Immigration was a big driver in the fulfillment of ex-PM Tony Abbott's promise to create 1 million jobs in Australia in five years, the Department of Home Affairs says.
Last week, prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that since the Coalition came to government in 2013, 1 million jobs had been created.
"The Liberal National government has today delivered on a significant commitment — there are 1 million more Australians in work than there were when we were elected," he said. "One million more jobs means at least 1 million livelihoods improved. This is an excellent outcome for Australian families."
Abbott, who was deposed by Turnbull in 2015, has in recent times been arguing that Australia should scale back its migrant intake from 190,000 per year to 110,000.
But Australia's immigration numbers played a big role in meeting Abbott's target, the Department of Home Affairs said in Senate Estimates on Tuesday.
Assistant secretary in the Home Affairs statistics and information branch, Jason Russo, said it was likely that "more than 50%" of the 1 million jobs created in five years were a result of immigration.
Here is Home Affairs suggesting that at least half of the "one million jobs created" in the last five years being trumpeted by the government were created as a result of immigration. #estimates https://t.co/TmJb0Mw1iU
Home affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo clarified that this was likely because immigration's contribution to population growth in Australia was running higher than 50%.
Last month, Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs put out a report analysing the impact of migration in Australia, and the report found that migrants accounted for two-thirds of net jobs created over the past five years, and 72.4% of full-time jobs created.
But the report stated that migrants were not replacing Australian workers.
"The most statistically significant associations were with stronger labour market outcomes for the Australian-born," the report stated. "This is likely explained by the fact that migrants are generally seen as complements to the Australian-born labour force.
"Some migrants also do not participate in the labour force or have limited work rights (for example, long-term visitors, students and working holiday makers) but still consume goods and services and therefore still add to job creation."
In Estimates, officials could not definitively break down the number of permanent and temporary migrants that made up the total figure, but said that the 457 temporary skilled visa program accounted for around approximately 500,000 of the 850,000 of the jobs created in the time the report examined (which ended in 2016, well before the government reached 1 million jobs created).