Together, the Humanitarian Program and Trans-Tasman Agreement make up approximately 50,000 annual permanent migrants.
Immigration is always a hot topic. But, unfortunately in many ways, this past week has been next level.
My interest in immigration focuses on the unusually high number and ongoing lack of public consultation or plan to address its negative impacts on complex issues such as environmental sustainability, housing affordability, infrastructure and services, economic diversity, and so on. It has therefore always been interesting to see that year after year, Australian governments grossly understate the annual permanent migration intake.
Permanent Migration Program
The annual numbers game happened this week when the Labor Government belatedly announced in a brief media release that Australia’s annual Permanent Migration Program will remain at a very high 185,000 permanent visas in 2025-26(1). I say very high because it is well above the successful Twentieth Century average of 70,000 per annum, which delivered a good model for Australia.
Curiously, the so-called Permanent Migration Program is much lower than what’s arbitrarily termed ‘net overseas migration’. More on that later.
Headlines such as “Labor holds permanent migration numbers steady”, “Australia keeps 2025–26 Permanent Migration Program at 185,000”, “Australia’s Permanent Migration Intake Stays the Same” and “Labor to maintain permanent migration levels” all came out with the claimed permanent annual intake figure of 185,000.
But as the old saying goes: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
This widely stated Permanent Migration Program number of 185,000 significantly understates the actual annual permanent migration intake, for two key reasons.
First, it does not count the annual permanent Humanitarian Program of around 20,000 (soon to be 27,000), being permanent resettlement for refugees etc. For some reason this permanent category was hived off decades ago to be counted in another permanent category. Confused yet?
Second, it does not count New Zealanders, who have unlimited rights to permanent residency in Australia under the Trans-Tasman Agreement (TTA). The TTA has produced a post-2000 annual average of around 30,000 net migrants to Australia.
The Permanent Migration Program planning information on the Department of Home Affairs website also makes no mention of Labor’s new Pacific Engagement Visa program, which provides 3,000 further permanent visas per year. I can therefore only assume that those permanent visas are not counted in the Permanent Migration Program, but we’ll leave that aside for now.
Together, the Humanitarian Program and Trans-Tasman Agreement make up approximately 50,000 annual permanent migrants. This increases Australia’s annual permanent migrant intake by roughly 27 per cent to around 235,000 per annum.
For the sake of transparency and truth, this should all be reported and counted in the Permanent Migration Program headline figure.
Putting COVID-impacted fluctuations and the recent loosening of various temporary migration programs by the Albanese Government aside, these two omissions from the permanent migration program calculation largely bridge the gap to the Australian Bureau of Statistic’s net overseas migration (NOM) figure. NOM is the net change to a country's population from all people moving to and from the country, calculated as the number of people who arrive for 12 months or more minus the number who leave for 12 months or more, over a 16-month period. See what I mean by arbitrary? It’s no wonder most Australians are, in my experience, confused and easily misled when it comes to immigration numbers.
Anyway, the permanent migration figure is the most important figure when it comes to immigration and ultimately the more important issue of population growth, because net overseas migration includes many temporary migrants who depart, particularly without a guaranteed or likely place in the Permanent Migration Program.
The question is therefore: If Kiwis and refugees are permanent, why have successive Australian governments intentionally materially understated the annual permanent migration intake number by leaving them out of the count? Could it have something to do with the 'optics' of a '2' in front of the annual permanent migration intake number instead of a '1', and the related majority public opposition to excessively high immigration in almost every independent public opinion poll in memory?
Australians need transparency and population policy reform, not smoke and mirrors. Otherwise we will see even more disaffection with politics and governments, and more extremists.
Sustainable Australia Party has been calling for policy reform in this area for over a decade. We have consistently warned that failure to slow Australia’s rapid population growth to more a manageable level would not only exacerbate our complex economic, environmental and social challenges including the growing housing crisis, it would lead more people into the arms of socially divisive opportunists like Pauline Hanson, and worse.
Skills distortion
While on the subject of truth and transparency in migration reporting, I also can’t also help but notice a second major area of distortion in communications released by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke. He asserted that the Permanent Immigration Program would "prioritise skilled migrants, who accounted for more than two-thirds of the total."
As I’ve stated for over a decade, of the around 130,000 people in the ‘skill stream’, roughly half consists of the direct family dependants of skilled migrants as ‘secondary’ applicants. That’s right, around half of the skilled stream really belong in the ‘family stream’. That leaves only around one in four people in Australia's annual permanent migration intake bringing in officially designated skills. A further problem is that some estimates have only around of half of those skill stream migrants actually working in the field in which they have designated skills.(2)
Given only about one in four of Australia's permanent migrants are bringing in designated skills, and as low as one in eight end up working to address designated skills shortages, it helps to explain why Australia has suffered an intractable vicious circle of skills shortages over recent decades.
The fact is that family dependants, family-reunion entrants and refugees dominate the permanent migration intake – not highly skilled migrants as claimed - creating a major annual net skills deficit because of the skills and services people demand. Most permanent migrants are not providing the specific skills Australian businesses are calling for, yet still demand skills from doctors, teachers, aged care workers, engineers and accountants, to name a few.
This is where high immigration activists say such fact-based analysis “blames migrants” to try to further derail and ultimately silence debate. No, the blame lies solely with our politicians. This is self-explanatory.
Population plebiscite
It’s time for Tony Burke to stop the smoke and mirrors. We need urgent transparency about migration numbers and skills, followed by proper consultation with the Australian public through a plebiscite to determine Australia’s 2050 population target. From this, we can democratically determine the real annual Permanent Migration Program inclusive of all categories of permanent migrants.
Julia Gillard offered a false promise when she called for “a sustainable Australia, not a big Australia”. Time is running out for us to achieve this in a sensible and socially harmonious way.
William Bourke is the founder of Sustainable Australia Party.
(1) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-02/labor-holds-permanent-migration-numbers-steady/105725862