The Coalition’s minister for “congestion busting” wants to force some migrants on working visas to live outside major cities, with the hope they will come to like those areas and stay when they become citizens.
Alan Tudge on Tuesday told Sydney’s 2GB Radio host John Stanley the government “taking a good, close look” at how to get more immigrants to move into rural areas.
Tudge was appointed cities, urban infrastructure and population minister by new PM Scott Morrison last month.
He said alongside ongoing transport projects and a $75 billion infrastructure program over the next decade, the Morrison Government had a strong “decentralisation” agenda as its focus.
“We’ve got three very fast growing, big capital cities in Melbourne, Sydney and south east Queensland around Brisbane and yet the rest of Australia is growing quite slowly and often there are places which are actually crying out for more people,” he said.
“The challenge for us is how do we get a better distribution of the population growth so that instead of everybody coming to those three big capitals, they’re more evenly going across the country.
“One of the levers of course that we do have is in relation to migration and we’re looking at whether or not we can create further incentives and indeed then further conditions upon new migrants to go to the smaller states, the smaller capitals or indeed to regional areas for at least a few years where hopefully they’ll make it their home.”
Tudge’s comments came after a poll commissioned by the Sydney Morning Herald suggested 63% of Sydneysiders would like to see migrant numbers restricted, and 50% oppose more development in Sydney to accommodate growth.
Tudge clarified in his interview that “when you’re a citizen you can live wherever you like,” but suggested working visas could include conditions like living location.
He said a migrant worker could, for example, be told they must stay in South Australia for a few years, “and then hopefully during that time they actually grow to love South Australia, they stay there, they work there, their kids go to the local school, they join the community and that would then help South Australia to grow and take a bit of pressure off Melbourne, Sydney, and south east Queensland”.
Tudge said South Australia’s population grew by 10,000 in 2017, and compared it to Melbourne, where he says population grew by 10,000 every 25 days.
He said both South Australian premier Steve Marshall and Northern Territory chief minister Michael Gunner were keen to grow their respective regions.
“We want to work with [them], and same in regional parts of Australia, where sometimes they can’t get a warm body to do the job,” Tudge said.
“There’s real opportunities here to take the pressure off the big capitals and support the growth of the smaller states and the regional area.”