Permanent visa applicants are required to undergo a medical examination with a registered 'panel physician' or 'commonwealth medical officer'. Temporary spouse visa applicants are also required to undergo medical tests. (they want to medically test your foreign spouses and children, whether or not you intend to reside in Australia).
The medical exams includes a chest x-ray 'to test for TB'. Current NICE guidelines only indicate that chest x-rays are to be used in monitoring TB treatment - for over a decade, if not more, blood tests or skin tests are considered the accurate testing for TB. Blood is taken at the visa medical exams for HIV and other (unknown to the applicant, so a bit spooky really) tests, so the x-ray seems v. unnecessary. Temporary visitors self-certify that they are free from TB on arrival cards.
Fees for these services are paid by the applicants to the medical examiners. These medical examiners advise Home Affairs on the testing regime, ie. that the chest x-rays are required. The fees are around market rate, but as interest rates rise, the value of the immediate cash from the applicants (as opposed to waiting for a claim to an insurer or the state medical service for overflow management), increases to these examiners. Little incentive to reduce the testing per patient revenues flowing in.
Even if you meet the medical requirement, if the Department delays decision for more than 18 months, they require you do do new medical exams.
Very interesting and informative. However, I feel compelled to point out that people coming from New Zealand also need a visa to enter Australia, but they probably don't notice the requirement as a visa is granted to them automatically upon entry.
Yes, they do. I tried to keep the "open labour market with NZ" question out of this overview (and NZ citizens have been removed from the temporary visa stock data I show).
all these visa rules especially paths between temporary and permanent categories are used to benefit certain industries interest like universities, tech, medical, hospitality etc
For example, without a clear and easy path between student visa and permanent resident the number and quality of foreign students would drop significantly collapsing Australian "all about money" corporatised public universities
Don't worry - Treasury taxes Australian families out of existence, the RBA feeds a land price boom so they can't find homes and then the Immigration Department refills the country with Muslims. Well done, all!
Of interest: Canadian inflation is under control following their three quarters of falling NOM.
Which brings me to one of my favourite topics: Chucking out the famous aphorism about inflation being a *monetary* phenomenon.
I have myself published about using actual resident population as an inflation control measure.
NOM is one option. The price of a bridging visa could vary with inflation. if we pop out of the top of the CPI range, a bridging visa goes up by $1000, for example. I'm not sure that would have desirable effects though, longer term.
Australian holiday travel is frequent enough that I suspect we could contribute, in part, to managing inflation via departure and arrival taxes
If departure taxes could go negative in times of inflation, could you cause a run on the dollar, a fall in domestic demand and a bump in imports? I suspect yes. We have a million overseas departures a month already. The scale is significant. Might not hit rents but would affect demand at Coles and Woolworths, Transurban, etc if trips were more frequent (or if they were longer).
Would be interesting to model the lags and compare to traditional policy!
I definitely see how what you are suggesting could work to tweak visa prices and criteria as an inflation tool, and how automatic stabilisers could be built into the system. Worth thinking more about, for sure.
My only hesitation is that there are many policy settings in many domains that would also help control inflation. Some people have suggested increasing and decreasing the compulsory superannuation rate in response to inflation (or having a rule like the compulsory rate is last year's inflation +3%). I'm not sure it is a good idea to design every policy for this purpose.
Every target will cause ripples. Choosing the most trivial and most discretionary part of consumption as a target might be less distortionary than affecting retirement savings or home puchase!
I'm not seriously suggesting holidays as an RBA target, but I can't help noticing that all the transmission of monetary policy goes quite explicitly through demand these days and there's a certain amount of path dependency in our choice to continue to use /only/ the price of money to affect demand. Feels dirty to control demand directly; unscientific; wrong. Upsets people. I like that (sometimes too much?!).
Other levers might hit demand with shorter and less variable lags. Sorry to distract your comment section. But it overlaps with your big point, which I think is that the number of people on the ground here matters.
A topic close to my heart these days, I'll keep posting here for sanity, get less abuse here than on reddit
We have a natural limiter for migration flows being the number of airport parking spaces and the hours the airports operate. A little bit of cruise traffic, the merchant mariners our country relies on more than we give credit (eg. we prevented crew changes and rest breaks in COVID - Sri Lanka carefully facilitated this right through), but the in and out it mainly by air.
If we had a problem with flows such that it would effect housing, wouldn't we see this in empty planes leaving (translated to cheap flights)? I've not seen this, but haven't been watching closely.
Unless empty planes are leaving, then is Migration policy just really about whose bums are on the seats coming in?
Few would argue that Australians leaving to live abroad and return to live at home should be restricted. - I raise you an almost 8 year wait on the Partner visa queue that there are officials in the Department who disagree, Just to say I have skin in this game, so sorry if the frustration comes through here.
For evidence-based policy it would be good to break down the Australia bucket - at any one time, a portion of the population are not able to leave:
- Those serving custodial or suspended sentences and those on parole including the recently deported back to Australia after an overseas conviction (in Jamaica 'deportees' are a big social problem).
- Those dependant on various benefits - if you live on a worker's compensation claim, you are not able to leave the country for 16 months. (I met an Aussie traveller in a bar in Germany who explained this to me - he'd had a bad industrial accident and bought a deserted Far North Queensland town with his lump sum, then travelled overseas each wet season. I reckon he did more for encouraging tourist visits to Australia on his travels than all of the efforts of Tourism Australia - lovely fella) I'd imagine it is the same with the State Pension, NDIS and various other schemes.
- Those in State care.
It is claimed that the reason departures are down is 'the Pandemic' - I'd reckon an increase in benefit recipients would have an effect. A quick search did not find anyone checking a correlation here. But I think focusing our policy only on the inwards to get to a net number is a problem.
On the Contributory Parent, I think it is dangerous to try and draw any cross-country comparisons with Australia's migration system as I don't think there is any country with as complex a migration system as Australia's. An investor permit in many countries fills the need of Australia's bizarre parent visa (have you seen the 'balance of family' test - now that is ugly).
Permanent visa applicants are required to undergo a medical examination with a registered 'panel physician' or 'commonwealth medical officer'. Temporary spouse visa applicants are also required to undergo medical tests. (they want to medically test your foreign spouses and children, whether or not you intend to reside in Australia).
The medical exams includes a chest x-ray 'to test for TB'. Current NICE guidelines only indicate that chest x-rays are to be used in monitoring TB treatment - for over a decade, if not more, blood tests or skin tests are considered the accurate testing for TB. Blood is taken at the visa medical exams for HIV and other (unknown to the applicant, so a bit spooky really) tests, so the x-ray seems v. unnecessary. Temporary visitors self-certify that they are free from TB on arrival cards.
Fees for these services are paid by the applicants to the medical examiners. These medical examiners advise Home Affairs on the testing regime, ie. that the chest x-rays are required. The fees are around market rate, but as interest rates rise, the value of the immediate cash from the applicants (as opposed to waiting for a claim to an insurer or the state medical service for overflow management), increases to these examiners. Little incentive to reduce the testing per patient revenues flowing in.
Even if you meet the medical requirement, if the Department delays decision for more than 18 months, they require you do do new medical exams.
The mates at it again, I reckon
Fun fact - Australian Border Force is one of the few current Public Sector Paramilitary in Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramilitary
(correction, sorry, I hit P sometimes and fingers take over Public / Private)
Very interesting and informative. However, I feel compelled to point out that people coming from New Zealand also need a visa to enter Australia, but they probably don't notice the requirement as a visa is granted to them automatically upon entry.
Yes, they do. I tried to keep the "open labour market with NZ" question out of this overview (and NZ citizens have been removed from the temporary visa stock data I show).
all these visa rules especially paths between temporary and permanent categories are used to benefit certain industries interest like universities, tech, medical, hospitality etc
For example, without a clear and easy path between student visa and permanent resident the number and quality of foreign students would drop significantly collapsing Australian "all about money" corporatised public universities
Don't worry - Treasury taxes Australian families out of existence, the RBA feeds a land price boom so they can't find homes and then the Immigration Department refills the country with Muslims. Well done, all!
Of interest: Canadian inflation is under control following their three quarters of falling NOM.
Which brings me to one of my favourite topics: Chucking out the famous aphorism about inflation being a *monetary* phenomenon.
I have myself published about using actual resident population as an inflation control measure.
NOM is one option. The price of a bridging visa could vary with inflation. if we pop out of the top of the CPI range, a bridging visa goes up by $1000, for example. I'm not sure that would have desirable effects though, longer term.
Australian holiday travel is frequent enough that I suspect we could contribute, in part, to managing inflation via departure and arrival taxes
If departure taxes could go negative in times of inflation, could you cause a run on the dollar, a fall in domestic demand and a bump in imports? I suspect yes. We have a million overseas departures a month already. The scale is significant. Might not hit rents but would affect demand at Coles and Woolworths, Transurban, etc if trips were more frequent (or if they were longer).
Would be interesting to model the lags and compare to traditional policy!
I definitely see how what you are suggesting could work to tweak visa prices and criteria as an inflation tool, and how automatic stabilisers could be built into the system. Worth thinking more about, for sure.
My only hesitation is that there are many policy settings in many domains that would also help control inflation. Some people have suggested increasing and decreasing the compulsory superannuation rate in response to inflation (or having a rule like the compulsory rate is last year's inflation +3%). I'm not sure it is a good idea to design every policy for this purpose.
What do you think about that concern?
Every target will cause ripples. Choosing the most trivial and most discretionary part of consumption as a target might be less distortionary than affecting retirement savings or home puchase!
I'm not seriously suggesting holidays as an RBA target, but I can't help noticing that all the transmission of monetary policy goes quite explicitly through demand these days and there's a certain amount of path dependency in our choice to continue to use /only/ the price of money to affect demand. Feels dirty to control demand directly; unscientific; wrong. Upsets people. I like that (sometimes too much?!).
Other levers might hit demand with shorter and less variable lags. Sorry to distract your comment section. But it overlaps with your big point, which I think is that the number of people on the ground here matters.
A topic close to my heart these days, I'll keep posting here for sanity, get less abuse here than on reddit
We have a natural limiter for migration flows being the number of airport parking spaces and the hours the airports operate. A little bit of cruise traffic, the merchant mariners our country relies on more than we give credit (eg. we prevented crew changes and rest breaks in COVID - Sri Lanka carefully facilitated this right through), but the in and out it mainly by air.
If we had a problem with flows such that it would effect housing, wouldn't we see this in empty planes leaving (translated to cheap flights)? I've not seen this, but haven't been watching closely.
Unless empty planes are leaving, then is Migration policy just really about whose bums are on the seats coming in?
Few would argue that Australians leaving to live abroad and return to live at home should be restricted. - I raise you an almost 8 year wait on the Partner visa queue that there are officials in the Department who disagree, Just to say I have skin in this game, so sorry if the frustration comes through here.
For evidence-based policy it would be good to break down the Australia bucket - at any one time, a portion of the population are not able to leave:
- Those serving custodial or suspended sentences and those on parole including the recently deported back to Australia after an overseas conviction (in Jamaica 'deportees' are a big social problem).
- Those dependant on various benefits - if you live on a worker's compensation claim, you are not able to leave the country for 16 months. (I met an Aussie traveller in a bar in Germany who explained this to me - he'd had a bad industrial accident and bought a deserted Far North Queensland town with his lump sum, then travelled overseas each wet season. I reckon he did more for encouraging tourist visits to Australia on his travels than all of the efforts of Tourism Australia - lovely fella) I'd imagine it is the same with the State Pension, NDIS and various other schemes.
- Those in State care.
It is claimed that the reason departures are down is 'the Pandemic' - I'd reckon an increase in benefit recipients would have an effect. A quick search did not find anyone checking a correlation here. But I think focusing our policy only on the inwards to get to a net number is a problem.
On the Contributory Parent, I think it is dangerous to try and draw any cross-country comparisons with Australia's migration system as I don't think there is any country with as complex a migration system as Australia's. An investor permit in many countries fills the need of Australia's bizarre parent visa (have you seen the 'balance of family' test - now that is ugly).