James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In noting this report, can I start by commending the work of the committee, in particular the chair, the member for Berowra, who is with us in the Chamber at the moment. It is a very important topic, and unforeseen circumstances have added some complexity to the work that they've done. In reading through it, and particularly some of the submissions—they were diverse and very interesting, but also, in many ways, what I was expecting would be the kinds of responses to a call for public submissions that the committee issued. This is a really valuable body of work and something that will be very relevant for some of the decisions that we have to consider as a parliament going forward when it comes to the new challenges we're going to face around migration, which at the moment is non-existent given our international borders are closed, apart from repatriating Australians back into the country. We have a closed border, and that is going to have an enormous economic impact on this nation's economy; it will be felt more acutely in some parts of the country than in others.

It's going to be very topical to talk about not just restoring immigration and the important economic dividend we receive from that, but also using it as an opportunity for reform. Frankly, I very much think there are opportunities for reform that are in line with the direction government policy has already been going over the last few years, in particular some of the decisions that the Morrison government has made to effectively move down the path of having differentiation in the way in which we treat migration policy in this country. I do think when you're a diverse continent and you have a big metropolis like Sydney and smaller communities in the remote parts of Australia, you cannot simply have a one-size-fits-all approach to migration. Recent data, which I grant is from before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, shows the population growth rate in this country has sat at about 1.6 per cent for many years, but in the state of Victoria it's been at 2.2 per cent. In my home state of South Australia, it's been at half the national average, at 0.8 per cent. It got up to 0.9 per cent in the most recent quarter that the ABS published. There's an enormous difference between Victoria at 2.2 per cent and South Australia at 0.8 per cent.

There's the story of Australian migration, particularly in the last decade or more, in the large metropolises like Melbourne, which in recent years has had about 100,000 people a year swelling the size of the city. As well, Sydney and the south-east corner of Queensland have been very high population growth areas from a migration point of view. It's not just the small country towns. Small cities like my home city of Adelaide have really been lagging behind. There is going to be not just the loss of the immediacy of the economic dividend of migration but also the delayed impact on the demographics of a city like Adelaide and a state like South Australia. There are the challenges of an ageing population and having a smaller proportion of taxpayers compared with the overall size of the population of the jurisdiction. It creates an enormous amount of pressure when tax is raised on a smaller proportion of the population.

I commend the purpose of the inquiry, which was to look at regional Australia and regional Australia's migration needs and workforce needs. Under the current migration policy settings, that includes the city of Adelaide. In fact, it includes basically everywhere except Melbourne, Sydney and now Brisbane. It was the Western Australian government that asked Perth to be considered regional under the regional migration scheme, and the Queensland Labor government asked the Gold Coast to be considered as regional as part of the regional migration scheme. So we now have a situation in our migration policy settings where, basically, regional Australia, from a migration point of view, is considered everywhere except Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. That invites the opportunity for us to consider why that has been the case in the past and what we're going to do into the future to reverse those trends and not have the pressures on our big cities from overcrowding. As migration is attracted to those areas and you have very high rates of growth—as I mentioned, in Melbourne, with 100,000 people a year—that puts an enormous amount of pressure on infrastructure and government services. I believe that those circumstances could start to really reduce the quality of life for the people living in those cities, because their infrastructure and their services are not keeping up with the growing population.

You have the reverse circumstance in a smaller city like Adelaide, where, because of lower population growth, we have businesses that are struggling to recruit and employ people—probably not so much in the city of Adelaide but certainly in some of the regional satellite cities. The committee went to the member for Barker's electorate. There are some very good examples in his electorate of where they are really struggling from a workforce point of view. Also, as I mentioned, there are the pressures from low population growth. The direct correlation is indisputable between very low population growth and the impact on the overall economic growth rate.

I'm a great advocate, as many of the relevant ministers and the member for Berowra and others in the Liberal Party room know, for a lot more differentiation in our migration program and for jurisdictions like South Australia and my home city of Adelaide to have smoother, cleaner and quicker pathways to attract people to our jurisdiction as we contract the overall migration program. We've reduced it from 190,000 to 160,000, which is fine, as long as a larger proportion of the 160,000 comes to the non-major metropolitan cities than under the program when it was 30,000 larger, at 190,000. We've had the Designated Area Migration Agreements, which I hold great hope for in my home state of South Australia and for other jurisdictions, because they are an opportunity to have demand-driven migration after you've first done very deep labour market testing to confirm that the roles you're trying to recruit people from overseas to are not able to be filled by Australians. That labour market testing is critical because of course our first priority is to make sure that any Australian seeking a role in our economy can preferentially get it over people coming into our economy from overseas under these DAMAs.

Once that test has been met and once we've confirmed the skill capability of the people making these applications, we absolutely must do everything we can to help Australian businesses, particularly the regional businesses that are having massive pressures and labour shortages. Being unable to recruit the labour that they need in this country is holding back the economic prosperity of all of us because these businesses are not able to undertake the expansions that they'd like to. That is obviously contracting economic activity in the communities where these businesses would like to expand and cannot. That obviously has a multiplier effect across all the other businesses within that local economy that would receive the benefit of a larger workforce with income in their pockets to spend in the local communities. They would raise their families in those communities. That would grow the size of those communities and create the scale and critical mass we want to see in these regional communities. As a nation want to grow not purely in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Our regions, frankly, are capable of growing at a much higher rate than cities like Melbourne and Sydney. It is getting to the point in those cities where it's very difficult, with their current rates of growth, to keep up with the infrastructure and service needs that they have.

I've often said before—and I think I said this in my maiden speech—when God was giving out continents not many countries got one. We are the only continent country on the planet. That makes us unique. It also underscores the fact that the cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are vitally important to us, but our country is also much more than those three cities. The opportunities for economic growth are in those three cities as well as through the rest of this country. We need a heightened emphasis on migration to where the skill shortages are and to where the businesses are that want to grow their businesses but can't because they can't attract the labour force that they need. Evidence to this inquiry very clearly showed that is happening in a lot of the regional centres and remoter parts of this country. We as a parliament can undertake some great reform to address that imbalance and to drive really strong significant economic growth, not just in regional Australia but in the whole nation.

I commend the work of the committee and thank them for what they've done. I look forward to being part of some really sensible reformist initiatives in this space going forward.

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