The Hon Tony Burke MP

The Minister's National Press Club Address, net overseas migration figures, and Australia's refugee intake. JACOB GREBER : Tony Burke is the Home Affairs Minister. Tony Burke, welcome to the program. : Great to be with you, Jacob. : Minister, what took you so long? : Well, we were still working through all the policy issues.

The nature of immigration; there's two factors that mean it can take much longer than other policy areas. The first is when you're dealing with issues like visa hopping, you need to work, you can't just deal with one visa at a time, you need to look at all the different ways because otherwise it’s a whack a mole sort of situation, people just shift to whichever part of it you haven't dealt with at all.

And the other issue, of course, is every part of the economy is affected by immigration these days for Australia. And so trying to come to the softest landing, dealing with the challenges we've got with housing supply, which is not immigration's fault, but immigration needs to be part of the answer and to do that in a way that has the softest landing for the economy is something that you've got to get right.

So, you know, I would love to have been in a situation where the moment I thought about ideas, we were straight out announcing, but you end up, you end up with a much better landing through working it through collegiately. : Sure, but you, you were ready red hot to go six weeks ago at the National Press Club, very, very famously now. Did the Prime Minister fundamentally disagree with your first draft? : Look, effectively what I announced today, the different measures that we're talking about today, all of them in general form and pretty close to what was announced, existed back in February.

The issue was twofold, working through when different colleagues wanted to have more time to work through different parts of it. That's reasonable. So, that happened.

And secondly, we then had an added delay while we had the conversations with the Opposition where we had thought they might be, might have more of an appetite for legislation as well, and certainly it would have been more comprehensive if that had been possible. But once they decided they weren't, then you end up - that just caused another delay because we were waiting while we were having conversations with the Opposition. : The net overseas migration number we learned today has come down.

In fact, it's now lower than where you thought it would be only a couple of months ago. Would you meet the target in two years’ time even if you'd done nothing today? : On current projections, the answer is yes. On current projections from the information that we're getting from Treasury, we are tracking in the exact trajectory that we need to be able to have the numbers that were in the last budget for both the current financial year and the next financial year.

The question though is it's not only about the focus – : If I can jump in there Minister - why do it? Why go to all this effort? Why upset all these groups, make all these folks anxious?

Why do it? You're on target. : Yeah, and this is the bit that I was just saying, which is that it's what's within the number that determines the economic impact. You could have net overseas migration of 225,000 with no skilled workers or with all skilled workers or whatever you do or your skilled section.

You can have different industries. How you get there determines the impact on the Australian economy. : Former Labor leader Bill Shorten told us last night that targeting international students is economic self-harm. What's your response to that criticism? : That's one of the reasons we haven't changed the planning levels.

This is where - one of the challenges we had with international education - so, this is one of the - it's a really important industry for Australia. It creates a lot of jobs, not just people who work at universities, but all the ancillary jobs around and the small businesses that get the benefits of students being there. But of all the export industries in Australia, this is probably the only one where you have to have a home for every customer.

Now, one of the changes that we've made today that I've announced is not to change the number of students, but for a whole lot of them to change whether they can bring family members with them. Now, when you had Bill Shorten, University of Canberra is actually one of the examples of an institution that's done a pretty good job on student housing. But think about this.

If someone comes as a single, they can stay in student housing. If someone comes with their whole family, then they're out in the general housing market, which - where we already have extraordinary shortfalls. : Farmers groups are also a little bit cross about the changes. They're saying it puts Australia's food security at risk.

Backpackers fill one in seven farm jobs. Did you consult with that sector? : Look, I've been working closely with Julie Collins as the Agriculture Minister, working through the different problems and she's been, obviously I've got to consult with every sector. So, I've been doing it through my cabinet colleagues a lot of the industry group part of it.

But can I put it in these terms… : Are their concerns overblown? : They're right to be concerned about agricultural workforce. And as I said before, there is no part of the economy where you can have an impact on immigration without having some tension there. But I'd say this for the agriculture sector, the government has a Pacific worker program called the PALM Visa.

It's really important to us as a government, and it's been really effective in our relationship with the Pacific. That area is still underutilised, and people want those agriculture jobs. One of the things that some of the farming groups told me back when I was Employment Minister and we made a whole lot of changes to deal with worker exploitation for those specific workers, said to me, well, if you do that, a whole lot of our members will just go off and use backpackers instead.

Now that has happened, but can I say, to the extent that backpackers need to be there, we've got the processing happening at a faster rate again, and that'll be possible. But I don't accept that the reason for relying on some of these backpackers should be that people are upset that we're insisting on no exploitation of Pacific workers. : Minister, you're also cracking down on the overstayers, the 70 odd thousand.

Obviously, this is not a new problem. Greens and asylum seeker groups are concerned that you'll deploy ICE-like tactics to get hold of these folks. : All we are doing, so this is a very modest operation, but something that Australia had always done until 2015. So, the whole life of the Rudd-Gillard government, for example, we had a modest program where, when people overstay, they come into detention… you give them a bridging visa first.

At the end of the bridging visa, they come into detention, and then they leave. It's a modest program that we always had, and we stopped doing it in 2015. And basically, that means overstayers at the moment have just had an attitude, some of them, of, 'well, what are you going to do?' It should be really simple.

If you want to come here to visit, you apply for a visitor visa. If you want to come here permanently, you apply for a permanent visa. And if you don't have a visa in Australia, then you should leave.

None of that has anything to do with our protection visa system. : The proposal that you had earlier to reduce the refugee intake by a third got quite spectacularly reversed by the Prime Minister. How are you finding the dollars, some seven billion plus according to the PBO that you now need to find to fund the return to 20,000 people? : Yeah, I need to correct you first of all on that, and I'm glad you put it to me because that has been asserted in the media at different points.

There was no moment where I ever made that proposal. No moment. What happened was – .

So, why was it in the budget office calculator? : Because in 2023, before I was Minister, when the decision was made to go to 20,000, it was budgeted as a terminating measure, which meant at the next budget, next year's budget, we were going to have to make an active decision to renew it. That got reported as though, which was always untrue, as though as part of this net overseas migration decision, we were trying to actively cut the program.

There are many programs in government that are called terminating programs, which come up for renewal – : But it's real money now, isn't it? The Treasurer has to now find that. : Well, it was always going to be. You know, we'd always made a decision as a government, in public announcements, that we were going to be at 20,000. : Your own office said you were going to reduce it by a third. : No, no, no, no, that's not correct.

I know – : That's not correct? : -- the ABC reported that. What my office said was the decision had already been made that at the next budget, unless an active decision was made, it would go down. That was then reported as though my office was confirming that a decision had been made right now to cut it.

Not true. Never true. : Sounds like it was a bit lost in translation there, Minister? : Look, if I was to - if I was to try to spend my life correcting - I'm Home Affairs Minister, if I spent my time correcting everything that's untrue that's said about me, I wouldn't get my job done. : Minister, we have to leave it there. Thank you very much for talking to 7.30. : Great to talk to you, Jacob.