In a little under two weeks we will get the latest official report on the number of overseas migrants entering and leaving Australia.

Whatever the number is, some people will be outraged. But they shouldn’t be.

There has indeed been a well publicised surge in net overseas migration since late 2022.

But those getting angry over migration are suffering from recency bias, and ignoring the 18 months before when more people left our shores than arrived.

Taking in the entirety of the pandemic and its aftermath, we can see that net overseas migration over the past five years is not much larger than it was in the five years leading up to the outbreak of Covid in early 2020.

Graph showing net overseas migration over the five years to December is only 141,000 high than in the previous five-year period

Some seem to be blaming migrants for unaffordable homes; that ignores the fact that property prices were going bananas when the international borders were closed.

Indeed, the housing crisis is decades in the making.

And if you look at the jobs market, there’s no evidence that migration has been too high: unemployment has remained low at a bit over 4% and the workforce participation rate (67%) is near record highs.

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Employers are still complaining of chronic skills shortages, not least in the trades we need to build more homes, which is the actual solution to cheaper housing.

Australia has benefited and continues to benefit hugely from migration, in tangible and intangible ways.

But with all that said, we are entitled to ask our leaders: what’s the plan?

We might agree that the peak annual net migration rate of more than 500,000 in September 2023 was too high, but how do we know that? And what should it be?

In other words: what does a well-reasoned migration program look like, one that matches our need for skilled workers with our capacity to house and service a growing population?

On this, the government is silent.

Labor in August 2023 committed to working with the states to develop a comprehensive, “principles-based” plan around the number of permanent settlements “to ensure migration meets the local needs of communities across the country”.

We’ve seen nothing since.

Instead, after anti-immigration protests, the minister for home affairs, Tony Burke, rushed out a three-line press release stating the permanent migration cap in 2025-26 would be the same as last year: 185,000.

When it comes to the more important net overseas migration figure, Jim Chalmers has made it clear that this “isn’t a government policy or a government target”.

“It’s not a floor or a ceiling. It’s not something that the government determines,” the treasurer said in May 2023.

Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of the immigration department before it was absorbed into home affairs, reckons that’s not good enough.

Rizvi believes the lack of a clear migration plan has created a vacuum, allowing misinformation and extremist views to flourish.

“We need something that resembles a plan. One that makes sense and ministers are willing to explain to the Australian public,” he said, adding that it can’t be limited to permanent migration.

“But they (the government) consistently have backed off doing that.”

Terry Rawnsley, an urban economist at KPMG, agrees that it would be a “very smart idea” to have a more scientific approach to net migration – one that balances the economic benefits of migration with our capacity to house and service these additional people.

Rawnsley said one option would be to target a range for annual net overseas migration, in a way similar to how the Reserve Bank targets inflation, and to revisit the target.

The targeted range could be something like 250,000 to 350,000, for example.

“We need aged care workers, and care workers, and IT workers, and we can think through those numbers and then triangulate that with what’s coming through the pipeline in the housing system.”

The government has funded and supported institutions to provide the data we would need to start developing a more scientific approach to net migration in this country.

For example, Jobs and Skills Australia creates detailed lists of skill shortages, while the new National Housing Supply and Affordability Council publishes an annual “state of the housing system” report.

Of course it wouldn’t be easy, but Rizvi and Rawnsley reckon it is eminently doable.

Politically, it would require some bravery.

But a reasoned and transparent approach to migration could be an antidote to the politics of division and grievance that threatens to undermine what has long been one of Australia’s greatest strengths.