Josh Taylor

Restricting welfare to citizens not ‘punishing’ but ‘incentivising’, shadow minister says

The shadow immigration minister, Jonno Duniam, has said Angus Taylor’s budget reply proposal to limit welfare payments only to Australian citizens was not a punishment for permanent residents but a way to “incentivise that pathway to Australian citizenship”

ABC 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson asked Duniam how does “punishing tax-paying permanent residents appeal to would-be migrants that the country so badly needs?”

Duniam responded that “countless” people who have migrated to Australia and have become wealthy because of the opportunities have not been punished, and people like them who want to come won’t be punished either.

He said:

But they’ll still have to wait under the visa system a number of years, in almost all cases, to receive the kinds of welfare benefits that you are talking about.

And in many cases now, under Labor’s current approach, there are wait times between 4 and 10 years for various supports that people may want to take advantage of.

So this is not about punishment, but it is about trying to incentivise that pathway to Australian citizenship.

He said the Coalition is pro-migration, noting Australia’s ageing population, but says that “we want to determine who is coming here [and] in what number”:

We want to ensure that we have houses for them to live in.

And can I say, we want to preserve, for those who eventually become Australian citizens – which I hope is all of them that want to come here – the services that we provide in this country.

That’s a pretty pro-migration policy, if ever I’ve seen one.

But there will always be critics, and they will say what they say.