How

Net migration to Australia more than doubled between 2000 and 2008 and has never  gone down significantly outside the pandemic. The government’s current plan is for net migration to be 340,000 in 2024-25, then 255,000 a year until 2025-26, then 235,000 a year forever.

Australia should aim for net overseas migration to stay below 50,000 per year indefinitely.  The principal mechanisms by which this could be achieved are as follows. 

1. the Commonwealth government declaring an objective of keeping net overseas  migration below 50,000 a year indefinitely. 
2. ending work rights for prospective international student visa holders so that the  student visa would no longer be a de facto work visa. This would still allow all the  genuine education exports to continue but would end our tertiary education system  operating as a low wage work visa. This would greatly improve the living standards of  students by reducing competition for both entry level work and entry level housing. 
3. Increase the temporary skilled migration income threshold (at a minimum the ACTU recommends around $90,917 rather than the current $73,150). This would  mean our skilled migration program would be less of an alternative to wage rises,  training and investment. 
4. reducing the number of skilled permanent visas from 132,200 to 10,000 and allocate these by auction. 
5. limiting family reunion visa sponsorship rights to citizens (under the current system,  permanent residents can sponsor spouses). 
6. ending the humanitarian visa program from developing countries (effectively ending  it). Instead we could spend the same political and financial capital overseas via the  UNHCR and other organisations, where nearly nearly all refugees actually are, rather  than selecting a relatively tiny number for resettlement.
7. Grandfathering work rights for the SCV 444 program (New Zealand citizens).