The comments from backbencher Julian Hill - who sits on the Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Migration - come amid fierce debate within the federal opposition over shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally's plea to "put Australian workers first" through an overhaul of the migration program post-COVID.
In a piece for The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age earlier this month, Senator Keneally warned Australia's reliance on migration for economic growth has "at times ... been a lazy approach".
Mr Hill said that far from cutting the flow of permanent migrants, "Australia will continue to need permanent migrants to build a life here, helping to boost demand and pay down Australia's post-COVID debt", as well as slow down the ageing of the population.
"A good way of kick-starting permanent migration in the wake of the COVID crisis could be for the government to clear the outrageous backlog of spouse and partner visa applications," he said.
"Thousands of Australians who have fallen in love are now stuck overseas waiting for a visa to be issued for their partner and the queue keeps on growing. These people already have connections here and want to build a new life in Australia. They're ready to make Australia their home."
Just under 40,000 partner visas were granted in 2018-19, representing the vast majority of visas issued under the "family stream" of permanent migrants. About 90,000 people are in the queue.
Earlier in the year Mr Hill accused the government of applying a "harsh and cruel" limit on the number of places in order to meet its target of reducing the annual migration intake to 160,000.
That cut was "a sham", he said, because in most cases the people involved were already living in Australia on bridging visas. Department statistics for partner visas granted last year show that 20,490 successful applicants were already in Australia, while 19,428 were based overseas.
Mr Hill said his proposal was not in conflict with Senator Keneally's call for Australia's migration program to shift away from its reliance on temporary workers.
"It's not radical to say that Australia's migration program must always be in our national interest and calibrated accordingly," he said.
"Kristina was talking about the composition of the migration program - particularly the proven strengths of permanent migration - and the idea that Australia should offer [immigrants] a new, permanent home.
"Regional Australia especially needs people who will settle down, buy houses, send their kids to school, and become active community members."
Another Labor MP, former economics professor Andrew Leigh, emphasised migration was vital for the revival of Australia's universities, which have been sucker-punched by the pandemic.
"If we want a strong higher education sector, a strong immigration program is essential," he said.
"Turning off the migration tap is not just disastrous for the finances of universities but also for their academic mission. We need to be open to migration."
Labor's political rivals used last week's parliamentary session to weigh in on Senator Keneally's contributions, with Liberal MP and migration committee chair Julian Leeser dubbing the opinion piece "injudicious" and "cheap politics", while One Nation leader Pauline Hanson lavished it with praise.
Senator Keneally reiterated her calls for debate about the composition of the migration program, but said Australia was "built on migration" and the most successful multicultural country in the world. "These are not sentiments you're going to hear from Pauline Hanson," she told Sky News.
Credit and Source: THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
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