Labor’s latest migration crackdown may bring numbers closer to government forecasts, but years of piecemeal reform have left the underlying problems of planning, administration and public confidence unresolved.

The government’s performance on immigration policy in recent months has been excruciating to watch. Tony Burke’s policy announcements at the National Press Club aimed at bringing down net overseas migration more quickly clearly reflect perceived pressure from public opinion that migration levels are too high. It also reflects the government’s failure to meet its own forecasts for net overseas migration. The government feels compelled to make these changes even though it is not really challenged by credible policy alternatives from the Coalition or One Nation.

In trying to understand this situation, it’s worth looking at the big picture.

When Labor came to power in 2022 it inherited an immigration train wreck from the Coalition.

The legacy of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Coalition government was a degraded immigration administration absorbed into a security-focused Department of Home Affairs, a policy vacuum, unprecedented case processing backlogs and a huge pool of bridging visa holders remaining in the country. The Coalition allowed the domestic asylum decision-making system to be consumed by applications from non-refugee producing countries as part of an apparent work scam. Inexplicably, the Coalition also effectively abolished the immigration compliance function, thereby removing any incentive for overstayers to leave the country.

Labor correctly recognised that the Australian immigration system was “broken”. However, its response was half-hearted. It set up an inquiry led by former treasury secretary Martin Parkinson, but the inquiry had limited terms of reference and was conducted largely over the Christmas holiday period. The Parkinson review made many sensible recommendations, and the government implemented a raft of changes that dramatically improved on the mess they were left by the Coalition.

But Labor, presumably concerned to retain the tough border control image of the Coalition, retained the Department of Home Affairs administrative arrangements with the shrunken immigration apparatus remaining buried within a security-focused department. Labor also left net overseas migration forecasting with the Treasury, despite the immigration function in Home Affairs having the best insight into the only part of net overseas migration controllable by the government. Some immigration policies – relating to the entry of Asia-Pacific workers – were left outside the immigration function in the hands of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations and Department of Foreign Affairs.

The government also chose not to implement the Parkinson recommendation for a long-term immigration planning framework.

These strategic choices sowed the seeds for the troubles that the government is now trying to address.

There is no magically correct number for immigration to Australia. Planning targets (and accompanying policy settings) have been traditionally set taking into account skill needs, domestic employment/unemployment numbers, migrant employment performance, economic benefits, humanitarian commitments, broad absorptive capacity (including housing) and community acceptance.

Community acceptance is crucial. An important part of it is the community believing that the government is in control of migration and can meet its forecasts and planning targets, whatever they are. This is where the government has struggled.

The government inherited an unusually high level of net overseas migration (538,000 in 2022-2023). The reasons have been well documented. Only part of net overseas migration is within the government’s purview to manage. Actually getting it down to any forecast planning level requires an excellent forecasting apparatus, astute adjustments to policy settings and a high-quality visa processing administration. Net overseas migration outcomes since Labor took office in mid-2022 have generally been higher than the Treasury forecast.

Until Tony Burke’s recent announcement, the government’s response has been a series of very clumsy-looking actions to get actual numbers closer to net migration forecasts. The poor solutions have included high refusal rates for overseas students, jacking up fees, prioritising onshore applicants and processing ‘go-slows’.

It has looked like the government playing ‘catch-up’, because it was.

Although the piecemeal measures have brought actual net overseas migration down (the figure dropped to 292,000 over the 12-month period leading up to March 2026), Burke’s new measures are designed to be a king hit to the problem and enable the government to meet its target of 225,000 from 2027-2028 onwards.

The key elements are further tightening the overseas student program by limiting the ability for students to bring their family members with them and limiting ‘course hopping’, new limits on working holiday-makers extending their stay into a second or third year and tougher visitor visa conditions limiting further stay. Preferred occupations will be re-prioritised, particularly skills related to construction trades. There will be an expansion of compliance resources and an increase in penalties for ‘rogue’ migration agents.

The changes are aimed at bringing down numbers without causing havoc to the economy, although clearly many individuals relying on existing policy will suffer. The expansion of compliance resources is welcome because there needs to be more active departmental activity encouraging people here unlawfully to leave.

Many of the changes are very fiddly, adding to complexity for processing staff and clients. They make an ongoing mockery of Clare O’Neil’s rash promise in 2022 to simplify the immigration system.

Burke’s changes may work to get net overseas migration down to 225,000 in 2027-2028 but will not solve the underlying strategic problem of achieving more predictable outcomes.

What the government should do is adopt a long-term immigration planning framework, as recommended by the Parkinson review. This could involve setting high and low ranges for net overseas migration over a three-year period which will give Australia the best economic and social outcomes.

The government also needs to give itself the apparatus to make better forecasts, set policies that are likely to achieve those outcomes and a high-quality client-focused processing system to back them up. I suspect that can only be achieved by restoring a freestanding, properly resourced Department of Immigration and Citizenship – that only has one job.

In addition, if the government wants community support for its immigration policies, it needs to much more actively communicate to the community why immigration is needed and how it benefits them economically and socially in their everyday lives. It has been missing in action on this and is now paying the price.

Without these actions, the government will remain on the back foot and be subject to cheap shots from opposition parties without realistic policies and from hostile sections of the media.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.