Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Along with housing, immigration has become a key issue that's influencing votes around the country. Some experts say the current rate of immigration is putting pressure on housing and the cost of living, and it's got the major parties looking at how they can address things as they face losing more voters to the party taking a hardline approach, One Nation.
In this Squish Shortcut, we'll get you across the numbers, what the experts are saying and what might come next. Squish Shortcuts is the backstory to the big news stories. I'm Alice Dempster.
And I'm Andrew Williams.
Andrew, One Nation just won its first elected seat in the House of Reps in the Fariby election. It's a huge electorate in regional New South Wales. And one of the issues on the minds of voters going in was immigration.
And it's a complex one there because on one hand, you've got a lot of farmers in the region who rely on migrant workers like fruit pickers to help with harvesting, whereas others want to cap the numbers of people moving to Australia to live. Now, this is kind of a microcosm. of Australia as a whole in a way, because that's the sentiment you might be seeing more broadly.
And it's had some voters right across the country looking to One Nation, as you mentioned in the intro, as the alternative to the major parties, because One Nation has promised to do exactly that, cap the numbers of people moving to Australia.
And it's probably a good time to outline what we mean by immigration. It's when someone moves from their home country to a new country to live there permanently.
Yeah, and people come to Australia for a variety of reasons, but the big ones involve the opportunity for better work and pay or to be with family who have previously moved here or just because it's a safer or nicer place to live than where they were born.
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Chapter 2: What are the key issues surrounding Australia's immigration debate?
And when it comes to migrants, a lot of them are students and temporary workers who rent. And that's been a factor in pushing vacancy rates to record lows and sent rents through the roof. We're also still catching up after our borders were shut during the COVID-19 pandemic, where there was a big disruption into how many people were coming here.
Yeah, so you're talking there about when our borders opened up again, there was a massive surge of what's called net overseas migration. And that sudden influx hit a housing market that was already struggling. Since then, the issue's really become a political pressure point.
It has. So let's have a look at some of the numbers that crop up in this debate. And it is a debate. Groups like the Business Council of Australia say migration is crucial for our productivity and economic growth, although they do want some reforms. to how it works. Australia's population is now about 28 million people, and roughly a third of those, around 8.8 million, were born overseas.
That's a really high proportion compared to similar countries. If you take the US, for example, it's around 15% there. The UK is around 20%. When people talk about Australia being one of the world's biggest cultural melting pots, there is definitely something to that.
And that increase happened really quickly. Since 2000, Australia's population has grown by 43%, which is nearly triple the average growth rate across similar countries. And it's driven in large part by migration of international students and skilled workers, especially over the past decade.
And so the figure that we're talking about here would be the number of migrant arrivals, the temporary kind, minus the departures. So that number spiked after COVID. It hit more than 500,000 in 2022-23, dropped 429,000 the next year, and now it's around 300,000. Now, that is still historically high but is coming down when you look at the trend over the last few years.
Now, got to stay with us here a little bit because that number is not the same as permanent migration.
No, the number of permanent immigrants is set at 185,000 a year. The difference is made up of temporary visa holders.
And that's an important part to note because it's the part that some experts say has changed our migration system. We've got around 2.9 million temporary visa holders in the country made up of students, backpackers and skilled workers. That makes up about one in 10 people living here. But 20 years ago, that wasn't the norm. We used to bring in people permanently.
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