- Attracting and Retaining Skilled Migrants
- As discussed in Chapter 2, Australia has a long and proud history of welcoming newcomers and is a nation founded on the enterprising spirit and community enrichment that migration imparts. Despite this, contributors to this inquiry have emphasised that Australia needs to do better to attract and retain migrants that have skills and experience vitally needed to ensure the future prosperity of the nation.
- The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, for example, stressed that ‘Australia’s attractiveness cannot be taken for granted when international competition for talent continues to intensify due to major migrant receiving countries facing similar population and labour force challenges’. The Accommodation Association of Australia/Australian Hotels Association/Tourism Accommodation Australia, meanwhile, jointly submitted that ‘[i]f we fail to make further improvements, we may fall behind other comparable countries in attracting and retaining talented individuals’. Others claimed that Australia was in a ‘global talent war’ and ‘global race for talent’.
- Concerningly, as pointed out by the Migration Institute of Australia (MIA), ‘[e]vidence has been mounting over the last decade that Australia may not be the primary choice of destination that it once was for skilled migrants’ and others. Now, Canada, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and some European countries are ‘all more highly regarded destinations for skilled migrants’ than Australia.
- The causes for this relative decline in Australia’s attractiveness as a migration destination are complex and myriad and are addressed throughout this report. This report also offers recommendations for remediating some of these causes. Together with the Government’s reform agenda for the migration system, all improvements to that system recommended in this report will contribute to again making Australia a destination of choice for the world’s most talented migrants—that is, improve the country’s capacity to attract and retain these migrants.
- This chapter deals with a more fundamental issue underpinning Australia’s migration system: the cultural and structural environment within which migration policy is set and administered.
Fostering a Welcoming Environment
Social Cohesion and Multiculturalism
5.6An important consideration for the country’s ability to attract and retain skilled migrants is the degree to which the Australian cultural environment can foster and sustain social cohesion in the face of population intake from around the world.
5.7Over the last few years, there has been a worrying decline in social cohesion in Australian. Settlement Services International (SSI) reported on the findings of a recent Mapping Social Cohesion report which points to this trend:
Mapping Social Cohesion (MSC) is an annual survey conducted by the Scanlon Foundation/Monash University charting Australian public opinion on social cohesion, immigration and population issues. The surveys have been completed since 2007 making it a definitive source of information on trends in public opinion in this area. The 2022 survey is the largest in the Mapping Social Cohesion series and was administered to almost 5,800 respondents. A key finding is that while social cohesion increased during the pandemic it is now declining. As we readjust to life after the pandemic, ‘we are at a crucial tipping point where we can solidify and strengthen social cohesion or allow it to further weaken’.
5.8Indeed, the latest Mapping Social Cohesion report (2023) noted that while social cohesion in Australia ‘has been remarkably resilient through the challenges of recent years… we continue to face difficult national and global circumstances, global conflict, economic pressures and uncertainty and division over issues such as the Voice referendum’. As a result of these factors, the report found that:
…our social cohesion is under pressure and declining on some fronts. Our sense of national pride and belonging has been declining for some years, discrimination and prejudice remain stubbornly common, while in more recent years, we are reporting greater financial stress, increased concern for economic inequality and growing pessimism for the future.
Concerningly, the report found that in 2023, the Scanlon-Monash Index of social cohesion (a measure used by the report to quantify social cohesion in the country) had declined by four points to 79, which is the ‘lowest score on record’, and that compared to the peak during the COVID-19 pandemic in November 2020, social cohesion has declined by 13 points. At the same time, the report also emphasised that ‘there is reason for optimism that we can respond collectively to the challenges we face and restore and strengthen our social cohesion’.
5.9In evidence to the Committee, the MIA outlined the factors the Scanlon Foundation sees as essential for building social cohesion (the so-called ‘five domains’):
- Belonging—to build pride;
- Worth—to provide satisfaction;
- Social justice and equality—to provide economic opportunity;
- Participation—to encourage political engagement; and
- Acceptance, rejection and legitimacy—to set the standards against discrimination.
- Drawing on these ‘five domains’, the MIA defined ‘social cohesion’ as ‘the process by which a sense of belonging is created for members of that nation, the fight against marginalisation and exclusion, and an opportunity for upward mobility’. As argued by the MIA, social cohesion, so defined, is also critical to nation building efforts:
Nation building and social cohesion concepts are inexorably linked, nation building promotes the foundations of social cohesion with social cohesion in turn strengthening nation building efforts. Common to most definitions of nation building and social cohesion is the notion of government leadership and investment. A nation looks to its government to provide economic and other societal stability, and to provide the conditions by which social cohesion can be fostered. Social cohesion in turn works with economic prosperity to create a resilient and secure nation, although it should not be considered a means to economic prosperity alone.
5.11In the Australian context, the fostering of social cohesion is also inextricably linked to multiculturalism as a philosophy of national unity and national identity. The Tasmanian Government, for example, informed the Committee that while ‘social cohesion is not synonymous with multiculturalism, there are some parallels’, noting that ‘a core understanding of Australian multiculturalism is the idea of a “two-way street” for migrants and existing citizens’—that is, a process of cultivating social cohesion. It suggested that ‘Australia’s migration system must be considered in parallel to our multicultural policies to ensure that social cohesion is strengthened’.
5.12The historical background to the formation of multiculturalism in Australia and its main tenets are described in Chapter 2.
5.13The connection between multiculturalism and social cohesion is acknowledged by the Department of Home Affairs, which contends:
Australia is a diverse society with a rich Indigenous heritage and a successful migration history. We are proud of our Indigenous cultures, which are some of the oldest continuing cultures in the world. … The diversity of the population provides Australia with a variety of languages, beliefs, traditions and cultures…. We celebrate this diversity and at the same time strive for a unified and harmonious nation. It is this social cohesion that underpins our prosperity.
5.14In evidence to the Committee, the Australian Bahá’í Community, meanwhile, praised Australia for achieving ‘much in recent decades in building a largely peaceful and relatively harmonious multicultural society’, while also questioning the potential for multiculturalism to ‘create cultural silos and exclusion through the concept of the “other”’. They suggested the need to ‘move beyond the necessary but limited conception of multiculturalism’ to reach even higher degrees of social cohesion, and argued that a greater recognition for the ‘oneness of humanity’ was a necessary element in any social cohesion strategies:
Far from hindering difference or undermining a love for one's country, accepting that our primary identity consists in belonging to a single human family enhances our national and cultural identities by placing them in perspective. It also helps to disassociate our individual identities from some of the destructive implications that manifest when they are taken to extremes – racism, conceptions of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ defining oneself in opposition and competition with others, or other forms of overt and subtle discrimination.
Together with the concept of the ‘oneness of humanity’, they suggested that the principle of ‘unity in diversity’ ‘invites us to move beyond mere tolerance and acceptance of one another and see cultural diversity as an asset and the means by which society can flourish’. Drawing on this diversity, they claimed, ‘entails the weaving together of multiple strands into a new pattern of community life—a pattern made more beautiful by the variety of its element’.
5.15Others were more sceptical of the role of multiculturalism in sustaining social cohesion. Indeed, Sustainable Population Australia, for one, claimed that cultural diversity conversely undermines social cohesion, requiring considerable expenditure from government towards strategies and programs that promote social cohesion between disparate, and sometime adversarial, cultural groups. Mr Simon Cole, similarly, suggested that ‘[w]hile it is possible to be united and diverse, we all acknowledge that there are tensions between diversity and social cohesion that require work.
5.16In contrast to this, Dr Andrew Theophanous tied immigration, multiculturalism, and social cohesion together as complementary-reinforcing phenomena in his evidence to the Committee. Dr Theophanous asserted that ‘multiculturalism includes the concepts of social justice and human rights’ and that it ‘is a philosophy that is indispensable in a society like ours if we are to have any genuine sense of our identity and our future’. Further, while some ‘critics see multiculturalism as a philosophy which is in direct opposition to social solidarity and to those elements of Australian social life which contribute to our sense of nationhood and even our identity’, Dr Theophanous contended, it works as a philosophy of national unity through our commonly-held commitment to cultural pluralism, social justice and human rights.
5.17Migration and multiculturalism, moreover, still enjoy enormous support from the Australian public. In an encouraging sign, despite the decline in the social cohesion index, the Scanlon Foundation reported that ‘Australians have an overwhelmingly positive view’ of multiculturalism, diversity, and immigrants. The Foundation reported, for example, that 89 per cent of respondents expressed a positive view of multiculturalism, 78 per cent thought migration-based diversity makes the country stronger, and 85 per cent agreed that immigrants improve Australian society. Additionally, a massive 94 per cent believed that immigrants make good citizens (see Figures 5.1 and 5.2, below).
Figure 5.1Attitudes to Migrant Diversity and Multiculturalism 2018 to 2023
Source: Scanlon Foundation Research Institute, Mapping Social Cohesion, 2023, p. 67.
Figure 5.2Attitudes to Immigrants, 2018 to 2023
Source: Scanlon Foundation Research Institute, Mapping Social Cohesion, 2023, p. 68.
5.18Citing similarly positive results of a previous Mapping Social Cohesion report, AMES Australia submitted that the ‘high and growing support for multiculturalism in Australia is a sound platform for a future migration system and can be the driver for strengthening opportunities to build social cohesion by creating a sense of belonging and trust’.
Contemporary Review of Multiculturalism in Australia
5.19On 24 July 2024, the Australian Government announced the release of the outcomes of the ‘Multicultural Framework Review’ (the Review), the ‘first major examination of the state of our Australian multiculturalism in a generation’. The Review report—Towards Fairness: A multicultural Australia for all—contained a total of 29 recommendations, ten of which were deemed ‘high priority’, including the following:
- Australian Government to affirm commitment to multicultural Australia;
- Develop a national plan to celebrate Australia’s cultural diversity, to synchronise existing federal, state, territory and local government initiatives such as Harmony Week to acknowledge and celebrate Australia’s cultural diversity; and
- Establish a Multicultural Affairs Commission and Commissioner, and a standalone Department of Multicultural Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship.
- In response, the Australian Government called the Review ‘among the most substantial reviews of Australian multiculturalism ever conducted’ while noting the following:
The Government commits to the Framework’s principles and will be guided by them, as we build on our commitment to ensure Australia’s multicultural settings are fit-for-purpose to harness the talents of all Australians.
5.21The key to building a welcoming environment for migrants, founded on a national philosophy of multiculturalism, is the need to build a more human-centric, supportive, and welcoming migration system that nourishes social cohesion. As argued by the Tasmanian Government: ‘[a] more holistic, human-centric approach to migration policy and program design is needed to support improved longer term settlement outcomes and broader social cohesion’. In a related fashion, the Centre for Policy Development (CPD) emphasised the need for a migration system that is orientated to ‘recognising the people we are welcoming into the country as future Australians’.
Committee Comment
5.22As touched on in Chapter 2, the Committee is convinced that multiculturalism must form the basis of Australian society and identity. Australia is a nation of diverse origins, linguistic plurality, and a rich cultural tapestry composed of a thousand threads. Our collective commitment to this multicultural vision, built around the shared values of democracy, the rule of law, and fairness and equal opportunity for all, is the cornerstone of social cohesion and nation building in Australia. The philosophy of multiculturalism, in this sense, acts as a foundation to Australia’s unity in diversity, and crucially functions to make the country a more welcoming place for all migrants, irrespective of origin.
5.23While acknowledging concerns expressed in the evidence about possible tensions between multiculturalism and the maintenance and promotion of social cohesion, the Committee is of the view that the immeasurable benefits that derive from multiculturalism outweigh any potential downsides and is confident that leadership from all levels of government and from civil society will act to buttress the continuing success of Australia’s system of multiculturalism. The Committee believes that Australians will remain unified in our commitment to multiculturalism as a philosophy of national identity.
5.24The Committee, therefore, welcomes the release of the Towards Fairness: A multicultural Australia of all report and the Government’s in-principle support for its recommendations. The Committee encourages the Government to implement all of the Review’s recommendations, where it is practical to do so, and looks forward to monitoring the outcomes of this agenda and its impact on and interaction with Australia’s migration system.
Re-establishing a Department of Immigration
5.25Central to the fostering of a policy setting and policy administration environment that elevates immigration as a nation building lever of the highest order, is the structure and organisation of the machinery of government. As contended by the MIA above, leadership and investment from government is quintessential to nation building, and if migration is to form a central element of Australia’s nation building efforts, as the Committee heard in evidence, it must be given an independent and exclusive space within government operations.
5.26In-line with Recommendation 11 of the Towards Fairness report, which called for the re-establishment of a ‘standalone Department of Multiculturalism, Immigration and Citizenship’, the Committee heard evidence that the immigration portfolio should be re-established within a standalone department. For example, Heather Marr, Libby Hogarth and Nish K. Padiya recommended that a Department of Immigration ‘in light of its nation building role, become a stand-alone department, responsible for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, with a cabinet level Minister’.
5.27The Committee heard that the Department of Home Affairs had been created in 2017 ‘as a merger of national security, counter terrorism, emergency management, immigration and citizenship and multicultural affairs’. On this amalgamation, CPD submitted that:
This inclusion of immigration policy within broader national security architecture has subordinated immigration policy expertise to national security interests over time.
It contended that re-establishing immigration and citizenship within a standalone department would be ‘an opportunity to strengthen migration’s role in ‘nation building, social cohesion and cultural diversity’.
5.28Expanding on this, CPD submitted that:
This new department or autonomous division could become a centre of expertise in migration policy, grounding policy and program decisions in what works in helping people to settle, and be more coordinated and strategic in helping Australia to yield the maximum social and economic benefits of migration as well as providing maximum benefit to the migrants themselves.
5.29The Migration Hub at ANU expressed similar concerns to CPD, submitting that ‘designing a migration system focused on client experience will be difficult if not impossible so long as migration remains a subset of national security and policing’ within the Department of Home Affairs. Expanding, they argued:
The decision to move immigration into the Department of Home Affairs, in the historically peculiar post-9/11 context, has created an overemphasis on links between migration issues and security issues. This has led to an excessive focus on risk mitigation, worst-case scenarios, and compliance, rather than client experience. If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail; if immigration is part of security, every migrant looks like a security risk.
5.30Reflecting on this decision, Professor Alan Gamlen, Migration Hub at ANU, said that while he understood why the amalgamation of immigration with security and policing happened, ‘it happened in the quite peculiar context of the post 9/11 security environment, which no longer maintains’.
5.31The Migration Hub at ANU emphasised the need to decouple the immigration portfolio from the Department of Home Affairs as a means of changing the culture of Australia’s migration system:
Refreshing and re-focusing the culture and management of the migration system on wider goals and achieving better client experiences therefore requires moving the immigration portfolio out of the Department of Home Affairs. An overly securitised immigration apparatus cannot achieve jobs, skills, population growth, and nation building. Immigration requires strategic, generational thinking, rather than short term operational decision making, or which is subject to political exigency. A resilient migration system requires a dedicated public service focal point for government-wide migration issues that is not beholden to a single sub-set of government priorities, because it spans them all.
5.32Foundation House – The Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture Inc (Foundation House) also lamented the amalgamation for immigration with security and policing functions, and contended that this had degraded the migration and multicultural affairs functions of government:
In our view, the Government's capacity to undertake these functions has been significantly reduced with the incorporation of migration and multiculturalism into the Department of Home Affairs. The Department's website describes its main areas of work as having the goal of " keeping Australia safe."
"Home Affairs brings together Australia's federal law enforcement, national and transport security, criminal justice, emergency management, multicultural affairs, settlement services and immigration and border-related functions, working together to keep Australia safe"
That is clearly an apt characterisation for functions such as law enforcement and criminal justice, but not as appropriate for multicultural affairs, settlement services and immigration and suggests that they have secondary status and may lack the attention that they require.
Foundation House recommended that ‘Government consider reestablishing a Department for Immigration and related issues such as settlement, social cohesion, and multiculturalism’ as a separate entity.
5.33The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) informed the Committee that the absorption of the immigration function into the Department of Home Affairs resulted in ‘an elevation of those border protection functions and the diminishing of the immigration/migration functions, and that was very problematic’. Elaborating, they said the following:
I think what we saw after integration was a bolstering of capability in border protection and a focus on border protection rather than migration or immigration facilitation. That did create some issues with culture in the workplace and with valuing the work of the immigration side of the department, and we did see that degradation of capability because of the focus of the government.
5.34The CPSU emphasised that their main concern was to see ‘an adequately resourced immigration system’ that allowed government employees ‘to fulfil their role to the best of their capability’ and not be ‘under intense pressure because of staffing shortfalls…’ They added that ‘[w]hether that’s a separate department or not is up for debate, but certainly a refocus to the immigration functions is very important, and we're seeing that more recently, and we welcome that approach’.
5.35Responding to questioning on the administrative arrangements currently governing the immigration portfolio and the potential for the re-establishment of a standalone Department of Immigration, Ms Stephanine Foster PSM, then Associate Secretary, Immigration, Department of Home Affairs, informed the Committee that the Department Secretary had:
… vested all the immigration functions together in one group and, essentially, given the responsibility for managing those functions under his broad guidance still within the department, but with the capacity to pull together all of those things which deliver an effective immigration function in one place.
5.36Mr Michael Pezzullo, the then Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, while emphasising that ‘[t]hese are matters for the Prime Minister’, confirmed that he had ‘gone as far as the secretary of a department can go administratively in effectively recreating… a mini department of immigration within the larger Home Affairs Department, with the one proviso that under the relevant legislation… I remain the accountable authority’.
Committee Comment
5.37The Committee is persuaded by evidence received for this inquiry suggesting that the amalgamation of immigration, multicultural affairs, and citizenship functions together with security and policing functions within the Department of Home Affairs has degraded the capacity of the Australian Government to deliver a migration system of world-class standing.
5.38The Committee has heard convincing evidence that Australia’s relative attractiveness as a migration destination has diminished in recent years. Given on-going shortages in the labour market, particularly in key sectors of the economy, and the importance of high-skill industries for the nation’s future prosperity, the Committee believes that more must be done to ensure that Australia remains competitive as a destination of choice.
5.39If migration is to play a central role in our nation building efforts into the future, immigration, citizenship, and multicultural affairs must be given enhanced standing within the machinery of government.
5.40The Committee notes evidence from the former Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs explaining that most of the administrative changes have already been made to allow for a smooth disaggregation from Home Affairs. Given that ‘a mini department of immigration’ administratively exists within the Department of Home Affairs, the Committee feels taking the final step to re-establish a standalone Department of Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs is practical and readily achievable with minimum disruption to government operations.
5.41Additionally, the Committee notes that the movement of the Australian Federal Police to the Attorney-General’s portfolio at the start of this current government, as well as the recent shift of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to the Attorney-General’s Department as well, indicates that elements of the ‘experiment’ of the super-department vision of Home Affairs has been recognised as not fulfilling its goal.
5.42The immigration and citizenship, multicultural affairs, settlement services and elements of the social cohesion functions of the current Department of Home Affairs are ready made to be consolidated and strengthened in a renewed standalone department.
5.43Importantly, as a central driver of nation building, it is essential that the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs remains in the Cabinet.
5.44The Committee suggests that such machinery of government changes would renew the focus, drive, and sense of purpose of immigration, citizenship, and multicultural affairs functions, allowing the migration system to once again be fully directed to advancing the long-term interests of the country.
5.45The Committee recommends that the Australian Government considers re-establishing the Department of Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs as a standalone department, to administer the current immigration and citizenship, multicultural affairs, settlement services, and social cohesion functions of the Department of Home Affairs.