NICK MCCALLUM:
Immigration is shaping up to be a major battleground in the upcoming federal election. The Government has appointed a population minister to determine what is our ideal population. The Prime Minister in the past has said it would be about 36 million by the middle of this century. Now he's backtracking on that.
The Opposition says that's way too much, our infrastructure can't handle it, and it's promised to reduce immigration.
Now on the one side we have the new Population Minister, Tony Burke. He joins us now. Good morning to you.
TONY BURKE:
G'day. Good to be with you.
MCCALLUM:
Now, what is your gig? Tell me what you have been assigned to do over the next year.
BURKE:
To coordinate what has never been coordinated before, and that includes looking at different parts of the country where there is demand for more people, where there's not and where you could have more people but the infrastructure's just not up to it. To start and bring all those different issues, which reaches almost every area of the Commonwealth government but also reaches through to state government issues of infrastructure and right through to local government with urban planning. Coordinating all of this for the first time, to try to get a national strategy that brings it all together.
MCCALLUM:
And part of that is to come up with a figure, an ultimate ideal population, and also how much we need in terms of immigration?
BURKE:
Not in terms of an end point. We will certainly work out how you make those decisions year by year. One of the challenges that I don't think we've ever really grappled with, is that population issues affect different parts of the country in very different ways.
There would have been a whole lot of your listeners this morning in gridlock on bridges who would have very strong views about the carrying capacity of extra people in some parts of Melbourne. There would also be employers right now in regional Australia and particularly in Western Australia who just can't find enough workers.
Now, there would be very different conclusions from each group about whether we need more people. But in terms of what they're experiencing in their part of the country, they're both right.
MCCALLUM:
Mr Burke, it seems like only yesterday that the Prime Minister was saying this figure of 36 million by the middle of the century was okay. And now all of a sudden he's backtracked and appointed you.
BURKE:
The 36 million figure came from a report which was done by Treasury, where they said, 'this has been the average over the last 40 years, if we add that for the next 40 years, this is where we'll get to.'
Now, it was on 3AW that Tony Abbott said he didn't see anything wrong with that, on the Derryn Hinch program. It was very specific from the Opposition in terms of support for that figure.
MCCALLUM:
Yeah, but let's get to the original question. Mr Rudd indicated that that seemed okay to him, and now he just appears to have turned around on that.
BURKE:
The issue that we're working through is, how does that affect different parts of the country differently. And I think it's quite reasonable for a projection, it's not a government target, it's not an ambition to get there.
MCCALLUM:
But the Government - I mean, you as the Government can determine whether we get to 36 million or not. And that's the point, isn't it?
BURKE:
No, immigration is only one of the drivers of population growth. More than a third of population growth happens anyway through natural growth through the birth rate. And I'm not going to pretend to be in charge of that.
MCCALLUM:
Good luck if you are.
BURKE:
n addition to that you've got issues, in parts of the country like southeast Queensland, where they've got massive population growth, and a lot of that is people moving from other states to that part of the country.
So yes, in regards to the population pressures, immigration is relevant, but there's a lot more to it than that.
MCCALLUM:
Okay, final question because I do know you've got to go. Three hundred thousand net immigration. That was for the last year. That's a record. Is that sustainable? Is that only going to ever be a one-off?
BURKE:
I think the factors that we had in that last year were very much a one-off. Now, you wait and see how these things turn out. But the figure that you quote there includes a large number of Australians who were working overseas who came back to Australia because of the global recession. That was why that figure was so high.
MCCALLUM:
So that 300,000 figure you would imagine would come down dramatically anyway next year?
BURKE:
Yeah, I don't think we're going to see another year where so many Australians return home in a single year. That's why that figure was so large.
MCCALLUM:
Okay, Tony Burke, Federal Population Minister, thank you very much indeed for your time.