Labor Refuses to Own Its Migration Disaster
The air rifle was shared. The other kid took it when no one was looking, the stock snapped, and he quietly put it back in the corner so that the next person to pick it up would be the one seen with the broken piece in his hands. That is the posture Tony Burke adopted last week when he was asked whether the Albanese government had made a mistake by allowing net overseas migration to surge after the borders reopened. He called the question "disingenuous" and said that judging past decisions with the benefit of hindsight was unfair because, at the time, "everybody was looking at the needs of the economy."
The numbers that followed are not hindsight. In 2022-23, net overseas migration reached a record 538,000. It remained elevated in subsequent years, 429,000, then 306,000, and stood at roughly 292,000 in the year to March 2026. Coalition figures put the cumulative addition under Labor at around 1.5 million people, roughly the population of Adelaide. Across the same period, dwelling completions lagged. In several major states the gap between new arrivals and new homes has been large and persistent; the Institute of Public Affairs has noted that recent net permanent and long-term arrivals have run at nearly three times new housing supply. Rents, house prices, and hospital and school waiting lists have moved in the direction one would expect from that imbalance.
Burke's refusal to treat these outcomes as a policy failure rests on two moves. The first is to treat the immediate post-reopening surge as an unavoidable catch-up of deferred students, workers, and family members. The second is to insist that any assessment of whether the volume or composition was sustainable must be postponed indefinitely, because the relevant information was not fully available in real time. Both claims are contestable. The border had already reopened under the previous government; the subsequent acceleration occurred under Labor's settings and visa decisions. Labor's own later targets, 245,000 this financial year, 225,000 the next, implicitly acknowledge that the earlier run-rate was higher than the country could absorb without strain. The government has begun tightening student family visas, working-holiday second- and third-year places, and "visa hopping." These are adjustments, not an admission that the original settings produced a measurable cost in housing affordability and infrastructure congestion.
The electorate has already formed a view. Public concern about the pace of migration has risen sharply, and both the Coalition and One Nation have responded with proposals for sharper reductions. Labor's response has been to reframe the debate as one of technical management rather than responsibility for the scale that was allowed. Burke's interview is consistent with that approach: the surge happened, the pressures are real, but the decisions that produced them were reasonable given the information available, and therefore not properly described as a mistake. The broken stock is still in the corner. The claim is that no one in particular put it there, and that noticing the crack now is somehow unfair to the people who were holding the metaphorical rifle when it snapped.
Whether the earlier volume was the best available response to labour shortages is a separate question from whether the government is prepared to say that the resulting housing shortfall and service pressures were a foreseeable and costly consequence of its choices. On that narrower point Burke has given a clear answer. The government will adjust the settings going forward. It will not treat the period of record inflows as a policy error for which it is accountable. The kid has put the metaphorical rifle back. The task now is to persuade everyone else that the stock was already cracked.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2026/10/labor-refuses-to-own-its-migration-disaster/
