4 hours Ago By David Crowe
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has made a private pledge to review a “golden ticket” visa for wealthy investors who commit $5 million to enter Australia, after Labor scrapped the program last year over fears it brought spies and criminals into the country. Dutton aired his plan at a Liberal Party fundraiser when a migration agent urged him to restore the significant investor visa, a pathway for hundreds of rich migrants over the past decade but a target for criticism over who received fast-track status. The private remark was revealed when the migration agent, Min Li, posted a video of the event to Chinese social media platform RedNote with a description of the “cosy” drinks with the Liberal leader to help him win the election.
Dutton revealed his thinking when Li asked him in the video to restore the significant investor visa, as donors shared drinks to raise money for the Liberal campaign. “I think we’ll bring it back,” he told her. “Whether we do it before the election, or look at a different design for it – we’ll have to consider all that.
” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton shake hands at a Lunar New Year celebration in Box Hill in Melbourne’s east on Saturday. Credit: Justin McManus Li, whose agency promises family migration to Australia for wealthy applicants, with no education or English requirements, told Dutton that investors wanted a clear direction about the significant investor visa. “Probably the redesign is something we’d have to do in government,” he replied in the video she posted on the Chinese site.
“We’re very happy to have a conversation about that.” The social media video showed Li attending the fundraiser in the Sydney electorate of Bennelong to help Liberal candidate Scott Yung, who is seeking to unseat Labor member Jerome Laxale in the key marginal electorate. Census figures show that 14 per cent of people in Bennelong were born in China and 3 per cent were born in Hong Kong.
Peter Dutton speaks at the Business Association of Whitehorse Lunar New Year Festival in Box Hill on Saturday. Credit: Justin McManus Dutton, who was the senior cabinet minister in charge of migration from 2014 to 2021, praised the significant investor visa while campaigning in Melbourne on Saturday to celebrate Lunar New Year, joining events with the Chinese community in the electorate of Menzies. Asked by a Nine News reporter if he would restore the visa, he said: “As immigration minister, I brought in a record number of people through different visa programs, and we did it in a responsible way.
The significant investment visa provides an opportunity for people to invest capital.” He said he wanted the visa program to be about investments in jobs and growth, and would announce his policy in due course. But the privileged entry program, known as the subclass 188 visa, has been criticised for selling fast entry and doing little for the economy.
One of the people who gained entry, property investor Huang Xiangmo, was later blocked from returning after Australian officials declared him unfit to hold an Australian passport and cancelled his permanent residency. The visa was also a source of business for failed company iProsperity , which attracted overseas investors but collapsed in 2020 owing $325 million. The Productivity Commission told the government the visa was “prone to fraud” and only required recipients to spend 40 days a year on average in Australia, which meant it was effectively a non-resident permanent visa.
“Overall, the case for retaining the significant and premium investor visa programs is weak and the government should abolish these visas,” the commission said nine years ago. Li, who is also known as Sandra Li, told this masthead that investors were going to New Zealand, Canada, Singapore and other countries because they could not get to Australia, which meant Australia did not get the investment. “If the door is shut, then they go somewhere else,” she said.
While Li said she paid for the dinner at the Liberal function in Sydney, she said she did not make a donation to the party. Political parties can sometimes record payments at events as “other receipts” or as donations when they lodge their financial returns at the Australian Electoral Commission. Labor scrapped the “golden ticket” in January last year after a review of the migration system, saying the visa was not delivering for the country or the economy, but migration agents launched a campaign to warn that good investors would be turned away.
The Migration Institute of Australia, which represents the agents, said it was wrong to call the visa a “golden ticket” and that it took years for people to qualify for citizenship under the program, but others said it was right to scrap the scheme. Sustainable Population Australia president Jenny Goldie said the special visa was an “outrage” because it meant wealthy people could buy a visa and enter the country. Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis.
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