The transcript of yesterday’s Liberal announcement about its immigration target follows, featuring Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. Abbott’s parliamentary secretary, dog-whistler Cory ‘ban the burqa’ Bernardi is along for the ride.

Abbott and Morrison seem to have considerable difficulty explaining exactly what the policy means and how it will be implemented, especially in relation to temporary skilled and student visas.

For mine the key exchange is this:

Question: How do you know you can hit your target if you can’t say which parts of the programme you’ll cut from?

Answer: Well, because there are all sorts of different components, and there are some very large components of the immigration programme that if reduced would certainly bring us very swiftly to the 170,000 maximum that we’re nominating. So it’s just a question, it’s just a question of intelligently managing the programme, making sure that all of the entrants in these various categories are fair dinkum. That’s what we did before, particularly under Phillip Ruddock, that’s what we will do again.

transcript

TONY ABBOTT: Look, it’s good of you guys to interrupt your debate preparation to come along this morning. Look, last week, for most of the week, the Prime Minister was engaging in a debate about population. It’s impossible to discuss population without also discussing immigration because immigration accounts for about two thirds of our population increase. In fact, it’s fundamentally dishonest of the Prime Minister to pretend that population has nothing to do with immigration. So, today I’m here to launch the Coalition’s 2010 Immigration Policy. I’m pleased to be joined by my friend and Shadow Minister for Immigration Scott Morrison and also by my friend and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Population, Cory Bernardi.

Immigration was running at about 200,000 a year in the last term of the Howard Government. Under the Rudd/Gillard Government, immigration has gone up to 300,000. We had 200,000, more or less, under the Howard Government at the time of an unprecedented economic boom, under the Rudd/Gillard Government, we’ve had 300,000, not withstanding the global financial crisis and the associated economic slowdown. 300,000 is just not sustainable. Immigration at this rate is just not sustainable. So the Coalition will reduce net overseas migration to 170,000 a year within our first term. We will maintain though, the various employer nominated categories, because it’s important that business has the skills and the people that it needs.

Most of you may not be aware, but I am a migrant myself. Australia is an immigrant society, proudly so. The Coalition parties are pro-immigrant, but it’s very important that our immigration program have the support of our people and that is what this policy is designed to ensure.

So I’ll now ask Scott to say a few words and then we’ll hear a little from Cory.

SCOTT MORRISON: Thank you, Tony. The policy we’ve released today is all about one thing and that is about a sustainable rate of population growth and how to achieve it and what can be done immediately to move towards that goal. Sustainability is all about ensuring you don’t deny the opportunities and quality of life that we enjoy today to those generations that follow. That’s what sustainability means and it’s important that we don’t run at levels of population growth, which at over two per cent per year at the moment, are historically high and in recent times, but also historically very high in terms of global population growth, global population growth today is around 1.2 per cent. In the OECD countries, it’s less than one per cent. What we are proposing in this policy is to restore within a first term the population growth rate to 1.4 per cent, which is Australia’s long run average.

At that long run average, Australia’s been able to enjoy considerable and great economic success, particularly throughout the 11 and a half years of the Howard-Costello government, the Coalition government. So returning those growth levels to that level, within the first term of a Coalition Government would ensure we are meeting the needs of our economy, that most importantly we are meeting the needs of preserving the quality of life, both for current generations and future generations.

Read the rest at The Stump.