This paper was presented as a lecture in the Senate Occasional Lecture Series at Parliament House, Canberra, on 23 September 2011. In this lecture Peter Mares argues that our thinking about migration has not caught up with recent changes in policy, particularly the rise in temporary migration.

With 6 million people or 27% of the population born overseas Australia has – apart from the city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong – the highest proportion of overseas-born residents of any country in the world. Australia's migration program is changing in quite fundamental ways. In fact we may be witnessing the biggest change since the abolition of the White Australia policy forty years ago, but these changes are not widely recognised or discussed. The implications of these changes are not entirely clear or predictable, but they may well be profound.