Australia’s migration debate is obsessed with the wrong question.

The question is usually: are too many people coming to Australia? But that framing is misleading. The better question is: how should Australia manage the growing number of temporary migrants already living here, and how should that population be linked to housing, infrastructure, jobs and social cohesion?

In principle, Angus Taylor is right to say migration needs to be linked more closely to planning. But that has become harder over recent decades as Australia’s temporary migrant population has expanded, meaning we now have a growing number of people onshore who are effectively in a second-class status: living and working here, paying taxes here, but not fully included in the community.

That is the real issue. Not daily arrivals and departures, but the scale and character of temporariness in Australia.

The Coalition’s plan to link migration numbers directly to housing completions fails to address this. Of course, migration and housing should be planned together. Housing, transport, health, education and migration are all connected. But a one-to-one link between migration and housing completions is........

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