Australia’s permanent migration system is incoherent, inefficient and in parts unlawful. It delivers few new skilled workers while being clogged with family visas that, by law, should not be capped at all.

Meanwhile, temporary migrants – students, graduates and working holiday-makers – carry the real weight of supplying skilled labour, yet are undervalued.

However, the migration program is simultaneously presented to the public as both “capped” and “demand-driven” – a contradiction that undermines its credibility.

It needs two fundamental reforms: Recognising the central role of temporary migrants in the skilled workforce, and separating skilled migration from family migration while redefining migration as primarily about skills, not family reunion.

Public perception often assumes that skilled migration equals the permanent migration program. In truth, the opposite is the case.

The permanent intake is capped at 185,000 people a year, of which about 30 per cent is earmarked for family visas.

Even within the skilled stream, the majority of visas do not go to skilled workers but to their families. Counting family and secondary applicants together, more than 60 per cent of permanent visas are, in fact, family-related. Double the amount officially claimed. (See Figure 1)

Meanwhile, the share of genuinely new skilled arrivals from offshore is tiny – just 12 per cent of the program. The rest are already in Australia on temporary visas.

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