No ‘magic number’ in immigration debate, home affairs minister says

“If the opposition wants to say that net overseas migration should be reduced faster than the 40 per cent reduction the government has already achieved, there needs to be a debate and not just about what the total is. [but] What is the visa class?” he said.

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“[We’ve given] 21,000 visas for healthcare workers, 4,300 visas for teachers, 15,524 visas for construction; We tripled the number of visas we issue for construction. “If these are areas where people want to cut back, then they need to explain which hospitals will say they don’t have to fill every shift.”

Former deputy immigration minister Abul Rizvi said Burke was right when he said net migration was difficult to manage. “But that’s no excuse for not having a long-term target or target range for net migration. Without that, the government and everyone else is flying blind,” he said.

“It’s like not having a target range for inflation because inflation is hard to manage.”

Liberal senator Jonno Duniam, who became the opposition home affairs spokesman this week, said he had heard of Burke’s challenge to the Coalition. “When Tony Burke starts by saying ‘they have to talk about where,’ I think he needs to talk about ‘why,'” he said.

“There is no clarity in the decision-making processes. We want to start from there.”

Thursday’s was Burke’s first major speech since becoming home secretary last year; He took responsibility for politically sensitive issues such as visa cancellations, the NZYQ group of released immigration detainees, a $2.5 billion deal with Nauru, and the return of wives and children of Islamic State fighters.

After the election, Labor once again expanded its home affairs portfolio to include Australia’s national security agencies. Announcing the merger, Burke acknowledged that he did not want to get to the point where “we are constantly securitizing all the language around immigration and multiculturalism.”

“That’s not good for social cohesion and that’s not what we’re doing… But at the same time, there’s often a shift in visa cancellation.”

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Pointing to the recent decision to ban US provocateur Candace Owens from the country, Burke said that he has accelerated visa cancellations for perpetrators of domestic violence as well as those who try to create conflict in Australia.

“When someone applies for a visa, they are asked to be a guest in your country. If the purpose of coming is to create controversy, we do not need to say yes,” he said.

He also defended the government’s approach to issuing visas to Palestinians fleeing Gaza, explaining that there were still 600 to 700 people abroad in the current caseload.

“To my knowledge, there has never been a group that has been studied this intensely,” he said. “I’m disappointed that some of the debate sees us setting standards for the people who are most heavily scrutinized [that] “We don’t dress people from any other part of the world.”