Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Prime Minister for the opportunity to respond to the question from the member for Corio. Next year's migration program has been set to ensure that we focus on skilled migration. We are ensuring that more than two-thirds of the intake for next year will be for skilled migrants because the best way to ensure the cohesion of our society through our migration program is to focus on skilled migration. One of the great achievements of the Howard government was to ensure that we reversed the low level of skilled intake that we had under the Hawke and Keating governments, which fell to less than 30 per cent. It went to as high as 70 per cent under the Howard government.

I note that that was one of the things that the previous government did not change. If only they took that approach to other immigration policies of the Howard government. But on the matter that the member has raised, it is true: we have decided to increase the number of places available for the contributing parent scheme. We have done that by reducing the number for the non-contributing parent visa scheme, because under our migration program we invite people into the country who are able to come and to pay their way. We maintain a program—

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