Divergence, I could swear we’ve had this conversation before. One section of the report report looked at methodologies and past research to determine if immigration can be quantified in economic terms. It carried out no research of its own. It recognised that skilled labour was a productivity enhancer.

The benefits of immigration in the first instance are accrued by the immigrant. Then through taxes and of purchasing goods and services, makes a similar contribution to the economy as you or I do. I noted your reply to a senior member of the public service.

We can physically see over a 50-year period that in many cases immigrants have surpassed local borns in wealth accrual. This is most evident amongst the Greeks and Italians who worked harder and longer hours than the ‘natives’ to buy property and put their kids through private schools. It is not unusual to find them owning significant property portfolios. This is capitalism at work – something you do not subscribe to. Nor do you subscribe to GDP which is curious as this is the core measure of growth. You are anti-growth.

You want to run a tape measure up and down immigrants as if economic worth was somehow representative of a human life. Your comments are highly problematic as you dog whistle racism (foreigners taking our jobs) which is far from true. They do the jobs we don’t want to do: aged care, cleaners, taxi drivers, etc. They are critical to keeping the service and hospitality industry going.

The 10.4 per cent Morgan estimate is an analysis which rightly includes youth unemployment if one removes the one hour a week criteria of being ‘employed’. It has little to do with population or immigrants. Yes, job creation is slow but that is because of global recessionary forces. Your arguments would be more cogent if you broke out of your ideological blinkers and read arguments which have some economic validity.

Just a footnote to immigration & unemployment:

With the latest buzz word being DIVERSITY. Govt institutions seem more tuned into/keen to employing those of non-English backgrounds rather than those of English backgrounds--all things being equal, or even where things are less than equal.

One example, but not in anyway an isolated case: An associate of mine recently went for a govt position. The panel of three interviewers proudly announced at the outset that the organization was multicultural and the panel reflected that.The panelists introduced themselves as representatives of/from three (multicultural registered) ethnic groups --the organization clearly believed it had covered all bases,leastways, all that were entitled to appeal to any discrimination body!

Malcolm King,

The 2006 Productivity Commission report on immigration did indeed do some modeling to try to quantify the benefit to productivity from immigration. They did find a positive benefit, but it was small, mostly going to the migrants themselves and to owners of capital, while there were definite losers among the bulk of the population due to wage depression. See p. 154 and the graphs on pages 155 and 147.

http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/9438/migrationandpopulation.pdf

I don't judge migrants or anyone else purely in terms of their economic value, but a common argument used by the growthists is that there is some enormous economic benefit from a bigger population, so we just have to put up with the other problems that are being caused by the population growth - which you ignore, as if the economy existed in a vacuum, with no effects on the environment or the society.

<For a nation, the ultimate economic goal is to have rising output per head, produced on a sustainable basis, distributed fairly, with jobs for everyone who wants to work. Productivity and workplace participation and population growth are the main means to that end.>

Let's test your ideas on the US. They had high tariffs and essentially zero net immigration between 1921 and 1965. Americans picked fruit, cleaned toilets, and did all those other jobs that they supposedly won't do now, at least for what employers want to pay. The government then moved toward a more globalized economy, reducing tariffs, instituting very high legal immigration, and condoning illegal immigration. If you were right, everyone would be doing splendidly.

Most men are receiving lower real wages now than in 1979:

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4c-change-real-hourly-wages/

Wages went up with productivity until 1972. Now productivity is up by 240.9% since 1948, but real wages are only up on average by 107.8%.

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4u-change-total-economy/

The ratio of CEO to worker compensation was about 20 to 1 in 1965, but is now about 230 to 1, down from 400 to 1 in 2000.

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4-ceo-worker-compensation/

No wonder that the US has become so polarized. State of Working America has many other fascinating graphs.

AndrasSmith,

There are people on the Left in the US who believe in open borders. In their view, anyone who wants to restrict immigration for any reason is therefore automatically a racist, and any other reason that he or she puts up has to just be a pretext. All that is needed to refute any argument that such a person might have is to scream, "Racist!"

Since you can't read minds, you can't tell if Bob Birrell has racist ideas or not. Since his arguments aren't based on racist theories, you should be using rational arguments to refute them - if you can, instead of trying to smear him.

Tim Colebatch didn't claim that all the new people we are acquiring would be active on the labour market, but most of them would be. As of last January, there were 8 job seekers for each vacancy in Tasmania, 3.9 in Victoria, 4 in New South Wales, 4.3 in Queensland, and 1.5 in Western Australia.

http://www.smh.com.au/data-point/job-vacancies-plunge-as-confidence-slides-20130109-2cguy.html

It is funny that no one had any problems understanding why the price of bananas went up when Cyclone Larry went through, but somehow issues of supply and demand don't apply to the market for labour. Take a look at those State of Working America graphs that I linked to in my previous post.

Malcolm cheryl paddy King:
Do you get paid for each comment on this forum by the property council?

No. I get paid $50 by your wife every time you post one of your ridiculous asinine comments. She's thankful for the breathing space.