Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

The reality is that voting to disallow these regulations is a vote for unsustainably high migration and for a less targeted migration system. Of course, we can trust the Greens to not listen to the Australian community and to vote for unsustainably high migration while they also do everything they can to stop the government's agenda to build more homes in Australia and make it easier for Australians to get into the housing market. They continue to vote with the Liberals to block our housing measures while, at the same time, they take positions on these sorts of debates that would lead to unsustainably high migration.

You can also trust the Liberals, particularly Senator Henderson, to misrepresent my remarks in the Senate yesterday. For reasons known only to her, Senator Henderson chose close to omit some of my comments yesterday—words to the effect that the pressure on our migration system and our migration numbers that is caused by the explosion in international student numbers is a direct result of the broken migration system and the broken international education system that the Liberals and Nationals put in place when they were in government. I can't imagine why Senator Henderson forgot to include that part of my remarks to the Senate yesterday.

The changes to graduate visas in these regulations make three significant changes: firstly, they reduce the length of temporary graduate visas; secondly, they reduce the age eligibility from 50 to 35; and, thirdly, they simplify and rename the visas to make them easier to use. These were all recommendations of the migration review and of work completed by the Grattan Institute. These are key changes to help reduce migration back to sustainable, normal levels. Treasury forecast that, overall, these changes will reduce net overseas migration by 54,000 cumulatively over the next three years.

The changes also build a fairer and more targeted migration system. The migration review found that graduates are among the largest cohort of permanently temporary migrants, who are vulnerable to exploitation. These changes that we're introducing help reduce the number of people who are permanently temporary while still providing pathways for the skilled workers we need. These regulations are critical to fixing our broken migration system that we inherited from the coalition by bringing down migration levels and by building a more targeted system.