Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced the government’s long-awaited migration policy yesterday. It’s been a week dominated by the topic, with One Nation unveiling its policy on Monday, too.

The government’s proposed settings appear to be knee-jerk reactions to reducing net overseas migration (often referred to as NOM), rather than being based on careful modelling of labour demand and migration impacts on infrastructure.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Burke delivers overdue migration baby, but is it sturdy enough to withstand the critics?

Falling short of expectations

There was a strong expectation Burke would set out a concerted approach to lowering the 400,000-odd people on bridging visas, especially those awaiting the outcome of an appeal to the Administrative Review Tribunal following rejection of an application for a student or asylum visa.

Their chances of success on appeal to the tribunal are minimal but, because of the huge numbers, it takes a long time for cases to be heard. During that wait time, the person is issued a bridging visa, which enables them to work.

It was also expected the government would propose restricting the capacity of these people to work, and to examine ways to limit their capacity to appeal, thus encouraging them to leave.

This wouldn’t have been controversial because it has been an issue for a decade. All political parties are in favour of doing this.

But apparently this did not happen because Burke had not reached agreement with the Coalition on migration policy changes.

Instead, he’s proposed a return to 2015, when people........

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