We need to make sure that it is guided to deliver for the needs of the Australian people.

What we don’t need is random dog whistling and someone wanting to claim – of someone wanting to claim that they’re against all the numbers that – they want all the numbers to be lower except every visa that might affect their electorate.

Greg Jericho

The latest population data also shows interstate migration.

As ever more people are moving to Queensland than are leaving. (That because it’s a good place to die, or because it’s god’s own county, take your pick!) (Amy edit: It’s because it’s the greatest nation on earth Grogs. GOSH)

WA is also doing well at the moment – mining jobs are on a bit of a tear

NSW as usual is the state that loses the most numbers (mostly just by virtue of it also being the most populous state)

But even though WA and Queensland are getting people from interstate , it’s not as big as in the past, indeed Queensland is getting fewer people moving there than for most of the past 40 years

It also reflects that overall we’re not moving interstate as much as we used to. Back in the 1990 around 1.8% of the population moved interstate each year now it’s down to 1.3%

Well, what you saw there is a bunch of stuff Labor have wanted to do for some time – changing up some of the ‘permanently temporary’ visa changes Coalition governments have done over the last 30 years.

The main focus are the Morrison changes – changing up how international students can receive visas and what they can move to, how many family members can be brought in, and also addressing the Labor issues with free trade agreements and working holiday agreements which largely have been Coalition signed agreements, that have included labour flows designed to suppress wages in Australia.

They are using the cover of this ‘debate’ to do it. But they won’t be upsetting business. Just universities. And there also wasn’t a huge amount of pushback to the narratives which have taken hold, but (and yes, this is scraps) it is good to see a politician say there is no mass migration problem. Because there isn’t.

Where this is going to get real for people is in compliance. That is to be boosted and you’ll be seeing a lot of American, British and Europeans being taken into detention for overstaying visas. And that is not what people will expect. And it is also going to be a lot more brutal then what is being flagged.

Q: Just popping your Home Affairs hat on, the ASIO boss spoke about, recently, a probable terror threat level, not really explaining how serious it is, but there’s a limitation on lifting it to anything higher. And there’s also this new category, so attacks that could be serious but were thwarted early in their preparation. 16 since Bondi, which sounds pretty high. Is it time for a “see something, say something” type campaign? Is that where you feel things could be in Australia? Or is it not…?

Tony Burke:

Yeah, look, some of the campaigns that we’re looking at include the issue of the publicising of the National Security Hotline as well. One of the things that people don’t realise, every call that goes through to the hotline – and, yes, you get some pranks, some calls that don’t lead anywhere – all of it’s followed up. All of it makes a difference. Every extra piece of information that people can give us matters.

And the other area of communications that we’re working our way through at the moment is what advice we can give to friends and parents. If I were to go to the risk that a normal advertising campaign won’t reach, but in terms of our national security, we really have to look at, is how do you deal with the young male playing games, chatting to people overseas, who thinks they’re chatting to a friend their own age, may in fact soon be chatting to AI, and then if AI gets into a certain point of radicalisation, they get handed over to another handler? We’ve talked today about what comes over the border and who comes over the border.

Can I also say we need to be really careful about what comes over the browser. We have real national security risks there, particularly for young people. So, one of the challenges in any advertising campaign there is, “What do we do for parents to notice what signals there might be?” Because the radicalisation online, what used to take years of people being recruited into terrorist cells can now happen within days.

With low reference points to being able to cause real harm to people. So, across all the advertising campaigns, the one that I’m most concerned about – and I have been putting the most work into lately – is working out who these young people might interact with – be it their parents, be it a teacher, be it a coach – who might actually notice there’s just been a sudden change in their language, in what they’re saying, and it’s OK to make the phone call. You don’t need to be sure that you’re reporting complete radicalisation.

And we established a system to be able to do this in the Budget before last, I think it was. It might have been the last Budget. But the advertising campaign on that, I think, is the biggest risk that we need to get moving on. Because that’s the bit that people are most likely to be unaware of. There’s been – and we can always do more, and I do want to do more – but we can always do more in getting people to contact the National Security Hotline. But people are unlikely to call the National Security Hotline about their own child.

Whereas a program like Step Together, which has been very successful in New South Wales, and we’re now working out nationally, allows people to just report, “I’m just a bit worried about something,” and gives a lower entry point. But we need to have an explainer for people in a simple advertising campaign of what are the signs to look out for. The national security environment has never been more complex. And what you said at the start is where… And I’m talking about this with the agencies.

Each of the Five Eyes has a slightly different security profile, but effectively for us, once you get to “probable”, there’s realistically no escalation, because “likely” is when you know something is about to occur, and “certain” is when it’s occurring. 

So, from probableable all the way up — probable all the way up, there can be significant changes, and we don’t have a simple way of expressing that under our current framework. So, that’s something that we’re talking about and need to do, and in terms of advertising campaign, how we work through communicating the Step Together campaign is really gonna matter.

Q: You spoke about making the immigration system more decent and work for Australians, but you also said Australian citizens are waiting years for spouse visas. In my case, it was three years before I could move back to Australia with my family. Is that a choice by the department to proprong the processing of visas, to slow down the net migration of Australians and their families back to the country? And do you propose any changes to that, either to speed that up or slow that down?

Burke:

Look, there’s a planning level that’s used by the department based on a planning level that’s a Budget decision each year. Within that planning level, we do have a situation now where more Australians fall in love with people overseas than they used to, and the demand on spouse visas is higher than it used to be. We are always managing the different elements of family. The planning level, we have to cover the whole permanent program with that. So, we have to cover the skills program with that as well. But for family visas, we’re always balancing – ’cause it’s not just the partner visa, and obviously long waits can put tremendous pressure. Fortunately, now what I announced with respect to visitor visas, make it easier for partners to spend extended time in Australia together, even though the visa isn’t there, because there’s no longer an automatic switch to a bridging visa. 

Similarly, that’s not the only part of family migration. I’m also concerned if you apply for a non-contributory parent visa, which you would apply for when your parent turns 65, at the moment that’s a 30-year wait. You do the sums on different parts of the family system, this is why I’m astonished when some of my opponents say, “We need to be harder on family migration.” We’re pretty much at the limit, I’ve gotta say, on family migration at the moment, in terms of the delays. And, yeah, that is what it is.

The challenge is one that we are always working through. It is difficult for waiting periods to get any longer than they now are. And people do go through hardship while they are waiting. The visitor visa change will make a real difference in people being able to spend time together.

Q: One of the policies you’ve touched on today is around reducing secondary visas for international students. Today is also the first time we’ve heard you speak about this policy. However, One Nation has been speaking about this in the last month, and, indeed, it featured in their policy on Monday. In the age of populist politics, how important – how much political capital has Labor lost in allowing One Nation to lead the debate? And is it incumbent on Government to be more reactive and responsive in speaking about these issues as they come up?

Burke:

Yeah, look, certainly, I made sure that until all of our processes internally had been completed that I wasn’t going to announce things in a piecemeal fashion. But needless to say – and that’s why, because of this sort of concern – just to make clear, each of these measures had been developed way back in February, and we’ve just worked things through in a logical, orderly way. In terms of the politics of all of it, can I just say the most important thing for a government in dealing with immigration policy is making sure that we get the policy right and we get the decency right, and that we then explain it. To be explaining things in a piecemeal way before we had actually landed things would have simply resulted in confusion. Has that meant there was something I’d been working on for months that someone else said first? Yeah. But I think in the long term, there’s a bit of noise in that.

Q: When it comes to voter confidence, though, how important is it that the Government is seen to be leading on these issues and not being sidelined by minor parties?

Burke:

The key issue for confidence is two-fold. People want to know that the migration system unfolds in the way that we say it will, and that’s why, even though those net overseas migration forecasts have traditionally been forecast, there’s now an expectation we can show we can deliver that, and we’re making sure we do that. But the other part that’s incumbent on any government is to make sure that we’re looking after the economy. And we are, now that these lower numbers are out from our opponents, we are now walking straight into an argument where effectively we have people who will be going to the next election, effectively arguing that in regional areas you have large-scale hospital closures and doctors that you just can’t find. That’s what it means. It means a whole lot of aged care just won’t be available for elderly relatives. If they were to implement the sorts of numbers they’re talking about. And so I’m on for that conversation.

Q: Under the changes of who leaves, how many more departures do you expect based on the tougher compliance and enforcement that you’ve outlined, such as a hundred new staff and 250 new beds?

Tony Burke:

Yeah, OK. So, the 250 beds, if you work on the basis that effectively it depends on how quickly the person then departs once they’re in those beds. It’s not 250 permanent places. So, you’d certainly turn over more than four in a year, and sometimes you’d only have people in there for a couple of weeks, sometimes even less than that. The behavioural change is actually the biggest outcome. So, we’re dealing with something that Australia hasn’t done for 11 years. But if you go back to how this used to work, effectively, you used to get 6-7 voluntary departures for every person who you’d actually brought in. And so that capacity is the real change here.

The real change is effectively for people to be self-managing and working on the basis that, “This is a country where, if I’ve no longer got a visa, I should leave.” And it’s a behavioural change that’s actually the really big shift.

Q: Given what you announced today when it comes to international students, there might be some who decide they no longer want to come to Australia in the future. Do you have any projections on the number of students that will come, what the potential cost implications might be? And given how complex the migration question is when it comes to Australia’s economy, are you and the Treasurer still on good terms, are you still mates after tackling this issue?

Tony Burke:

Yeah, absolutely. Add that to the list of things I’ve read that have surprised me about myself! I’ve had all sorts of arguments that I wasn’t aware of, as I’ve watch the news over the last six weeks. And, yeah, that is what it is. Sorry, I got distracted by the laughs.Do you have projections on international student numbers, the kind of costYes, thank you.

So, our impact.planning levels are unchanged.

OK, so the planning levels as to how many applications, we expect to be able to process, is unchanged. There is a change that’s going on at the moment for particular cohorts, which is a bit more complex, which some people have represented as us dealing with net overseas migration, which isn’t. And that is there are some applications from particular countries where the refusal rates start to go up, has started to go up.

Effectively, what’s happening there with student visas is we’ve had to look more carefully at how we check people’s assets to make sure that they can actually afford the course. Because what was happening was there were some people coming, where, in fact, the only way they were going to be able to afford the course was if they also got a migration outcome and spent 10 years working in Australia.

And so some of that means that there are some rejections happening at the moment. But that said, our planning level hasn’t changed, and we are giving the scope for the universities and the educational institutions to be able to run their businesses, be able to do what they do best for the Australian economy, but to make sure that what they’re selling is an education, not a migration outcome.

Q: Minister, you said that the housing shortage isn’t caused by migration. Given the importance of construction workers in Australia’s migrant intake, short-term and then long-term, because they may be different, what impact do your current migration targets have on rental prices around Australia?

Burke:

Can I put it in these terms, Charles? Effectively, the key to trying to get rents lower, housing affordability better, a whole lot of that relies on supply. You don’t get supply without getting the skills that you need to be able to build the houses. What I’ve announced today is to make sure that we go harder than we ever have before on construction skills, about making sure that we prioritise more than we ever have on both the permanent program and the temporary program, in making sure that the skills we need to build the houses are built and come here to Australia.

So, effectively, everything I’ve announced today, what impact, what sort of pressure does it put? It puts upward pressure on housing supply and downward pressure on the issues you’ve raised.You think this will bring, eventually, the price of rents down?It’s never going to be the only issue. But obviously anything you do that improves supply, you know, we’re both here, we’re both improving supply and reducing demand.

We’re doing the two things that should help with exactly what you’ve described.

Q: Just following up actually from the last couple of questions, do you acknowledge that while you have been in Government there are points in this debate that have been extremely harmful to migrant communities, where Labor was either quiet or, according to those communities, felt like there was a silence? And is there a concession that you need to make that it’s, as a result, migrant communities who have paid the price of demonisation in this process?

Q: Can you give me an example of when I have been silent on that? ‘CauseThis is what the migrant…community is feeling.

Burke:

I’ve spent my whole career, my entire political life, standing up against hate speech…my entire political life.

Q: We’ve spoken here about mass migration. You today have declared that to be absurd. The feedback from migrant communities is they haven’t felt the Government has their back to really loudly push back. It’s not my view, it’s the view I’m getting from the community groups who feel that demonisation.

Burke:

All I can say is I’ve given the speech I’ve given today, pretty emphatically. And the issues of making sure that people, no matter what their heritage is, that their citizenship is the same, that they are 100% part of the Australian community. We build this project together. It’s something that I would be saying on a platform somewhere pretty much every day, and have devoted my political career as much more to that cause probably than you’re hard to find any other.

Tony Burke on the parliament:

The nature of some of the issues that you would deal with here are issues where, immediately on introduction in black-and-white legislation, you would get a behavioural change.

So, for example, if people see something you’re doing that you’re closing down a visa-hopping process, and the legislation is then before, you’ll get a behavioural change completely against the national interest that would happen immediately. Immediately.

With taxation law, there is a long-standing tradition that you can effectively have the legislation, have its effective start from the date of introduction. The history of courts with immigration law has not always been as government would hope. I am not going to, for the sake of no outcome, create a perverse, immediate behavioural change that is phenomenally against the national interests of Australia.

Now, as I say, if I was trying to wedge the Opposition or playing a game in some way, or if I wasn’t being completely up-front with you about the nature of the sorts of problems we’re trying to fix, I think we’d be in a different situation. But it remains open for the Opposition to be able to step up. The tools that I’ve got will actually be able to deliver the numbers that we’ve always said.

The issue of the additional tools is about trying to make sure we can work with as much precision as possible ’cause there’s economic benefit in being able to do that. And when I make decisions that, on every reason I’ve given you just now – like the questions, the previous question in terms of the political situation in Australia – everything I’ve just responded to is about the national interest. Everything I’ve just responded to is about the economic interests of Australia. And, you know, the times that we’ve had massive reductions too far in immigration have coincided with the worst economic times in Australia’s history. We need to be careful with it, and I’m being careful with it.

Q: So, you won’t say, “We missed the number because we couldn’t get legislation past”?

Burke:

No, absolutely not. And I won’t say that because that won’t happen.

Q: A bit of a preamble, but in the context of your speech, I heard today an objective assessment a rationale that we don’t have a mass migration problem, that the situation is in hand with the changes you’ve made, maybe a few more changes can be made. But when I look at the opinion polls, I see a completely different picture. I see 30% of people wanting to vote for One Nation, I see 40% of people think One Nation is the party best able to handle immigration, which is more than the Coalition and your vote combined on that matter. And when I hear your speech today, I also think this is the first time I’ve heard you say it, and I go back to Philip Ruddock, who’s a big fan of immigration. He’s got a book coming out. He said last year, “There’s been a vacuum of leadership from the Government on this, and that has allowed these perceptions to grow.” Do you accept you and your predecessor, and the Prime Minister warnings should have been more vocal in saying the things you’re saying today, earlier?

Tony Burke:

As I said, I have been wanting to make sure, and when I was last at the Press Club I was asked extensively about immigration. And when I was asked about, you know, I used the term, “There’s not a magic number.” Because what you need to be able to do in this portfolio is to pinpoint as precisely as possible across the different visas themselves and the different occupations that you need, and to have the tools to be able to do that with precision. What I have been doing since the election is to try to give the Government those tools. And I have been reluctant to stand up and explain until that cabinet process was concluded. I have been.

And for the very simple reason that what people want is to know that we are taking control. What people want is to know that the Government will be using the system to be able to best benefit Australians. And also people want to know that the Government will be decent about it. All of those things, while I would obviously like some additional tools that are not in the tool kit at the moment, is why I’m standing up today.

(Also maybe the media coverage of this has skewed how people think of it? People think that humanitarian visas are in their hundreds of thousands. It’s capped at 20,000)

Q: You spoke about community unease on the high levels of migration, the net overseas migration rate. One Nation’s target is 130,000. The Coalition’s will be between 150,000 and 170,000. Yours is 225,000. So, despite what you’ve announced today, your political opponents will be able to frame you as having far higher migration ambitions than what they have. Given the public sentiment, how will you be able to argue and win the case to the public that higher levels of migration is the right thing to do?

Tony Burke:

Because the lower levels will trash Australian services and trash the Australian economy. That’s what they’ll do. Let me give you a simple example. You referred to One Nation’s papers that were put out the other day. In their documents, they dealt with the temporary work visas, and the temporary work visas, I think the figure they had was keeping it at 70,000, but effectively taking all the family members off.

And that was their way of doing the reduction. Let’s take four occupations that people would view as pretty important in terms of the Australian economy and Australian services. Doctors, construction workers, nurses, and aged care workers. Because can we presume that we’ll get the same people, the same number that that 70,000 will still be there, if none of them are allowed to bring their family anymore? How many doctors at the moment, the proportion of doctors who come to Australia, come with family attached to their application? 50%.

How many construction workers come with family attached to their application? 50%.

How many nurses and aged care workers come with family attached to their application? Two-thirds. The impact of that policy, think of how often any of us know – and particularly in regional areas, but can I say not limited to regional areas – the way you’re able to access a doctor, the doctor is someone who’s here on a visa. Imagine half of them not coming. Imagine half of the construction workers who we have to build the houses that we need, not coming. Imagine two-thirds of the people who we rely on in aged care or nursing not coming.

That’s the impact of those policies. And so what Australians want – and they have a legitimate reason – they look at the nightclub-style queues on a Saturday morning that snake around the corner in a whole lot of parts of particularly our major cities, and it’s not people queuing for a nightclub, it’s people queuing for a home inspection for a rental property.

We have a shortage of homes* and people want to make sure that we guide the immigration system so that we soften our numbers to be able to allow housing to catch up. But it would be a complete own-goal to say the way we’re going to do that is to trash our medical system, trash our aged care system, and not get the construction workers to build the homes that would actually help with the problem. That’s what those lower numbers do. And if that’s the debate I’m walking into, I am all in.

*Highly debatable. We have a shortage of affordable homes, but the dwellings exist.

Greg Jericho

As Tony Burke runs thorough his lines at the National Press Club, we can show the latest population figures that the ABS put out at 11:30.

In the year to March, net overseas migration was 292,100, down from 298,800 in the year to December 2025

As a share of the population, it was 1.05% down from 1.08%

The thing is the natural increase as a share of population is also falling – down from 0.6% a decade ago to 0.36%

So the annual rate of population growth is now 1.43% – as low as it has been for 20 years (excluding the pandemic lockdowns)

Q: You’re at 292,000 now on the NOM, as released today. You mentioned some numbers about the third year of the working holiday visa. Do you know how to get down to 245, what the visa cuts will be in each individual class? Just when you’re doing this speech, the Prime Minister has a stubborn streak, as of last week he was telling cabinet colleagues that he didn’t want you to do this speech in this forum, so how did you change his mind? I respect you must be one of the ones who wrote it!

Tony Burke:

When it was published that I was not going to be giving this speech in this forum, the first time that I saw it having been published was a day after the Prime Minister and I had had a conversation confirming that I would be speaking here. So, it was a bit hard for me to go back and say, “I’m upset that you’re not agreeing to something,” that he had agreed to yesterday that journalists were saying he hadn’t.

The fact… Look, can I just say, I’m the Minister for Home Affairs.

If I were to spend my whole life dealing with stories that were written that were untrue, that’s all I’d spend my time doing. It’s the nature of the portfolio. But when it was published, I can only say the Prime Minister and I had already had a conversation confirming that I would be here.

Q: Do you know how much each visa class comes down by to reach the targets, or just on working holiday visas, do you have the numbers?

Burke:

These number in these materials that are being made available that go through it, but can I say all of it’s a little bit deceptive. When you’re dealing with something like visa hopping, it all deals with who is, in fact, on that pile at any point in time.

And the nature of once you stop one form of visa hopping, you get movement in different directions. The advice that we have statistically at the moment is that the most likely outcome is we are tracking at the moment to the numbers that are in the Budget of 245.

And as you’d see with today’s net overseas migration, we’ve actually tracked below, below the most recent Budget forecasts. The nature of this portfolio has always been we are dealing with some aspects of net overseas migration over which the Government does not, and never should, have control.

For example, part of net overseas migration is what happens with citizens going back and forth. Part of what happens with net overseas migration is effectively driven by the relative strength of the Australian economy compared to the other places expats would want to work, or the Australian economy compared to the New Zealand economy. 

These are all issues where, to have the tools to be able to manage net overseas migration, where there are some parts of that number that are not, and should not be, within the direct control of the minister, you need other levers to make sure that you can manage it and still deliver something close to the number. This is because there’s been a change in public expectation. For most of my political life, net overseas migration has been viewed as a Budget forecast. Last couple of years, people have talked about it as a Budget target.

That is a very different way of looking at it. But given that we have the challenges we have with housing in Australia at the moment, I do think we need to be able to have these additional tools to make sure that what is published and forecast is reached.

Q: I’d like to ask you about people who stay, so you talk about people who come, people who stay, and people who leave. Are one of the large groups of people who stay are people on 485 visas, otherwise post-study work rights visas. These are people who have completed a degree usually and get to stay in Australia for longer. Under that program, the largest – by far the largest group that uses the 485 visa are Indians. I think just under 40% of all people who were granted visas in 2025-26 were from India. Under the free trade agreement with India, they get an extra year. Is this special carve-out for people from India going to stay or is that under question as well?

Tony Burke:

We are working within all free trade agreements in everything that I’ve said. There are free trade agreements all over my portfolio. Almost the entirety of the working holiday-maker system is dealt with through a series of free trade agreements. I referred to the UK, but it’s not the only one. And, effectively, for these different parts of the system, these are always concessions that were offered by Australia, and in return for those concessions there are other benefits that have delivered Australian jobs. And so we’re not about to undermine that.

Q: I wanted to ask about something more immediate. The last few days, I have been to a number of media conferences from your political opponents talking about the immediate problem of shortage of workers to do things like getting the harvest in, catching seafood for our Christmas dinner, pouring beers in pubs across Northern Australia. So, I understand we’re talking about a policy framework, but out in the real world, people are unable to bring the crops in. What are you doing about it?

Tony Burke:

OK. As I said, working holiday-maker processing is now being restored and we’ll be moving through those again. Effectively – and this is why I refer to legislation – the more tools and levers that are available, the more sharply I can target the system to be able to slow down to get housing in front, and to minimise the impact on the Australian economy. And so the working holiday-maker change goes to exactly what you described. Similarly, the new Ministerial Direction, replacing Ministerial Direction 119 with the elevation of agriculture and fisheries for processing priority, goes to exactly what of you’ve said as well.

Q: I wanted to ask you about the part of your speech, the story that’s – the bit that needs to be written, rather, about protection claims. It’s obviously an issue that the Government is grappling with. There have been reports that the Government was considering removing the work rights of temporary visa holders whose claims had been rejected by Home Affairs. Are the reports about putting time frames on the application of a protection visa – are these measures still on the table? Are they being considered by the Government? If you were to pursue a legislative option down the track?

Tony Burke:

A few things. A lot has been written over the last six weeks, and I can assure people that not one, single media drop came from me. And so I take seriously the cabinet process. I’ve never leaked against the cabinet and I never will. Can I also say with respect to that, some of what’s been written is right and some of what’s been written is very wrong.

In terms of the exact confidence right through to Insiders last week, but had been written in print as well, that the one thing people could be certain of was I would not be standing at the Press Club to make the announcement. I offer myself as exhibit A of what some of that speculation has been about. The conversations with the Opposition, I view as constructive. 

I think the right way to deal with it is to simply say, this is the problem we want to solve. But we will insist on solving it in a way that doesn’t undermine the decency of us as a country and doesn’t undermine the fact that we do believe – and the Government does believe – for example, the classic one was those footballers, where they came to Australia, they were completely honest about the visa they applied for, they intended to go back, circumstances changed when they were here, and we were a good and decent country.

We should continue this. I don’t think there’s much public appetite for people who know they don’t have a valid claim, being able to game the system. There are ways of working through that. I’m not going to go any deeper than that.

Q: I’d like to go to how you want voters to view your speech today. There’s the title – who arrives, who stays, who leaves – there’s the deportations that will be happening. Would you be comfortable if voters cast their mind back to John Howard, saying, “We will decide who comes here under what terms”? Not the same policy area, and I’m not saying you agree with John Howard, but that element of, “We’re taking sovereignty back.” Is that something you would be comfortable with voters thinking back to?

Tony Burke:

I’m never afraid of the word “sovereignty”. Never afraid of it. When I went through the acknowledgements at the start, I acknowledge the Brett Saunter as the commander of Operation Sovereign Borders. Sovereignty in Australia matters and people want to know there’s a system. The fact that in there’s a system. The fact that in the life of this Government, you know e, for more than a decade now, nobody who’s arrived without a visa has been able to stay in Australia, is part of the integrity that people expect. People do want Australia to be able to have a visa system. And what we need to make sure of now as we go to the next layer, where people do come on a visa but try to effectively work around for the visa system to deliver outcomes that Australia would never intend. And that’s what I want us to be able to do.

Burke:

All of this comes back to, in fact, a relatively simple proposition. For all the heat and drama of migration policy debate, it simply means everything I’ve announced means this: If you want to come on a temporary basis to Australia, apply for a temporary visa. If you want to come to Australia permanently, apply for a permanent visa. And if you no longer have a valid visa, you should leave Australia.

That’s all it is. But to have that working, to have that working and to have that system with as much integrity as possible, gives meaning to the citizenship ceremonies that are happening all around Australia today. And the reason I want to make sure that we have this system working as best as possible for the Australian economy and for the confidence of the Australian people in making sure that it works, is so that we give meaning and allow the celebration of those patriotic citizenship ceremonies that are happening.

And just think – ’cause some of you won’t have ever been to one – the beauty of the fact of people who have looked around the world, chosen us, and we’ve decided, “Yeah, we want them to stay.”

They stand up and they say from this time forward… I say under God, half of them repeat it, half of them don’t, it’s up to them. “I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people. I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people.” Whose democratic beliefs I share, rights and liberties I respect and whose laws I will uphold and obey.”

That is the commitment that meets every test of what Australians hope the immigration journey will be. And almost everybody who comes to Australia is a good guest in our country, and the people who make those pledges are good citizens and fellow citizens of this country. And I want to have the confidence that what people hear at those ceremonies is something that we move to every Australian feeling – which is that our response to people in that moment is to simply say “welcome home”.

Tony Burke:

The other area with Who Leaves, though, is best explained by what happened in 2015. And this is the area where I am most likely to be misinterpreted and where political opponents, or even – dare I say – some sections of the media may misrepresent the most, so I want to give absolute clarity. Before 2015, we had a routine process in Australia for overstayers where, when people had overstayed a visa, we would bring people into detention centres, give them a bridging visa, tell them to leave. If they hadn’t left, you’d bring them into the detention centre, and within a few weeks they’d organise their own flight and leave.

And effectively that didn’t just affect them, it had a behavioural impact. A whole lot of other people who were overstaying thought, “Yeah, it’s better that I just get on a plane and leave.” In 2015, there was a change in Australia. In 2015, we moved to mandatory visa cancellation. So, if I go back to 2006, when I was Kim Beazley’s Shadow Minister for Immigration, visiting detention centres. The detention centres back there, the people there were overstayers, they didn’t stay long. Anytime you went back, it was largely a different group of people in those detention centres.

But since 2015, the detention centres’ population has largely changed from students who might have overstayed to people who have come from prison to the detention centre.

And there are many compounds there where there is no way I would share an overstayer with that particular caseload, and it’s meant that the resources of the department have been had to be used in a very different way. What we will do is simply go back to what Australia always did before 2015. 

This is not the sort of operation that some people have seen on TV happening in other countries. This is making sure that we would have an additional hundred compliance officers and we would have an additional 250 beds.

We are working through – we already have different alternative places of detention near airports that are available – but we’re also having a look at the former quarantine facility in Melbourne to see how that might be able to be repurposed as well. Effectively, what we are doing is simply being able to make sure that if you overstay, you will be able to say, “There’s no consequences. As if they’ll make sure that I leave.”

We need, with the integrity of the program, to make sure that we can go back simply to what we did before 2015. No more, and no less. 

Tony Burke:

The final part of who stays is the issue of disingenuous protection claims. I start with this principle – having a protection system for asylum in Australia is critically important. There have probably been few issues that I have been involved with where I’ve had more support and thanks from people on the street than the decision that was taken earlier this year with respect to two elite Iranian soccer players. I had better say “footballers” or I’ll get in trouble! And so Australia does support a legitimate asylum system.

What there is no community support for – and I certainly have no time for – is when someone gets to the end of visa hopping and they can be from a Five Eyes country, they can be from Western Europe, they can be from Scandinavia, they know they don’t have a legitimate protection claim and they get advised, “Put one in anyway and you’ll be able to wait out the appeal system, wait out the court system, you might get up to nine years working in Australia.”

That’s not a legitimate reason for the protection system. It actually holds up the processing of the legitimate claims. To give a sense of the gravity of this, if we took the people who apply from countries where more than 85% of the applications fail, that constitutes 80% of our case load.

This is an issue I’d like to be able to deal with. I want to deal with it sensibly. I want to deal with it in a way that does not in any way create problems for the genuine asylum seekers who are there, who a decent nation needs to have a decent system for. Once again, this is one that I can only deal with, with legislation, and therefore that part of the story I’m not able to complete today. 

The next area, though, is Who Leaves. First of all, we’ll be changing the code for migration agents. So, migration agents who encourage the exact sort of behaviour of non-meritorious claims that I just described will be able to be sanctioned and de-registered. It’s something that should have happened some time ago and we cannot have people with some sort of official, formal status, using that official formal status to encourage people to make something which, by any definition, is an unacceptable abuse of the system. 

Tony Burke:

The visa hopping problem for students comes at the third area, which is not the extension or transfer, but what we call progression. Someone finishes their course and where do they go to next? And one of the classic areas of visa hopping is people finish a course, hop to the next course, hop to the next, and one of the worst examples is they transfer down to a not-so-legitimate educational provider, who is able to say to them, “Study with me.

It will cost you less. We’re not very demanding on whether you attend anything. And you’ll be able to go for your life and get out there and work.” And where this is being used effectively to drive a migration outcome, not an educational outcome. What we’ll be doing is setting a very simple rule. 

You can go up the qualification scale, but only up the qualification scale. So, at the end of a bachelor degree, if you want to then do a master’s, that’s up the scale, that’s OK. But to hop around, up and down, to different institutions, and claim that what is actually just seeking a migration outcome as part of Australia’s export of international education will come to an end as a model.

Tony Burke:

The next part of who stays are our changes to student visas themselves. For student visas, there are three times that a student once they’re here, seeks to vary in some way. Either an extension, which is you’ve got critically ill, you’re not gonna finish your course in time and you need an extra year, or your institution that you came to study at actually fell over, and you need to apply to a new one. You do a 12-month extension – that’s unchanged. The second thing that happens with student visas is people often seek to do a transfer. You come, you start your course, and after 12 months the course you’re doing is not the right fit, and you want to use your credits to do something slightly different.

And that will require the application for a new visa, so we’ll be able to test that it’s legitimate. But it’s effectively where at the same institution or same level someone transfers from one course to another. It works. It makes sure that we’ve got people actually studying things that they’re good at. And in terms of international education, that’s not the visa hopping problem. 

Tony Burke:

We’ll be attaching to visitor visas a “no further stay” provision. Obviously, you can’t do a no further stay with respect to a protection application, but we will have a “no further stay” with respect to other applications for people coming on visitor visas. That will give some consistency as to what happens with family migration. It will have no impact on anybody who is already here, because this is about the issuing of future visas and the rules for future visas. So, families that are already here, that won’t change anything for them.

But it does mean that the days of people having every bit of evidence and being so confident that they just wanted their family to be able to visit from overseas for an important milestone or to see an aged relative before they passed away, is something that we’ll be able to issue those visas as a result of this change.

And it also means, while someone is waiting for a spouse visa to come through, their partner will be able to visit Australia on a regular basis. 

Tony Burke:

The next issue is who stays here. Now, while we will be going back to the pace of processing for working holiday-makers that I described earlier, we will be going to a ballot system for years two and three. To qualify for the ballot, you will still have to meet the criteria that you currently have to meet in terms of the regional work. So, to qualify for your second year, you have to do 88 days in the regions. To qualify for your third year, you have to do six months. That won’t change. But what you will be qualifying for is a ballot.

Not everybody will get through because we need to have some control and certainty of what those numbers are. The ballot for year two will be limited to 45,000. For reference, last year, there were 57,000 people who qualified. So, that will be 45,000 will be the limit there. But needing to do regional work will be unchanged. To qualify for year three – and, remember, year three, with the exception of the UK, is something that is not part of any free trade agreement – that third year, it was something that was introduced not that long ago.

We will be seriously limiting year three down to a ballot system of 5,000. Now, last year, there were 31,000 in this group. That will only become 5,000 places. To qualify, you will still have to have completed the regional work to be able to be part of those ballots. The next issue on who stays is visitor visas.

Now, I referred before to somebody whose partner is overseas, putting in a partner application, and having to wait years before the person is able to come here.

There’s been a double standard on that. If someone doesn’t tell us that their partner is from overseas and the partner just applies for a visitor visa, once they get here and if they apply onshore, the process has been that they stay and they’re on a bridging visa. It’s a double standard that really has no logic attached to it. But the consequence of that sort of double standard has been deeply problematic.

It’s meant – and you ask any member of Parliament, no matter which side of the aisle they’re on – they’ll have examples of people trying to get visas for someone to come to a wedding, to come to a family event, and my department is not able to issue the visa, and they’re not able to issue the visa for a really simple reason. They have to, under migration law, do the test as to whether or not the visit is for a genuine temporary purpose.

And the practice that we’ve had of people being able to, from visitor visas, automatically transfer on to bridging visas, has meant a whole lot of these visas don’t get issued at all, even though the odds may have been reasonably high that it was going to be for a genuine purpose, they just couldn’t satisfy it. 

Matt Grudnoff

Tony Burke has said that immigration has not caused the housing crisis. He says that if you go back to the Hawke Government the population has increased by 75% and the number of homes has increased by 100%.

He is absolutely correct.

This is still the case if we look over just the last 10 years. In that case population has increased by 16% and the number of homes has increased by 19%.

I feel seen.

Tony Burke:

The next change on who arrives is the change with respect to student visas and graduate visas. If you’re an Australian citizen and your partner is not an Australian citizen and they live overseas, and you put in an application for them to come here, you have to wait quite some years. At the moment, if you’re an international student and you want to come here with your partner, you get them right from the start.

What we will be doing for international students – and I’ll go through the exceptions to this, because the exceptions are also important – for international students, we will no longer be allowing the attaching of family members for international students or for graduate visas. Anyone who already has their family attached to a visa and is already here, we’re not gonna be breaking up families onshore.

The ones who are already here, that will stay as is, you know, until at whatever point they leave Australia, unless they end up being entitled to a permanent visa. But we will no longer be adding to the stock of students automatically being able to bring family members over.

We have special visa conditions, which will still allow it for the Pacific and for the ASEAN nations, and for certain courses – for example, PhD courses – they’ll be able to bring family. 

You’re often in a very different circumstance of life for those sorts of students than people are for undergraduate. But one of the most effective things would be to also have an expression-of-interest system that would have us dealing very directly with the demand-driven challenges.

I can only do that part of it if we have legislation, and at this point we don’t. That said, what I’ve gone through will still have a substantive impact on us being able to control the numbers of who arrives in Australia.

Tony Burke:

Next, in terms of working holiday-maker processing, there are some things that I announce further down with respect to working holiday makers that curtail some of those numbers. The fact we are doing that allows us to restore the normal processing speed that we were previously at for primary applications for working holiday-makers. When I say that, we’re not restoring that pace across the whole of the working holiday-maker system, we’re doing it for those ones that have the regional requirement to be able to get years two and three.

There’s not a regional requirement with respect to the United Kingdom, and we have a challenge with the rapid growth of that, but obviously it’s part of a free trade agreement and something that we continue to talk to the United Kingdom about. So, at the moment, we are still in the case where we will be processing at the speed we have been processing the last few months for UK working holiday-maker applications.

But just to give you a sense of the pace of the growth, at the time that the free trade agreement was signed, the number of UK backpackers we had here in Australia was in the order of 17,000. Now, that’s a little bit on the low side ’cause that was the end of the pandemic. But the previous peak had been around 35,000. It’s now just shy of 80,000 in terms of number of people here in Australia. And it’s a level of growth that means we are just, at the moment, going to continue to be processing that one slowly, and we’ll continue – both myself and other ministerial colleagues who – particularly Penny Wong and Don Farrell and Julie Collins – working through with our counterparts to make sure we can have those conversations with the UK in a constructive way. 

Tony Burke:

The next thing with respect to who arrives are two things that we’re doing that will help speed up some of the processing that I’m able to do as a result of the other things that I’ll announce.

The first is ministerial direction 119. This is a ministerial direction which determines the priorities under which we process visas. At the moment, we’ve got a single one where we have almost identical rules for both the permanent program and the temporary program, which has meant sometimes when we can’t get someone through on the permanent, we also can’t get them through on the temporary in the processing order. 

What we’ll be doing is updating that and adding to the priority list, construction, agriculture, fisheries and teaching.

Tony Burke:

The first part of dealing with who arrives is something that was referred to in the Productivity Roundtable straight after the election, which was the reform of the points test. The points test is a major economic driver. Now, with that, we have redone the points test in consultation with Treasury to make sure that we are, for our skilled program, particularly the permanent part of the skilled program, getting the best possible economic benefit for Australia out of the people who come to move here on skilled visas.

We are also adding an unusual capacity there, which hasn’t been there previously, which is within the points test to be able to choose particular skills, which will have an uplift so that they will be viewed as though they were a higher level of qualification.

So, with that, whereas you normally get more points for a university course than you get for a TAFE or trade, it will be the case under the new points test that we will, on implementation, be making sure that anyone who is skilled in the housing trades will get the same number of points as though it were a university qualification, to make sure that we are getting the construction trades that we desperately need.

Tony Burke says the government decided all of this in February:

So, dealing with those as the problems, I then come to the reforms. Now, I respect that there will always want to be a political narrative that says, “Why is the Government announcing reforms to the migration program?” And people will always look at current political context. So, for the sake of just saying something that is demonstrably true, all of these reforms were started in the works started last year. Every measure I’m going to go through had been largely worked up and formalised by February of this year. 

This is not new. And then we go through all the process, as we should, of working through the refinements and making sure that what we’ve got is exactly fit-for-purpose. But no-one – and it’s simply demonstrably wrong to suspect that somehow this is a recent bit of work done to deal with a political climate. It’s not.

It’s when we sat down and looked at the pace we could get for new housing, and we looked at where immigration was it, we knew we needed to have ways to bring those numbers down. The second thing I’ll say about the reforms that I’ll announce is they are not as comprehensive as I would like them to be. Effectively, to be able to add all the levers that I talked about – particularly with respect to the problem of the demand-driven system that we have – you can’t do that without legislation. Now, I’m not going to use this platform to launch some sort of attack on the Opposition, because I hope they will come back to the table.

And I can assure everyone here, they’ve kept confidence with the negotiations and the discussions that happened, and I’m not going to breach any of the confidence there either. But let me make this clear – we have put nothing forward to them that is in flea — any way a wedge for them. Nothing. Every whereby is something that they would support, the only difference might be that there are other things they would want us to do as well. But I would also say, when they come to bring forward their policy without the sort of legislation that we would like to get through the Parliament, and that is clearly in the national interest, I don’t see how they would ever be able to implement the full powers that they would propose either. 

So, the changes that we’re making, as Tom said in the introduction, are summarised under the three headings: Who arrives, who stays, and who leaves.

Burke:

The final issue that’s a genuine problem is the concept of what we do with respect to housing. Now, I start with this – housing, and the housing shortage we have, is not caused by immigration. But immigration needs to be part of the solution for the housing crisis. And let me explain why. If you go back to the Hawke Government, back to the Hawke years to today, and look at, well, what’s happened to housing, what’s happened to the number of people? You find these two really simple facts. The number of people in Australia is increased by 75%.

The number of homes has increased by 100%. How on earth did we end up with a housing problem if they’re the stats? And the answer is really simple – back then, and Australians have every right to decide how many people they want to live in per household – back then, the number of people per household was 2.9. It’s now 2.5. Every time we get a 0.1 change, a 0.1 change in the number of people per household, we have to find an additional 450,000 homes.

Now, Australians have every right to be able to decide how many people they want to have living per household. But that also means anyone who looks at the migration program and wants to somehow say it was their fault, no. Australians have made a decision about how many people they want per household. 

Post-COVID, after we’d all lived very closely to each other, a whole lot of people decided they wanted fewer people around than had previously been there, and that may continue as a trend. But immigration will need to be part of the solution to help provide some space for housing supply to catch up. But if you were simply to look at where we’re at at the moment, because some people say, “Well, what if it just kept pace, if you just kept it at even numbers?”

The 2.5 figure at the moment is basically exactly what we currently have.

At the moment, immigration is not putting further pressure on housing, but what’s happening at the moment is we need immigration to soften enough that housing has a chance to catch up.

Matt Grudnoff

Tony Burke has pointed out that immigration is important to the Australian economy in both regional areas and cities.

He’s right. And those who are the loudest voices against immigration know it.

How do we know that?

Because they don’t want immigration cut in the areas they represent. This is why the National Party and One Nation are in complete agreement that immigration programs that mainly focus on migration to the regions should not be cut.

Pauline Hanson recently said about the PALM visas that regional Australia would die without those workers.

These people know that there would be significant economic costs of cutting immigration, that is why they want those cuts (and costs) to happen in the cities.

Burke:

The second issue that needs to be dealt with is visa holding. Now, not all of the movement from one visa to another is what I would call visa hopping. A lot of it is the system working as we would want it to. Someone comes on a student visa, study an area of skills shortage, get a qualification.

They go on to a graduate visa, look for work, get work in an area we had skills shortage, the employer decides to sponsor them and they get an employer-sponsored temporary work visa in an area of skill shortage. They then apply to the permanent program. Once they have been a permanent resident for more than 12 months, given the years they’ve already been here, they then become an Australian citizen.

That is not visa hopping, that is a system working at its absolute best, and that is Australia having some of the highest levels of direct economic benefit from the migration system. 

But there is a problem with visa hopping where there are individuals who would never, in fact, meet the qualifications to be able to become a permanent resident, and effectively jump from visa to visa, use the appeals process to be able to stay here as long as possible until it eventually becomes absurd to not just let them stay, because at that point they have Australian-citizen children and at that point they are so integrated into a local community. The different methods of visa hopping, I will go through a bit later. We need to deal with it. It’s a genuine problem. 

Burke:

There is an endless refrain that the Government is bringing in yoga teachers and not construction workers, to the extent that the Shadow Minister for Housing, Senator Bragg, has even said we are bringing in more yoga teachers than construction workers. It is absurd but keeps getting made, so let me just provide this information. In terms of construction workers, we have tripled the number that we’re bringing in.

We used to bring in 4,500. Last financial year, the number of construction workers we brought in was just shy of 15,000. We’ve tripled the number of construction workers who have come in. You can do your own maths to compare that to the number of yoga teachers.

In the life of this Government, the number of yoga teachers we have brought in is zero. Zero. And yet this claim is constantly made about yoga teachers. Why are they on the list at all? Because there was an agreement made by the previous government with India that yoga teachers would be added to the list.

The person from the previous government who announced that change was Dan Tehan, as Assistant Trade. So, it’s a tiny argument but it is so constantly out there, and so demonstrably wrong, it gives an indication as to how a debate like this can just run out of control. But there are genuine problems that we have to wrestle with, that we have to deal with.

The first is the challenge which was an active decision, started in the Hawke Government, expanded in a very big way under the Howard Government, and not largely questioned until quite recently. And that was that most of our immigration program would be demand-driven. Effectively, the decision that Australia took when we had a demand-driven program was to say that if employers can get the workers that they need and our educational institutions can get the students who are willing to pay, and we get the business, then infrastructure and housing will take care of themselves. That is no longer the experience of Australians.

That is no longer the view of Australia. But effectively there is now an expectation on us that the pure demand-driven approach to major parts of the immigration system is not what Australians want, and they do want to see government able to take a higher level of control on different parts of the immigration system compared to what previously has been there.

Tony Burke:

In dealing with the immigration debate, I, first of all, want to discharge some of the pretty absurd claims – ’cause we are capable of having a mature debate about this – there are some pretty absurd claims out there that I want to be able to deal with.

Then I want to talk quickly about what some of the actual problems are that we do need to wrestle with, and then I’ll deal with the reforms that we’re announcing today.

The first of the absurd claims is that Australia is a nation of mass migration. We need to remember just this one, simple fact: Before the pandemic, the intergenerational report had the projections for where Australia’s population would be by 2030-31. When we get to that point, we’ll be 700,000 people smaller than what had been projected before the pandemic. There are parts of the world where mass migration is something that they are dealing with. It is not something we’re dealing with in Australia. There was a peak post-pandemic, which was too high. There are reasons why it was too high and reasons why, logically, there was always going to be a peak. 

But with the net overseas migration numbers that have just come out about an hour ago, we’re now 47% below what that peak was, and are now in a situation we are tracking in accordance with the numbers that were last delivered in the Budget – in fact, a little bit below them. The second concept that’s come out recently in the debate is there some visa classes that are irrelevant to net overseas migration.

This is an argument that I’ve heard about the PALM, the Pacific Labor Mobility Program, also used with respect to working holiday-makers or backpackers. No area of the immigration program is irrelevant to net overseas migration. If we want to say that backpackers are irrelevant, let me give you this figure.

Last year, the contribution of backpackers to net overseas migration was 48,000. 48,000. So, every part of the program is relevant. There’s almost an approach, sort of the NOM version of nimbyism – I won’t try to invent the NOMbyism word.

It’s a concept where people say they want immigration numbers to go down, but they don’t want to mention this visa class and they immediately want to rule out all the ones that they would rely on.

And part of the challenge with this argument is that there has become a bit of a narrative that says, “Oh, maybe we need immigration in the regions but nowhere else.” It is true that immigration is critical to the economy of our regions. It is also true that immigration is critical to the economy of our cities as well.

For all the talk about student visas, it is also the case that there are people who work and have jobs in Australia as a result of international education being an incredibly important export.

It’s not simply the people who are involved in teaching. It’s also the people who work on the maintenance and facilities. It’s the people who work as the cleaners, it’s the people who run businesses that the students use. There’s a whole section of the economy in the cities that is only there because we have an important export industry in international students. Drastic cuts, wherever you make them, hurt the economy in every part, in every area. And had a we need to make — and what we need to make sure of is anything we do to temper migration needs to take account of the economic costs. And anyone who wants to pretend there’s only an economic cost in the regions does not understand the Australian economy. We talk about the need for extra housing. It’s pretty hard to get a house built without having a plasterer involved. In both Sydney and Melbourne, close to two-thirds of the plasterers we have were born overseas.

We need immigration. We just need to make sure that it is targeted for the needs of Australia in numbers and across the different categories that work for our economy. The final argument – silliest of all – but it’s been run so many times, I just have to use this platform and this moment to discharge it. And, hopefully, when these people are next interviewed by any of those who are members of the National Press Club, they’ll be pulled up on it.

With most of the press gallery acting like this is exciting to the rest of the nation, Tony Burke starts his speech:

Today – and no-one will let me get away with claiming there was a big strategy in making sure we could deliver this speech on Citizenship Day, but today is Citizenship Day. Effectively, anything about our migration story has to start with the concept that immigration is fundamentally a strength to this country, is fundamentally a strength to Australia. And the ultimate expression of an immigration journey is in a citizenship ceremony. They are the most joyful and most patriotic events that we have.

Where someone stands up at the end of their immigration journey and makes a lifelong pledge to our country, and our country responds to them with the words “welcome home”. It’s real nation-building and we need to always remember that, while there are issues in the immigration program that we are always wrestling with, that job is never complete, we can never lose sight of the extraordinary strength to the fabric of our nation in what is modern, multicultural Australia. It is possible… Sorry, and in that, the great Australian project has always been different to what some of the debate would imply. Some countries describe themselves as a melting pot – it’s not a term I ever use of Australia. In a melting pot, anything you throw into it loses its shape and dissolves.

I view our nation very much through the shape of an orchestra. It’s a pretty bad orchestra when everything is the same instrument. What you need to make sure of is that all the different instruments of the orchestra can work together in building harmony, and THAT has been the Australian project and that has been so much of the success of our nation.

And then he gets into who they want to kick out, in answer to a political problem.

Anara Watson

I wrote earlier today that Macklemore had pledged $1 million to organisations working to support the people of Palestine.

Macklemore’s statement included a reference to 15-year-old Muhammad al Zinati, who was killed in an Israeli “double-tap” airstrike after attempting to help injured aid worker Sherif Lubbad yesterday.

Muhammad al Zinati was a child, and he’s just one of the many who have fallen victim to Israel’s bombardment: more than 64,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza since October 2023.

Yet, delivering aid, medical supplies, and essential support to Gaza remains a significant challenge.

And according to the ABC, nearly 1,000 wheelchairs intended for children in Gaza are currently stuck in a storage facility in Jordan.

The wheelchairs, donated by Australian charities Kids on Wheels Alliance and Wheelchairs for Kids, have been sent for children who have lost limbs or have been paralysed as a result of the ongoing violence.

The Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization, which manages the storage facility, says that Israel blocked the shipment. Israel denies that the application was rejected.

Dr Anne Aly, Australia’s Minister for International Development, said that Australia was pressuring Israel to “allow humanitarian aid to flow unhindered to Gaza” and that it continues “to call on Israel to comply with its obligations under international law”.

And yet the UN says that countries like Australia should be taking a range of actions to help end Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children.

So, while Macklemore stepping up is great, the Australian Government could do much, much more.

The government’s discretion on how it provides personal staff to MPs has created a coalition you won’t see often – independent senator Fatima Payman, independent MP Dai Le and parliamentary veteran and multi-millionaire Pauline Hanson have come together to ask for more staff.

Payman is the only member with no personal staff. That’s a deliberate punishment -she left the Labor party and the Labor party is notorious for this sort of punishment. And holding grudges forever.

7am Podcast

Last week, countries including the UK, Canada and France announced plans to restrict trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

In the past, Australia has joined its overseas allies in actions on Israel. This time it’s different – with Foreign Affairs Minister, Penny Wong, saying Australia isn’t considering joining the ban. 

So – why not? 

Today, Commissioner on the UN’s Commission of Inquiry into the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel, Chris Sidoti, on Australia’s responsibilities, and its failures. 

You can find the podcast, here.

Speaking of the independent media, it is very worth your time reading this from Daniel Hurst writing for Deepcut with this exclusive:

The Australian health regulator bowed to pressure to adopt a contentious definition of antisemitism despite internal concerns it “may create further ambiguity” and “the perception of alignment with particular political positions”, a new trove of documents reveals.

Internal files obtained by Deepcut under freedom of information laws show the chief of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) told his colleagues there was “heightened external pressure on a range of public sector bodies” to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition.

They reveal that “some members” of the AHPRA board raised concerns in February “that the IHRA definition is not fit for regulatory purposes due to its lack of clarity and the political elements embedded within it”.

Read more, here.

It didn’t get the amount of coverage it should in the mainstream, but independents have been all over it.

Here is Renew Economy on how members of the Pacific actually feel about what it is Australia is doing:

Australia’s subsidies for fossil fuels since 2020 were almost six times the amount the nation gave in aid to the Pacific, underscoring the importance of halting new coal and gas expansions, Maina Vakafua Talia, Tuvalu’s climate and environment minister, said.

The comparison in subsidies was made in a report by The Australia Institute. It found Australian governments funnelled $62 billion into fossil fuels subsidies between 2020 to 2025, dwarfing the $11 billion in aid to Pacific neighbours. Just $1.3 billion of those funds were climate-specific aid.

“It doesn’t really matter how much money we subsidise, if we don’t put a stop to the real problem,” Minister Talia told a climate integrity summit run by The Australia Institute in Sydney on Tuesday.

Greg Jericho

On Monday the latest Intergenerational Report (IGR) will be released.

On Tuesday everyone will have forgotten the Intergenerational Report was released.

There are reports today in the AFR that Monday’s IGR will change the way future productivity growth is forecast.

Previously it just assumed the 30 years average would continue. Chalmers suggested that was dumb and so it was changed to assuming the 20 year average would continue. In Monday’s report it will go back to assuming the 30 years average.

This is because the level of productivity growth has been dropping pretty much for the past 25 years and the 20 years average would not be great when trying to forecast a good outlook:

Does it matter?

Look not really. The IGR report was set up by Peter Costello as a way to scare everyone about debt and sell cutting govt spending and also to sell his idea of a Future Fund to notionally set aside money for the ageing in population (ie superannuation of Boomer public servants) in a way that would enable him to stop John Howard wanting to spend everything from the mining boom in tax cuts. It’s just a bit of an indicator about what might happen, but almost certainly won’t.

It can however highlight what the government thinks are issues of concern (eg the LNP did not care at all about climate change)

In 2015 Joe Hockey treated the IGR as a Liberal Party policy document and it was widely ridiculed.

Since then, it has largely been announced with little fanfare, and then mostly forgotten.

I wrote about it in 2023 and can’t remember much about it.

We will dig through it on Monday and will publish any interesting aspects that we can find. But don’t worry too much about any of the scares about debt etc that you will likely read.

Rod Campbell

Groucho Marx famously wouldn’t join a club that would accept him as a member.

Along similar lines, I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to join the ATO’s consultation group for the Fuel Tax Credit (FTC) Scheme, Australia’s biggest fossil fuel subsidy.

Despite the Australia Institute having published a fair bit of research on the FTC scheme, I was told that meetings “are limited to parties/taxpayers directly involved in claiming FTC or providing advice to those who claim.” And that the number of attendees has to be “restricted” to keep the meeting “manageable”.

I tried to argue that given the $10 billion cost of the scheme to the budget, all taxpayers are directly involved, but no reply to that email.

To ease the sting of rejection, last week I browsed through the newly published key messages of the 2026 FTC Scheme club meeting.

There were 29 attendees, so I would have thought one more would still be manageable. The cool kids included the Minerals Council, the gas lobby group Energy Producers Australia, Deloitte, EY and others.

Anyway, the most interesting bit was:

Considering fuel security issues, there has been renewed discussion across industry in relation to other sources including alternative fuels and electrification; however, challenges remain around cost, compatibility of other equipment and infrastructure required to support electrification.

Members are anticipating government reform to address the increasing use of electric vehicles and potential changes to road charging.

This is interesting because calls are growing for the federal government to wind back the FTC scheme, particularly to big mining companies. The FTC scheme got some of the blame for BHP’s decision to keep using diesel mining trucks rather than switch to electric ones, exposed in recent ABC–Guardian reporting.

The quote above shows that while the Minerals Council is trying to present a united front opposing any changes to the scheme, behind the scenes, members are expecting reforms to encourage more electrification. The most obvious and sensible reform would be cutting the FTC Scheme.

Jack Thrower

The Government says AI and data centre investment could be the next mining boom, with Assistant Minister Charlton arguing its benefits could “stretch further than mining”.

Is this true?

Why AI is not like mining

The big difference is where profits come from. Mining often makes ‘super profits’. Normal profit is the profit rate needed for the business to keep operating, while a ‘super profit’ exceeds this normal rate and indicates something weird is going on in the market.

In the case of mining, this happens because how expensive it is to dig stuff out of the ground and then turn that stuff into useful materials differs drastically across the world. For instance, minerals might be buried deeper, of worse quality or in more annoying locations.

However, the price of mined goods is set internationally by supply and demand, settling on the costs of the world’s most expensive mine whose output is still demanded; if the price were lower, this expensive mine would simply shut down. This means mines with lower costs (such as those in Australia) make super profits; they can charge a high price with low costs.

AI is different; you can build data centres in a lot more suitable and comparable places than mines. AI companies do appear to be hoping for super profits though, super profits from having a monopoly over a product and charging consumers high prices. It’s currently unclear which (if any) company will succeed at this, hopefully none.

Why it could be (for the worse)

There are similarities, though. For one, mining and data centres provide very few jobs.

Worse, there is a risk that AI companies copy mining companies by taking advantage of Australia while giving back little in return. The mining industry has a history of successfully lobbying against regulations, and despite widespread acceptance among economists that taxing super profits is efficient, the mining sector successfully lobbied for the Rudd/Gillard governments’ mining tax to be watered down and later repealed. Meanwhile, gas (a subset of mining) has managed to pay relatively minimal tax for decades.

Prospects look grim, Big Tech companies are notorious for their tax minimisation strategies, including in Australia, and reporting suggests the government is considering watering down copyright laws.

There has been a bit of a kerfuffle where the major parties have muscled out the Greens from sitting on a parliamentary committee – this time one looking at AI.

David Shoebridge:

It is deeply disappointing that once again the Government has chosen to play politics with Parliamentary Committees and refused to support a representative from the Australian Greens to this committee. 

This decision no doubt comes on the request of senior department heads who have engaged in unprecedented action to try to avoid questioning by the Greens. 

If this Government is serious about creating a pathway to address the risks and possibilities of AI in this country they sure aren’t showing it here. 

The Greens stand with the community against the Government’s plans to sell out creatives, land and water and Australian control to US billionaires. We will not back down from this. 

Luke Slawomirski

The federal Health Department has released a consultation paper on excessive specialist fees. It makes for interesting reading alongside The Australia Institute’s recent submission to the parliamentary inquiry into specialist access.

The diagnosis is similar.

The Department notes that Australians spent $4.17 billion out of pocket on out-of-hospital specialist services in 2025, up 75.8% since 2019. The average out-of-pocket cost of an initial specialist consultation rose 67% between 2016 and 2025. That’s more than double the rate of inflation.

More importantly, it acknowledges why the market isn’t working. Patients have little power to negotiate. Information is poor. Supply is constrained. Higher prices do not mean better outcomes. And specialist care is heavily subsidised by government.

The Department concludes there is a strong case for intervention.

That’s very close to the argument in our submission: that Medicare currently subsidises specialist care without reliably making it affordable, that public funding could be used to support fair, transparent and affordable fees, and that patients (and referring GPs) require far more information to make decisions.

Where we differ is scope.

The Department focused on the minority of specialists charging very high fees. It excludes the broader affordability problem, public outpatient services and workforce planning.

Our submission argues that those issues can’t be separated. Excessive fees matter, but so do steadily rising ordinary fees, inadequate public alternatives, uneven specialist supply and weak referral information.

To illustrate, here’s a chart showing the average out-of-pocket costs in each state, and the median income of that state. The average cost in the ACT is $605 while in Tasmania it’s $144.

Are ACT specialists four times better than their Tasmanian colleagues? Or are they just charging what the market will bear?

The Department’s options – transparency, peer review, fee caps and incentives – are a welcome start.

But the bigger task is making specialist care affordable for everyone, not merely stopping the most extreme bills.

Angus Taylor is now speaking, but honestly it is all bullshit and there is no reason putting in something you know is bullshit just to fact check it when it is this level of bullshit.

So no. You know what he would be saying about immigration, and who he is blaming and so let’s put some facts out there – Coalition government’s historically have higher migration levels than Labor governments. Coalition governments have signed more free trade agreements, which include labour movement, than Labor and have signed almost seven out of every 10 working holiday agreements. Coalition governments changed the bridging visa arrangements, created more temporary visas, like the post-study visa, and have made the changes to the system which allow people on temporary visas to stay longer – such as the backpacker visa.

That’s just facts.

Michael McCormack, who has been leading the Coalition’s fight against the changes to the veterans’ allied health cap has spoken on the government’s decision to dump it and then gone into other issues, because you can take the man out of the deputy prime ministership, but you can’t take the deputy prime minister out of the man. Or something.

They do not have the faith in our veterans … and the standards are too low, it’s not go going to be bipartisan. We disagree with what they have been doing. It’s wrong. They had it wrong. They have simply got it wrong. And, you know, they know they have got I wrong because they haven’t even reached their own targets.

They have come in over their own targets every single time. Now, there’s absolutely nothing in what we see to suggest that it’s going to change. We are just going to get more of the same.

That is what we keep getting from this Labor Government – whether it’s immigration, whether it’s interest … rates, whether it’s inflation, whether it’s the economy, whether it’s Australians getting ahead, whether it’s small business – they say they are going to change, nothing changes. Australians have had enough. So in the end, we made clear what we expected of the Government, if we were going to be able to work with them, and they – they clearly couldn’t. You got the letter, we can send you a copy of the letter.

Anara Watson

We wrote in yesterday’s live blog that Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour had been left without supporting acts after the removal of American rapper Macklemore prompted the remaining acts to pull out in protest.

And in another act of support for the people of Palestine, Macklemore has announced that he is donating his entire $1 million earnings from Sheeran’s tour to six organisations working to help Palestinians. Those organisations are:

1. Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (@thepcrf)
2. HEAL Palestine (@heal.palestine)
3. Gaza Soup Kitchen (@gazasoupkitchen)
4. Medical Aid for Palestinians (@medicalaidpal)
5. UNRWA USA National Committee Inc. (@unrwausa)
6. Anera (@aneraorg)

He’s also invited Robert Kraft – the American billionaire at the centre of the controversy – to do the same:

“I invite Robert Kraft to match my donation. Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth protecting. A Palestinian life is no less valuable than any other life on this earth.

This is what this has always been about. Not me. Not a tour. Not the headlines or the controversy. It is about Palestinians’ right to freedom, dignity and safety in their own homeland.

I want to centre the parents carrying their children into hospitals without the basic resources to treat them, and the physicians, paramedics, journalists and aid workers who keep going back in. I want to center the organizers and activists who have paid real costs for standing with Palestine. Their risk is of a far different order than mine.

…

But aid alone cannot address the conditions that make it necessary. This is a manmade injustice, and I believe it requires immediate political change. Palestinians have lived for decades without basic rights and should not have to wait another day to be free.

That is where my focus will remain. I will continue to stand with the Palestinian people and their fight for liberation.

When the news cycle moves on, which it will, don’t move with it.

Free Palestine.”

After US pharmaceutical giant Astra Zeneca announced it was pulling the monthly 3.6mg dose of its breast cancer and endometriosis drug, Zoladex (goserelin), from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and the Australian market starting November 1, 2026 (part of an attempt to pressure the Australian government to dump the PBS) Mark Butler has announced another drug will take its place.

From Butler’s statement:

 From 1 October 2026, Triptorelin 3.75mg (Diphereline®) will become available on the PBS for the treatment[GA1]  of a range of women’s health conditions, including breast cancer, endometriosis and uterine fibrosis.
 
The expanded PBS listing of Triptorelin will provide certainty for thousands of women who have been unsure of their treatment options with the uncertainty around the listing of  Zoladex 3.6mg Implant, which is currently scheduled to be delisted from the PBS from 1 November 2026 at the request of its pharmaceutical sponsor.
 
At a special meeting in July 2026, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommended an expanded (unrestricted benefit) PBS listing for Triptorelin, to provide an alternative treatment for women
 
In 2025, around 13,580 Australians accessed Zoladex 3.6mg Implant or a comparable treatment on the PBS.
 
The expanded PBS listing means Triptorelin will be available as an alternative monthly treatment at PBS prices.
 
Without PBS subsidy, patients could pay more than $1,370 per script. Now it will cost no more than $25 per script.
 

I am a fairly regular critic of this government (because I think we can all hope for better and holding high expectations for good government is part of that) but this announcement should not be underestimated – there has been a bit of fancy footwork here – not just to secure another drug that is lifesaving for so many people, but also to push back against attempts by US drug companies, backed by the US government, to try and undermine our public health system. More of this please.

See what happens when groups with institutional power make noise? They get listened to. Compare this to the NDIS cuts response.

Via AAP:

Labor has bowed to mounting pressure and has scrapped a planned $5000 cap on veterans’ allied health payments.

Following weeks of sustained criticism, Veterans’ Affairs Minister Matt Keogh announced on Thursday the government had backed down on the measure.

In a bid to improve the budget’s bottom line, the government introduced a $5000 annual limit on allied health services for veterans, originally set to come into effect from July 2027.

The proposal attracted widespread condemnation from across the parliament, with the coalition, Greens and crossbench all calling for Labor to dump the cap.

A group of veteran-advocacy groups also teamed up to urge the government to backtrack.

Announcing the move, Mr Keogh said in a statement the government “has a deep respect for our veterans who have, and who continue to serve our country”.

“Anyone who pulls on our nation’s uniform to serve in our name deserves nothing less,” he said.

“We have been consulting on this measure and we have heard from veterans there are concerns about this approach.

“We have been listening carefully and today, the government is taking the proposed $5,000 threshold off the table.”

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said the decision was great news for veterans.

“Veterans shouldn’t have to fight for their healthcare,” he posted on X.

“Nothing signals warped priorities more than a government that’s so desperate to find savings it goes after our veterans.”

Fiona Katauskas

Alice Grundy

If you’re having a hard time understanding what changes the Albanese government is considering in relation to copyright, you’re not alone. 

The Guardian has broken it down, which might help a bit. Here’s my two cents on a few things worth keeping in mind. 

Australia is different from other jurisdictions — such as the US — where you have to register a work before it’s covered by copyright. In Australia the Copyright Act grants automatic protection to new work in Australia. This includes books, music, blog posts (like this one!) and videos.

The local law is part of the reason why some AI companies have said they’re not going to create data centres to train large language models (LLMs) in Australia; arguably any of that training would breach Australian copyright law. 

In the past, the US has managed to push other countries into changing their copyright laws to suit powerful business interests. If you’re curious, have a look at this potted history about how we ended up with 70 years after the death of the creator terms of copyright. Hint: it involves Mickey Mouse. 

We’re following with interest. Australia was a world-leader with the news media bargaining code that collects income from tech giants for Australian news content published on their sites. We have a chance to be a world leader again. 

Greg Jericho

Overnight the US Federal Reserve lifted its version of the cash rate by 25 basis points.

The RBA is now almost certain to follow in a couple weeks

Less than a month ago even one more rate rise in the next 18 months was no sure thing, now we’re getting close to the market predicting 3 more

So why did the US Central Bank lift rates?

Here’s the official line

“The Federal Open Market Committee approved the following statement for release by a 12 – 0 vote:

The Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/4 percentage pointto 3-3/4to 4 percent, in support of the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate. The Committee is continuing its policy of maintaining ample reserves in the banking system.

Economic activity is expanding at a solid pace. While uncertainty remains elevated owing, in part, to geopolitical developments,domestic spending has been resilient. Productivity growth is strong, and capital investment is robust. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little.

Inflation remains elevated. Today’s policy action will support a timelier return to the Committee’s 2 percent goal. The Committee will deliver price stability.”

There’s not much in that, so let’s just say – the Iran War keeping oil prices higher for longer; the AI boom that is raising construction costs and financing in the USA for not good reason other than a bunch of billionaires get to destroy the planet while selling us snake oil about cancer cures.

Sigh.

This is an A-Grade interaction.

Alice Grundy

Those who have been following coverage of AI in the media will have seen a comment from OpenAI’s senior vice president that: “Our company isn’t ready to have [a conversation about using renewable energy] if we can’t get through the gating problem of the copyright barriers.”

Anthropic seems happy to forge ahead even before a copyright deal, based on the news about a Queensland data centre. According to the AFR, 

“The San Francisco-based giant has signed a long-term lease at Queensland’s Western Downs Digital Park, north-west of Brisbane, the country’s single largest data centre project … Anthropic, which declined to comment, is expected to use the data centre for inference – answering questions and directing agents to act – allowing it to bypass a debate over what Australian content can be used to train AI.”

When we see hyperbole in the press about how we have to bend on copyright or Australia won’t get the “investment” we so desperately want, it’s worth interrogating those claims.

Also worth remembering that “investment” generally means foreign companies building their own infrastructure, diverting construction workers from other jobs such as building houses and working to generate profits for overseas shareholders. A growth in GDP only means that the income was generated here, not that the wealth will stay here. 

Grogs covered this off in the blog when the data came out – but he has also written about in the Guardian because so few mainstream reporters have:

Matt Canavan, who is famously conservatively Catholic, also defends the Christian Brethren – which is a choice.

Canavan:

Look, I think this is goes to a pattern of behaviour from the Labor Party that seems to have a problem with people of faith*, especially people of faith who involve themselves in politics, I mean, I was aghast. Should allegations be investigated? Sure, but as you just said, they were being denied. They’re not proven, and I was aghast during election campaign when the prime minister called a group of Christian people a cult, a group that he’d never met.

They’ve asked multiple times now to meet the prime minister after he called them a cult. And maybe in the heat of a moment, in the heat of an election campaign, you say things, and I get that. But the fact now is that you know almost well more than a year now since he made those allegations, the prime minister’s never even had the decency to meet with these people.

I have since the election. I didn’t have a lot to do with the brethren before, but I’ve met with them since those allegations. I was pretty impacted by them, and and they’re good people. They you know they get in the community now. Of course, like any group, some people might do the wrong thing, some might do the right thing, but to just run around allegations, particularly given obviously the Labor Party’s hands aren’t clean here.

These, a lot of the brethren members did campaign against them. Okay, welcome to politics. Like, I don’t condemn people who campaign against me.

They’re Australians and they have every right to criticize me, to to head out against me. I’m not going to condemn someone for that. And in terms, as you say, these are allegations. And yes, no problem. They should be investigated. They shouldn’t be done through a witch hunt style process that Labor Party is running here, because if we’re going to go to this route, well, okay, I’ve been stalked by unions, I’ve been threatened by unions, I’ve had my wife spoken to in the most abusive terms by unions. Where is the Labor Party’s condemned condemnation of that? Where is Labor Party’s? Why aren’t they returning the money from the CFMEU, who have been alleged to do and been doing the most misogynistic things with women, so I’m not going to take lectures here from the Labor Party on these issues. A proper investigation is impartial is fair enough. A political witch hunt against a group of people of faith is a sad day for a democracy.

*This is rich, coming from the Coalition, which continues to demonise Muslims.

Matt Canavan continues painting an alternative reality – you can tell that, because the only time conservatives are ever worried about ‘real wages falling’ is when it comes to migration. And Coalition governments have traditionally increased migration to deliberately help keep wages down. But the Coalition also does the inflation dance whenever anyone starts talking about worker pay rises, so you know – we are not exactly talking consistency here.

Canavan:

We we we are we are all we’ve both Angus and I have said for a long time that migration numbers have to come down. Now we’ve got to get this right in terms of balancing the impacts on the economy. You know, I noticed One Nation’s policy this week. They haven’t really outlined exactly what classes will be cut in what year, and that’s really important. It’s also the case that their reduction of 750,000 is about the same as what we reduced in COVID, and so I think we’ve got to be.

We we had a 760 1000 reduction in COVID, and so I think we’ve got to be really careful about those those impacts. \

We don’t want another COVID. We don’t want shock therapy. Well, I don’t. One Nation hasn’t released that modeling. They haven’t costed it. That’s what we’ll do, and we’re doing that work. And yeah, obviously we’re having frank discussions about where we should go. I’m not going to disclose those, but I’m very confident through the way we do business is we’ll come to a very considered policy that’s costed, that’s outlined in detail, and it’s something we’ll we’ll be fighting for. But I mean, I would like the government to do something now.

I think we have a crisis now of lack of housing, strained services, impacts on our labor markets as well, lower real wages.

All those things need to be fixed, and I don’t understand why the government is not taking a leaf out of the book of, say, the Trudeau government in Canada or the New Zealand government, who have acted on these things, but they seem wedded now to a plan that is failing, and all we’re going to get today apparently is another plan to implement the plan they put in place to implement the plan that they couldn’t get done in the first place.

OK, so a ‘lack of housing’ isn’t the issue, but affordable housing is, and the Coalition are decrying a 0.3% national drop in prices (which are still 8% up from last year) so let’s be fr fr about this huh? That isn’t something they consistently care about. In terms of the labour market, well, much to the RBA’s annoyance, unemployment remains low. And more working age adults are employed as a percentage of the population than two years ago. Wages are an issue, but that’s because every single time a worker asks for a pay rise, they are told they are contributing to inflation. (And yet, business profits are never considered an inflationary issue). Strained services is not the fault of migrants either – that’s down to a lack of government planning and our services RELY on migration.

There are also massive disagreements going on in the shadow cabinet over what the Coalition’s plan around migration should be. Again, this is a political narrative issue, not a substantive issue, so there are no real facts driving this which is why it’s so hard – and real risks to the economy, as well as you know – HUMANS – by pushing this so far.

Taylor doesn’t want to cut, but Matt Canavan, who has inherited a Nationals party on the brink of extinction, wants to go all in – to try and starve off those One Nation voters.

Canavan tells the ABC:

I’m not going to disclose private conversations I have with others, but I’ve said for a long time that migration needs to come down. Coalition is saying it needs to come down. A particular issue I think that there’s not enough focus on is the the number of people here, the stock of temporary visas. There’s a lot of focus on the so-called net overseas migration rate, which itself is not a comprehensive figure that people that aren’t included in that, and it’s a it’s a measure of the flow, the amount of water going into the bath, if you like. But the stock of people here has grown just enormously under this government, and that’s both because the flow has been high, but it’s also because the government hasn’t been processing applications. A bit the biggest increase since COVID in that stock has been people on bridging visas, and that’s because this government hasn’t been able to have run an efficient court system, a tribunal system. They made changes there, and that’s that is what is contributing to the massive community backlash against migration. So they they have those figures in my view have to come down. I’m not so sure we’re going to get that plan from the government today.

Bridging visas are Howard’s legacy by the way. He made those changes Canavan is complaining about.

The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters wants to inquire more into the Brethren’s actions at the last election. They last called them to appear before the committee on 21 August, on allegations that members of the far-right linked group were ‘paid to stalk’ political opponents of the Liberal party.

Plibersek says she doesn’t know if it is illegal – that’s for the lawyers to work out. But adds”

But I would think secretly paying known right-wing figures to disrupt events and pretend that they are just you know disgruntled citizens having their say is certainly immoral if it’s not illegal and prevent physically intimidating Sally Situ, who’s you know a head shorter than me, with big blokes standing around her physically stopping her talking to voters, I think that’s pretty troubling, and and it’s certainly not what we want in our democracy.

Back to ABC News Breakfast – will these changes make it easier to recoup owed child support?

Plibersek:

If people move from the private collection system to the agency collection system, it will give the child support agency the ability to go after that outstanding debt so that is one way we are helping.

There is a few more things we are doing. The next piece of legislation we introduce will actually have transport or travel bans on people who have, child support outstanding, they will be automatically stopped from leaving the country and that is a strong incentive for people to pay. We also investing more in resources from the tax office to go after people who haven’t been lodging tax returns. We know that one of the ways that minimise their child support or avoid paying is by saying I’ve had no income or have had much less income than they’ve actually had.

By getting more resources to the ATO both to pursue people who haven’t been putting their tax returns and data match so we have more information going between government systems about people’s incomes, we can reduce that outstanding child-support debt.

On ABC radio RN Breakfast, Plibersek says the legislation changes have been in the works for some time (which they have)

In the last budget, we set aside 183 million dollars to do the biggest changes to our child support system in many decades. And there’s two problems that we’re essentially trying to fix. The first is that there’s a lot of child support that’s just not being paid, and that’s terrible for kids.

… $2 billion in outstanding child support debt, and we’ve got 200 cases where parents owe more than $150,000, and one case where a parent owes more than $2 million in child support, and that’s just not fair, and it’s terrible for kids, and it’s terrible for families.

The second problem that we’re trying to fix is the fact that the child support system is often weaponised.

In look, in in most cases, when people break up, that they are happy to cooperate and support their children, and breakups are hard, but that they can do that in the best interests of the kids.

And what we know is that some families, unfortunately, that’s not the case. And former partners can weaponise the the system against their ex by doing things like putting in constant vexatious claims that the the person’s circumstances have somehow changed.

The child support agency has no power to refuse to consider those. That comes with a lot of paperwork, a lot of stress, a lot of heartache, and a lot of worry.

We’re giving the child support agency the power to refuse to consider vexatious claims. And the second really important thing we’re doing is we’re reducing the amount of information that has to be exchanged every time there’s a child support reassessment.

So at the moment, if you know that your ex has got a promotion at work, or they’ve repartnered, or something’s changed in the circumstances, which means that a recalculation should happen.

Tanya Plibersek is also out talking about something in her portfolio – addressing issues in the child support system. Parents overseas would be able to apply to Services Australia for support, and details, like a former partner’s private information – like work history – would not need to be shared.

Plibersek told ABC TV Breakfast:

It makes the child support system safer by taking out a whole lot of opportunities for harassing or intimidating your ex. It makes sure that people don’t accidentally incur family tax benefit debts because their former partner hasn’t properly reported income, it deals with that issue. 

And the third thing that it does that’s really important is that it allows children who are living overseas who have got an Australian parent to receive child support from that Australian parent and obviously that can make a very big difference for those children living overseas. 

For the sort of things we are changing in this legislation is making sure that only the amount of information that needs to be exchanged between parents is exchanged if there is a change of assessment.

I know this sounds a bit complicated what we know is parents often- they know that their former partner is earning more or their circumstances have changed but if they want to change — if they want a change in the child support assessment they have two provide a whole lot of really irrelevant information that can be quite unsafe to provide so someone is escaping a partner that has been physically violent, that has stalked or intimidated them, and they ask for a change of assessment, they have to hand over their own bank account details, their address, their new place of employment.

You can see how the danger of that would often prevent people actually receiving the child support that they need to raise their child safely.

Pauline Hanson, who counts men’s rights activists among her base supporters, will no doubt have thoughts about this. Labor is also partly counting on this.

Tony Burke did a strategic interview with the Nine papers – and he did it with one of the stars of their Sydney newsroom (who is on the editor track) and not a Canberra reporter. Which also speaks to who Labor is trying to reach here – this is not a media strategy which has just been thrown together. Together with the unions, this is one of the pieces in Operation Pushback. You’ll be able to notice elements of it fairly easily from now on.

Tanya Plibersek is asked about the headline quote in Burke’s interview – that he doesn’t want Australia to become ‘a guest worker economy’.

Plibersek says in response:

I think what Tony and the whole cabinet is clearly saying is if we’ve got people who are coming here because we need their skills and they put down roots here and become Australian citizens, that’s traditionally how our migration system has worked, and that’s enriched us as a nation.

Q: Do you think Tony Burke’s last-minute cancelation of his press club speech six weeks ago, which revealed disagreements within the government over migration has that been damaging for the government, in your view?

Plibersek:

I really think the idea of disagreements is overstated. We’ve been having sensible, detailed conversations because that’s what a mature government does. You don’t make an announcement without any economic modeling, which seems to be what One Nation’s done, and you know that that is the difference between being in government. We need to work through every detail and make sure that we are dotting every i and crossing every t.

Q: Will the government release its modeling about the economic impacts of migration costs?

Plibersek:

These are all questions for the minister. He’ll be at the press club today. I’m sure that you’ll be queued up at the press club with all your colleagues to ask all of these questions.

(The answer to that, after the hoohah with One Nation’s policy, is yes. It’ll be one of the first things they’ll do.

Labor has sent out Tanya Plibersek to speak on migration ahead of Tony Burke’s speech – she’s a friendly face and one of Labor’s best communicators, and won’t go too far, or get caught out by a tricky question. You’ll most likely see Jason Clare out and about on this in the near future for the same reason. Labor will be making this a ‘winning the comms’ issue and they’ll be throwing their best performers at it.

Asked on ABC radio RN Breakfast about why Labor is doing this now, Plibersek says:

I’m not going to talk about cabinet processes. What I will say is that we have consistently been bringing net overseas migration down since coming back to government. It’s down by about 45% and but we want to have a sensible policy as a government that recognizes that some migration is still very important to this country. We certainly need skilled workers. We know that there’s plenty of country towns that wouldn’t have a doctor, or wouldn’t have an aged care workforce, or wouldn’t have an agricultural workforce, or someone to work in the abattoir if we don’t have skilled migration, and we also, Sally, I think want to make sure the debate retains at its center the the reminder that Australia has been built on migration. My parents migrated here after the Second World War as refugees, and I think they made a pretty great contribution to this country and many many generations like them, so getting that balance right is worth putting some time into.

Welcome to the final day of this sitting – we don’t have too many left as we stare down the end of the year, so that is exciting!

Less exciting is Labor capitulating to One Nation’s made up political narrative that there is a serious issue with migration in Australia. In doing so, Labor is being a bit tricky – they are doing pretty much what was planned, as Labor had already started making a point of cutting temporary migration, and they’ll be announcing a tinkering in some of the only areas governments actually control – family reunions, international students and people who overstay on their visa.

Australia’s visa system is built on what they call ‘permanent temporary’ visas – we make it very difficult (and expensive) to get any sort of permanence, but temporary visas can be rolled over. Because of free trade agreements, working holiday agreements, and skill shortages, there isn’t a lot that governments can do about most work visas – nor would they want to, because that would not only tank the economy, it would cause the business lobbies to lose their mind and they would lose on the politics. So Burke is doing the bits around the edges where governments can cut – but the issue is, we still don’t know what substantive issue is being fixed.

It’s not unemployment. It’s not housing. It’s not over-crowding and it’s not standards of living. Because this is an issue which has been created by a political narrative, not an actual substantive problem. It’s the vibe and the saxophones have become so loud with media elevating a far right talking point (which whipped people into marching on the streets, alongside actual nazis) and the other supposed sensible mainstream party legitimising it, that now the government is releasing policy. It’s all a bit nuts. But this is politics in 2026.

So we will bring you the speech – if there is any left of it, given how much Burke has dropped out to media outlets ahead of the delivery. This includes interviews. This is how you know it’s a narrative problem – Labor is now showing it ‘control’ – because politically, it feels it has to.

We’ll cover that and everything else which pops up (although mostly, this is a day which will be dominated by narratives, rather than actual issues).

Gird your loins, and pour your coffees. (And Andrew, have some more of that home baked sour dough. Today we carb load.)

Ready?