I don't see how we can keep on building and growing. It has to stop at some point, and, naturally, we will have fewer builders, just as we have fewer people in manufacturing. I have a grandson who runs his own little tiling business. But, that's the way of things. We have had to accept the massive loss of jobs in manufacturing; building will by have to take a cut sooner or later, too.

Of course we could do a Trump, & reintroduce some tariffs. That should resurrect some manufacturing jobs. Making governments & large miners source all their equipment here, as they did before shipping became so cheap would go a long way in doing this.

I had a neighbour who used to build mainline diesel/electric locomotives at a plant in Maryborough. Now we import all rolling stock from Korea. As this is ordered by bureaucrats, the damn stuff won't fit our system when it arrives.

Still what can you expect when you have arts graduates running anything. We used to have heavy industry spread throughout the country. Now these fools sit in high rise offices in capitals ordering stuff from overseas, without even understanding what will fit or work.

They have a bit of paper from some university that doesn't let any one fail, & that is supposed to make them smart. It's our academia we have to worry about, not the Chinese.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43193146

The BBC sums up the arguments pro and con.

Apparently the Chioese government is very annoyed at Australians and their ingratitude. Because our prosperity depends on the Chinese and their money propping up our country full of people descended from Brit convicts..........

The current immigration policy is supposed to be propping up the building industry and the economy? So, if we didn't have all these demands on our housing by chinese students and foreign investors, plus the current unsustainable migrant intake?

House prices would come down as would rents. And the homeless would get a look in again. Developers would see the writing on the wall and start pushing decentralization and whole, new from the ground up, cities!

The excuse that we don't have this or that skill, could be better addressed by importing the skill and insisting he or she, also train 2-4 apprentices/cadets. And those apprenticeship or cadetship terms, being the upper time limit for their visa?

With particularly outstanding, temporary migrants, being offered/earning something more permanent or enduring?

As for the economy in general, the chinese proved beyond question, you can massively grow your economy while reducing population numbers, as proof of the pudding!

And with an essentially western style free market and unleashed entrepreneurial enterprise, coupled or cobbled to cooperative capitalism, doing most of the heavy lifting! Anything else serves stubborn enduring ineptitude and an obtuse lack of vision.

For in reality, the very best way to grow an economy is to thoroughly automate it and just lift those mired in poverty out of it!

And treat all such activities as an investment in our own robust and prosperous future, given these folk will be the ones adding new levels of absolutely essential discretionary spending to the domestic economy.

Real tax reform would assist as would cooperative capitalism and nuclear power as MSR thorium and the 2-3 cents per KwH that'd usher in as the new norm!.

We can run the country as now, to basically serve a privileged few or the whole bleeding lot of us!

The latter being the much smarter option, that lifts everyone's prospects, even the currently privileged few!

It's a no brainer and too easy!
Alan B.

The immigration and expansion issue is/ are being discussed in Four Corners, Monday 12th.

Do we need to have bigger cities, clogged roads, difficult parking, higher apartment complexes, and so on?

How many people are coming into Australia on 457 visas and similar and manage to stay?

'How many people are coming into Australia on 457 visas and similar and manage to stay?'.....and who are the dummies that devise reasons to let them come in the first place.
Half the aged care facilities employ them, and I don't see you telling the aged they have to suck it up.
If I get used to steak I'm not about to revert to rice....and neither is anyone else