Rhian,

Just do a search on "Visa scandals Australia", and your eyes will be opened. US law also says that H1B (like 457) visas can only be handed out if there is no American who can do the job. This is a joke. In fact, there is a law firm that specialises in showing companies how not to hire Americans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

The point about the infrastructure is that all the costs have to be met up front, before the migrant can contribute to them, and that it will take him a long time to pay for his share because the costs are so high. This is why we have an enormous infrastructure backlog. We never get a chance to catch up because we never get a break from the very high population growth.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” — Upton Sinclair (1935)

I had a perfect example of the detriment to Ozzies of this flood of immigrants, particularly as so much of it is importing the wrong people.

I waited 3 years to see an orthopaedic specialist. I finally saw one 3 months ago, but it took another 3 months to get the second appointment.

I saw that specialist today, at a major Brisbane hospital. The people in the waiting room made an interesting study. About half were south sea islanders, & Asians. Their accents made it obvious that few of them were born here. Of the Caucasian heritage people, again the accents or language spoken told me a large percentage of them were recent arrivals. It is the same at the nearest large suburban hospital I have taken my mother to on occasions.

Rhian claims more people mean more tax payers means more money for services, but as we know many migrants, particularly refugees are still not working after 5 years.

I don't know the percentage of migrants to native born Ozzies in the general population, but it appears they are much larger consumers of health care services than native born.

So many are waiting far too long for serious medical treatment, & it appears much of these delays can be laid at the feet of newcomers. Too many welfare for life are being imported, & much of the so called increase in GDP is actually the cost of supporting them. They fill public housing, hospitals & many services to such an extent that we just can't afford.

Hi Divergence

My salary is unaffected by whether we have high, low or no population growth.

Yes, there have been some instances of visa laws being broken or bent. But that clearly hasn’t resulted in Australia performing poorly on wage growth, as the ILO data demonstrate.

And yes, infrastructure needs to be paid for up front. In a business or household this is usually paid for by debt and repaid over a number of years, so the costs are spread over time and carried by infrastructure users. Governments often do the same.

If population growth led to ever-increasing infrastructure demands, one would expect to see government capital spending increasing as a percentage of GDP and/or total government spending, and probably rising net public debt. Government capital spending as a percentage of GDP has declined steadily for decades, from about 8% in the 1960s and 70s to about 4% today. As a percentage of government spending, it has fallen from more than 40% to less than 20%. If there is an infrastructure deficit, this is the reason.

Australia’s net government debt also trended down until the GFC – in fact it was negative in the mid/late 2000s, when population growth was at its height, and its recent increase is more a function of recurrent deficits than capital spending. It remains well below most comparable economies (at about 18% of GDP, compared to 70% across the advanced economies)

Hi Hasbeen

That’s odd, last time I went to the doctor, the waiting room contained lots of people, all of them white. I heard only Australian accents. That must prove that migrants don’t use health services at all. Or perhaps anecdotal evidence is not terribly helpful when assessing population-wide issues.

Happily, there are several doctors at my local group practice, so they got through the queue quickly. Three of the five doctors were of Asian origin. That is not unusual – census data show that more than half of Australian doctors and about a third of nurses were born overseas.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3882294/

I’m not sure what migration does for demand for health services, but it sure helps supply.

Hi Rhian,

The costs of infrastructure for such high population growth in the context of a First World country are simply unsupportable

“We’re a developed country with a Third World rate of population growth,” says former New South Wales premier Bob Carr, one of the relative few in this country’s business/political elite who is not a spruiker for “Big Australia”.

“My government was spending on non-Olympics infrastructure at real levels two-thirds higher than the average for the 1980s, but force-fed population growth runs so strongly that no government can catch up.”

“With population growth this rapid it is literally impossible to keep pace with infrastructure. You cannot possibly maintain spending at adequate levels to meet the huge challenge this represents.”

“It’s inconceivable that without ambitious Whitlam-style investment in urban infrastructure that any Commonwealth assistance will offset the impact of immigration,” he says.

“I’ll give you this guarantee. In the context of pressures on the deficit and a government that’s struggling with the pressures of Gonski and long-term health funding, Turnbull will offer nothing – other than a few model projects in light rail or bus transit corridors – to offset the problem our historically high immigration burden represents.”

Interview with Mike Seccombe, The Saturday Paper 7/11/2015

You skip over the issues of diseconomies of scale (such as desalination plants because a city has outgrown its natural water supply and running new transit corridors through built-up neighbourhoods), the distributional effects, which tend to siphon wealth up to the top, and the justice of taxing people more to pay for massive population growth, even though most of them do not benefit from it.

Hi Divergence

A politician’s justifications for his government’s under-investment in infrastructure is not very convincing. Nor is a “spending on non-Olympics infrastructure at real levels two-thirds higher than the average for the 1980s” particularly impressive, given that Australia’s real GDP increased by 65% between 1980-1989 and 1995-2005 when Carr was Premier. State estimates of real GSP don’t go back that far, but as Australia’s largest state Gross State Product in NSW tends to track national GDP quite closely.

The metrics we have discussed are aggregates, and capture both economies and diseconomies of scale associated with population growth. So if, for example, water prices are rising because of the need to build desalination plants, then that might lead to a higher price level and lower real wages. But we already know that Australia’s real wage growth is the strongest in the developed G20 economies. So even if population growth has caused higher water prices, this must have been more than offset by stronger nominal wage growth or lower price increases in other areas (economies of scale in public transport, perhaps). If you want to subtract the costs of diseconomies of scale from real wage growth to capture their effects on living standards, you will be double counting.

You claim there are distribution effects caused by population growth. Again I know of no evidence of this in Australia. Inequality has risen in most OECD countries in recent years, with no correlation I can see between population growth and changes in inequality. And unlike many other countries, in Australia real income growth has been strong for both low and high income earners, though it has been stronger at the top of the income distribution than at the bottom. If population growth is associated with strong growth in living standards across the board at the cost of a small increase in inequality, it is still a positive for the community.

OECD comparisons:
https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/49499779.pdf

Australian analysis:
http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2013/Economic-Roundup-Issue-2/Economic-Roundup/Income-inequality-in-Australia

latest Australian data:
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/6523.02013-14?OpenDocument