Tony Burke, “infra” is the key to success of a population policy

Labor frontbencher Tony Burke points out that the Australian government needs to spend more on public transport for an effective population policy.

SBS Korean Program has exclusively conducted an interview with Labor frontbencher Tony Burke about a population policy. Source: SBS

Scott Morrison announced a population plan aiming at drawing migrants to regional areas to ease congestion.

Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Australia Tony Burke said Labor does not object to it but is skeptical about the effectiveness of the policy.

Source: AAP

“You can’t have someone who arrive on a skilled visa and then send them to somewhere where the skill is not required,” Mr Burke said.

The Member for Watson points out that the government has to address Australia’s infrastructure deficit.

“Keeping immigration numbers exactly where they are that’s not how you deal with congestion, you deal with congestion by investing in public transport, by investing in roads,” he said.

A huge amount of money is required to invest in infrastructure. Asked how to secure the funding for the investment, Mr Burke mentioned the opposition’s array of tax reforms.

“We’ve got changes we put forward to personal trusts, to negative gearing and capital gains tax, and to dividend imputation, he said.

“Those policies mean that we can, therefore not simply deliver a better outcome of infrastructure also a better outcome for Medicare and a better outcome for education.”

Forcing migrants to country towns, greater risk of exploitation?

There are concerns that the government’s regional migration plan will open doors to more exploitation of vulnerable foreign workers who desperately want to get employer sponsorship.

Source: AAP

Some employers ask foreign workers to pay tens of thousands of dollars in return for the sponsorship. Given this kind of thing has happened to many workers, the current safeguard against this seems not to be enough.

Asked what measures need to be put in place to prevent the practice, Mr Burke said the only way to deal with this is to constantly enforce the law.

“But that’s not simply the power of employers also the failure of the government to properly enforce,” he said.

“It is terrible for those individual workers, when someone comes to Australia to work, I want them to have a good experience of working in Australia, I don’t want Australia to be a country of exploitation.”

[The full interview with Mr Burke is available on the podcast above]