Planning for Australia’s Future Population Policy Released

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has released Australia’s Future Population Policy.

The Government’s population policy includes:
1. Reducing the migration cap by 15% and incentivising more new migrants to settle outside the big cities where there are jobs and services

  • Reducing the migration ceiling from 190,000 to 160,000 places.
  • Introducing two new regional visas for skilled workers requiring them to live and work in regional Australia for three years before being able to access permanent residence. 23,000 places will be set aside for these regional visas.
  • Introducing new tertiary scholarships to attract Australian and international students to study in regional Australia ($15,000 scholarships will be available to more than 1000 domestic and international students each year).
  • Giving international students studying at regional universities access to an additional year in Australia on a post-study work visa.

2. Busting congestion on our roads and trains.

  • Plan to better connect regional centres with fast rail.
  • Investing $75 billion in road, rail and air infrastructure across the country.
  • Investing more in congestion-busting infrastructure through the $1 billion Urban Congestion Fund.

3. Planning for the future by working more closely with state and territory governments to match infrastructure with local population need

  • Population management as a fixture of future COAG discussions with the adoption of a bottom-up approach
  • Continuing to deliver new City Deals and Regional Deals to ensure three levels of government working together
  • Establishing a Centre for Population, ensuring there is a central, consistent and expert perspective on population growth. The Centre will pursue opportunities to improve data and research on population and facilitate collaboration on population planning across Commonwealth, State, Territory and Local governments.

For more information, see the following link, https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/planning-for-australias-future-population.pdf