Richard Dowling (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We'll get to that. We've fallen 17,000 below what Treasury predicted as well. Nobody can dispute that NOM is down and continues to trend down. Of course, we've maintained permanent migration at exactly the same settings, at 185,000. I know Senator Scarr focused a lot on Tony Burke's Insiders interview and what was and wasn't answered, but I thought, let's just see what he actually said in response to 'What's the appropriate level of migration?' I went back to look at the transcript, and he said, 'It's tailored to the needs of the nation—is what that's about. Retaining flexibility in the system is really important.' That's why he said, for example, 'Now, I never want a situation where we have a demand for more healthcare workers and we say, "No, we're not going to do them; we're just going to close shifts in our hospital." I don't want that situation.' So having short-term targets is folly. We actually want to have flexibility.

We need to have flexibility in our system. I don't know what central planning school you've come from where you think you can do these micro, quarterly plans for migration—