High immigration cannot be the solution as it will perpetuate low wage growth, high house prices and strained services. If Australia's population was say 15m not 25m we would have lower emissions and less strain on our river systems. When JobKeeper is no longer necessary, emissions nosedive and young people can afford a house in Sydney then consider immigration.

The IGR reveals that all along foreign student education has been a back door means to permanent residence, something long suspected. Perhaps Australia now has to consider long term zero economic growth and how that could be managed.

Over 2005-2020, "Big Australia" policy gave us 215K annual net migration on average. This is astonishingly high, close to 3 x the long term historical average.

Coming out of COVID, the IGR (in effect, Morrison) ups the ante to a devastating 235K net migration a year. No suggestion of asking mug punters about it.

But, according to this author, "the IGR steers clear of controversial economic suggestions". On which planet?

In the future an UBI will probably become a reality.

The way that this will be paid for will be by taxing companies by the number and type of A.I. machines and robotic devices that they use to produce their goods and products. This, after all, will be the source of increased productivity and reduced participation in the work force.

The concept of a debit tax could be considered. Those on an UBI will probably spend all of their income anyway and with electronic and digital banking tax avoidance could be greatly reduced.

The best contraception ever created is increased wealth and increased standard of living.
A tapering off of population should not be seen as a bad outcome but as a maturing of the economic climate.

WTF? - Not Again,
Firstly, the point of a UBI is that all citizens would be on it (otherwise it wouldn't be universal). Therefore it is very expensive. And taxing the means of production (rather than the profits from it) would make the nation less competitive.

Instead of a UBI, the government should create the economic conditions where suitable work is available for everyone.

The Intergenerational Report came via the same shonky computer models that gave us climate forecasts that never eventuated. Economist Judith Sloan called it "absurd". Immigration only "slightly" slows ageing. It's a Ponzi Scheme used by lazy, incompetent politicians.

If the federal government was required to internalise the cost of immigration by paying the states $100,000 per permanent migrant that settles in their jurisdiction, so that the states can adequately fund the extra infrastructure and services required, the Treasury would no longer tout the fiscal benefits of immigration.

The Reserve Bank governor admits that high immigration suppresses wage growth. The huge increase in immigration - almost a quarter of a million - brought in by John Howard, and continued ever since, has driven wages down, increased house prices, and gridlocked cities.

"The second implication is how to increase skilled migration without an anti-immigrant backlash".

There has been a backlash against immigration from the majority of Australians for some time; it is just being ignored by the political class. Suppressed wages. Unaffordable and scarce housing. Broken down or non-existent infrastructure. People dying while waiting for ambulances. Unintelligible accents on the telephone. Kids to dumb to work in skilled jobs because the political class prefers to import workers rather than train them.

Aiden,
The author is talking about controversial ideas about the future.
I have listed four of these.

Your contribution is: the government should create the economic conditions where suitable work is available for everyone.

Nothing new or controversial about that.