Australians could wait longer for an Uber if the Coalition returns to government, Nationals leader Matt Canavan has acknowledged, as the opposition prepares to significantly reduce migration.
Speaking to News24 on Tuesday, Senator Canavan defended the Coalition’s migration overhaul while conceding that a smaller temporary visa population would affect industries such as the gig economy and ride-share services.
“This large temporary visa population is also providing a lot of workers for the gig economy,” he said.
“I understand that people value being able to get an Uber quickly, but that convenience does not outweigh the pressure being placed on housing, infrastructure, hospitals and schools.”
The Coalition plan would reduce net overseas migration to 100,000 a year for its first two years in office and cut the temporary visa population by approximately 650,000 over four years.
The proposal would scrap temporary graduate visas, limit international student numbers and require most people seeking a second temporary visa to submit their application from outside Australia.
At the same time, the Coalition would preserve the permanent skilled migration intake at 185,000 places annually, create more opportunities for highly skilled workers and establish a new skilled project visa category.
Senator Canavan said Australians would need to accept certain trade-offs if the country’s migration intake was brought down.
The Coalition plans to reduce the temporary visa population by 650,000 over four years
“We need to balance the number of people arriving with the need to preserve living standards, and that balance has not been achieved under the Labor government,” he said.
The Queensland senator said the Coalition wanted to roll back what he described as Labor’s “experiment of mass migration” by sharply reducing the number of temporary visa holders living in Australia.
He claimed the temporary visa population had expanded dramatically, rising from about two million before the COVID-19 pandemic to roughly three million today.
“The cuts we are announcing today would be the largest planned reduction in migration in Australian history and would take the temporary population back towards pre-COVID levels,” he said.
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Senator Canavan also argued that Australia’s economic performance had been stronger before the post-pandemic migration surge.
“Before COVID, the economy was performing better than it is now,” he said.
“Productivity was growing more strongly and Australians were experiencing real wage growth. Since Labor’s mass migration policy began, productivity and real wages have both declined.”
He further claimed that the expanded pool of temporary migrant workers had placed downward pressure on wages earned by Australian employees.
Matt Canavan said the proposed changes would mean fewer gig workers, including Uber drivers (file)
“In my view, the availability of cheaper temporary foreign labour has been allowed to weaken and undercut Australian wages,” he said.
While the Coalition would reduce the overall number of temporary visa holders, its policy would also expand access to selected skilled migration pathways.
Asked who would fill jobs currently performed by migrant workers, particularly in sectors such as aged care and healthcare, Canavan said the Coalition had deliberately protected key industries.
‘We’ll be going back to a temporary visa population level similar to what we had before COVID, and we did those jobs then and we’ll do them again,’ he said.
‘While we’re ending temporary graduate visas, we’ll give people in the transition the opportunity to apply for visas that are in key areas like health and education to make sure that we have skills in those fields.’
Canavan also defended plans to force some visa applicants to leave Australia before seeking another visa, saying the current system had fuelled a sharp increase in bridging visas.
‘I was gobsmacked that when Tony Burke addressed the Press Club a couple of weeks ago, there was no plan to deal with that massive increase in bridging visas under their watch.’
‘We do have a plan for that because this is not how the system was designed and it’s not how it’s meant to be working, so let’s fix it.’