Angus Taylor disowns Coalition policies behind 2022

Angus Taylor may prefer to rewrite the timeline, but the migration surge of 2022–23 flowed directly from policies his own government put in place. Dr Abul Rizvi reports.

ON ABC'S 7.30 (Monday 16 February 2025), Opposition Leader Angus Taylor was reminded that the 2022-23 net migration boom took place under policy settings put in place by the Coalition prior to the May 2022 Election.

By suggesting those policy settings had nothing to do with the Coalition Government in which he was a Minister, he is taking all of us for mugs.

Prior to the May 2022 Election, the Coalition Government was under immense pressure from the business community to boost immigration quickly to address massive labour shortages.

The Coalition had responded by introducing unlimited work rights for students, fee-free visa applications for students and working holidaymakers and the special COVID visa, which enabled any temporary entrant, particularly students, to extend stay without having to continue studying and without having to be sponsored by an employer. It had dramatically expanded the working holiday maker scheme.

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In August 2022, the right-wing Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) was demanding action noting that:

‘Australia is currently facing an unprecedented, country-wide shortage of workers... Addressing this worker shortage should be a high priority for state and federal governments. Australia’s international borders have been reopened since the beginning of 2022, yet worker shortages are still increasing, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics reporting 480,100 job vacancies in the May 2022 quarter.’

Despite stomping on the immigration accelerator towards the end of COVID, in September 2022, former Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said:

“We do need an increase in migration numbers, but we’ll see what the government actually delivers, because this can take many, many months, if not a couple of years in the pipeline.”

In other words, a quarter of the way into financial year 2022-23, Dutton doubted the Labor Government could increase immigration quickly enough. At that time, Labor was running its jobs and skills summit and would then announce the Parkinson Review of the Migration System. That review was completed in March 2023 and the Government would start implementing the recommendations soon afterwards.

But by then, the 2022-23 financial year was just about over. The figures on the net migration boom were starting to come through. Students and working holidaymakers, the two categories the Coalition used to drive up immigration, together with a very strong labour market, drove net migration to over 500,000.

While there is an argument that Labor took too long to act to tighten policy, it was the Coalition that had stomped its foot on the immigration accelerator. For Taylor to suggest otherwise is just a repudiation of the facts.

Dr Abul Rizvi is an Independent Australia columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.