Annual intake more than doubled from 2005 and 1.3m have arrived in the last 3 years - a 5% population increase from immigration alone. Australia has an institutional accountability problem, and the growing dysfunction of the immigration system is one of its clearest symptoms. Since the mid-2000s, however, Australia has gradually normalised a permanently high-migration growth model, with annual intake frequently exceeding 200,000 people and peaking above 500,000 post-COVID. AdvertisementFor vested interests, it certainly has been. The immigration system now serves too many competing interests unrelated to the long-term interests of the country itself: