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The Forum > Article Comments > Immigration is the elephant in the election room > Comments

Immigration is the elephant in the election room : Comments

By Peter Wilkinson, published 22/6/2016

And it is a very big elephant; the bipartisan target is over 200,000 for 2015/16, about the population of Hobart.

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Aiden,
I'd like to know why you think we would be better off with more people.
What's behind your opinion?
Is it a matter economics, or do you actually believe more foreigners will be good for the fabric of our nation?
Posted by Armchair Critic, Wednesday, 22 June 2016 6:37:57 PM
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If we adopt an extremist "We're all right Jack. Youse can't come here now." policy.

Then the countries in our region will rightly feel racially offended.

Instead of the current healthy levels of Chinese and Indian immigration and investment, China and India will use forceable entry.

We would ultimately need 200+ Australian nuclear weapons to defend a "No Migrants Need Apply" policy.
Posted by plantagenet, Wednesday, 22 June 2016 7:02:51 PM
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Environmentally friendly while masquerading as lefty enemies of neo liberalism, or plutocrat - nativist agitprop?

Noticed on MacroBusiness story cited, another 'dog whistle' headline 'Sustainable Australia Party Dissects the Population Ponzi'

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/06/sustainable-australia-party-dissects-the-population-ponzi/

Like MB the writer of this article prefers the non-demographic research of an 'academic' to comment on immigration and population; always consistently negative?

The elephant in the room, is neither (mostly) temporary 'immigrants' nor fertility, but ageing native permanent population increasing pressure on services and budgets.

No coincidence that much of the nativist and far right literature obsesses about coming brown tides of humanity etc.. aka Trumpistas. A good example is found in article 'Far Right or Far Wrong'?

'Far right or far wrong? Illegal immigrants swamping Europe, turning churches into mosques - it's the perfect plot for a neo-nazi bestseller.... The book currently generating the most chatter is Jean Raspail's Camp of Saints. First published in 1973, in France, no British publisher (a gutless crew) has been brave enough to take it on. In America, publication was sponsored, in 1985, by the ultra-right (ultra-wrong), anti-immigration Laurel Foundation, under whose aegis it now sells like hot cakes.'

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/may/24/thefarright.immigrationandpublicservices

Luckily someone did review Raspail, Australian academic cited in this Online Opinion article, Katherine Betts, in John Tanton's nativist journal the Social Contract Press in 2005 'A Conversation with Jean Raspail'

http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1504/article_1340.shtml

The 'elephant in the room' is white nativism, radical right and neo liberalism dressed up as environmental concern and desperate for support from young people..... all very well, but if you are a conservative how can it help the 'sustainabilty' of conservative parties by attacking their future constituencies, like Howard managed in his own safe seat, and paid the price?
Posted by Andras Smith, Wednesday, 22 June 2016 7:12:58 PM
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Hi Divergence

According to the OECD, Australia’s real per capita GDP grew at 0.9% a year between 2006 and 2015, almost twice the OECD average of 0.5%

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV

The main difference between real GDP and real national income is that, to calculate real GDP, export values are deflated by the price of exports (to work out the volume of exports); whereas for national income, they are deflated by the price of imports (to work out the volume of imports we can access in exchange for our exports). This means that real national income grows faster than real GDP when export prices are rising faster than imports, and vice versa. Unless Australia’s population growth has caused China to slow its demand for our coal and iron ore, which I doubt, then the comparatively weak national income numbers are completely unrelated to population.

The Productivity Commission report you quote is rather out of date. It recently completed another inquiry into migration, Its final report is yet to be released by government, but its draft says:

“While immigrants benefit from their employment in Australia, preliminary modelling suggests that the Australian population as a whole benefits from higher output per person.”

And

“Preliminary econometric analysis commissioned for this inquiry found no discernible effect from immigration on wages, employment and participation in aggregate.”
Posted by Rhian, Wednesday, 22 June 2016 8:36:52 PM
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Let into any country hundreds of thousands of people from other countries thus radically reducing the national identity of the people in the country, easier to then control the population.

Guarantee that today you would never be able to get the current population of Australia to protest like they did during the Vietnam war against it, even if there was an equally bad situation.

Australians have now mostly become complacent and think they have to have Government fix everything for them, Government loves that because it allows them to grab more and more power and control over people.

Literally we are the nanny country.
Posted by Philip S, Wednesday, 22 June 2016 10:31:40 PM
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Come off it plantagenet. Any increase in GDP is in the housing required to house this flood, & that increase is coming straight out of our pockets. Paying for that GDP growth is making us poorer.

As for that bit, "countries in our region will rightly feel racially offended", what rubbish. Are you offended you can't migrate to Japan. Countries can feel offended if they like, & some will no matter what we do, better that than keep offending most existing Ozzies.

The real problem is unemployment. Building another 100,000 houses a year, at our expense of course, is employing hundreds of thousands. Shut down that huge percentage of the building industry, & the whole economy collapses. The loss of the car industry, & some employment in mining, are just a drop in bucket compared to building for employment.

Then add the fact that they are yet to find a way of outsourcing it to overseas makes building about the only reliable employer of labour we have left.

All the existing population is just a little poorer for every immigrant, & I'm sure many of the politicians don't like the high immigration levels, any more than most of us, but they can see no way out of the catch 22 we have got ourselves into.

With immigration we are destroying the country, particularly with political correctness dictating the garbage we are letting in today. Without Immigration the economy collapses. Our grand kids will curse us for our gutlessness in letting it happen.
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 23 June 2016 12:21:17 AM
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