Surprised to see the author referring to the "selfish property market". Selfish and pandered to by government it certainly is - hence the lunatic mass immigration programs by both parties leading to more over-priced building for people we don't need.

ttbn,

It has been large scale immigration especially cashed up Chinese that has been keeping the Australian economy afloat for the past 30 years.

The joke is that in a few months the WuFlu pandemic has wiped our all the gains and benefits of mass immigration and put things back to square one except now we have to many people for the available jobs and resources available.

Jared Diamond in his book 'Collapse' called the Chinese migrants to Australia and America an invasive species of humans because of their adverse impact on our environments.

But just do what Foxy and FOULmouth do and turn a blind eye to the destructive impact immigration is having on the Australian environment and focus on the money the cashed up Chinese can bring.

ttbn,

PS When Diamond called the Chinese migrants to Australia an invasive species he equated them with cane toads and rabbits.

Economic growth tied to population growth is a flawed model! In as much as it created additional demand, increased pockets of poverty and a level of unemployment that was and is semi-permanent! [Just identifying and removing poverty would have a better more sustained/sustainable efect!]

Population growth is a model predicated on increased housing and fat and bloated landlords charging whatever an overheated market could bear! Bet your bottom dollar they won't want that to change/will use all the political influence at their fingertips to keep the stauos quo and the current flawed model!

They pushed overcrowded cities skywards as we stacked and racked humuns into ever smaller spaces, just so when the inevitable pandemic hit, it could be spread much more easily!

We promoted asinine me-me individualism and aspirational go-getters at the expense of long tested and not found wanting, sane, vastly more productive, cooperative enterprise!

We could and should build a very fast train along our eastern seaboard as a VLT that gets you to your destination much quicker than the concorde could!

And because there are no moving parts to wear out and no friction. Maintenance costs would be so minimal so as to make this the least expensive model long term! And still be providing service when all the other fast trains are obsolete! Do it once and do it right and we won't need to do again for centuries!

A mile wide corridor should be resumed and once the VLT is built. Areas could be rezoned as urban and developed then sold. The proceeds paying for the entire build/resumption.

Some highly developed areas will need to be tunnelled under as a cheaper option than resumption.

As for the VLT? it should operate between tunnels inside a covered trench. To avoid traffic, koalas, kangaroos, cows, horses and inebriated humans out for an evening stroll.

And could be financed off budget via our reserve bank and credit notes.

What we need for this and any other project designed to assist and promote a robust recovery, is ultra-cheap energy! TBC.
Alan B.

We reached the sustainable population level of 5.6 billion in 1986.

Today it is 7.8 billion and increasing and is being driven by the quest for economic growth and higher standards of living. Our propensity for culture will be the death of us humans.

There's aound fifty tillion in spare capital around the world looking for a safe home. We should provide part of that safe home. Some of it would ensure we could rapidly rebuild an energy dependant manufacturing sector able to beat the pants off of any cheap labour model! Even more so, with genine tax reform manifesting as a single unavoidable 15% flat tax, every boy and his dog pay above a more generous tax-free threshold!

Borrow never cheaper money to build nation building projects that keep on giving long after they have repaid our entire debt!

The bigger the project the faster the recovery/the debt is repaid

Projects we should be cracking on with now are, An East Coast VLT that's faster than concorde!

An inland dual-lane shippingcanal that uses huge northern tropical tides and lock gates to keep Lake Eyre, permannetly full! And allows Lake Eyre to function as a central transport hub and source of permanent water for the (waste burning MSR's) nuclear powered desal plants we build along its banks!

Crack on with the mass produced, thorium burning MSR's, to among other things, produce exportable medical isoptopes and create a new billion dollar industry here as a medical tourism industry that we could count as annual milllions of tourists for rural and regional Australia. Who come here with untreatable death sentence cancers and go home in remission!

Yes this will take time, as long as a decade, if we start now! So what do we gain via endless delay? SFA!

Save, less recalcitrant others stealing our ideas and advancing/consolidating their recovery even as we hum and hah, make pretty speeches, fruitlessly blame joe blog, the Christian minority, ethenic difference etc-etc, as we go further and further back and deeper and deeper into a mire of debt that is doing nothing more now than prop up recurrent spending! And over-inflate the stock market!

And as such, ensure we and the real economy, go backwards at an ever increasing rate of knots! TBC
Alan B.

Alan B.,

Why not just get the Chinese to come in and do it all for us as a BOM agreement?

And a report just out reveals that Australia is lagging behind other industrial countries in introducing technology. Hence the mass immigration of cheap workers and the real possibility of being stuck with low wage, menial jobs for ever. Sorry I can't remember the name of the report, but it shouldn't be hard to find.

Mr Opinion. Getting others to do stuff for us we could do ourselves, has been a large part of the reason we are where we are today!

If we need expertise not available here, then, by all means, source it where it is and tie it to at least two local assistants to it who would learn on the job as we progress any project!

Electronic translation machines would remove any language barrier!

The only thing that prevents the progress of any project is, countervailing vested interest and their political lackeys, entrenched (die in a ditch first) recalcitrance, economic illiteracy and marketers at the helm needing their trembling, timid hand held with every real economic decision?

If this were not so? We'd still have a car industry, nuclear power and real tax reform? Plus a robust manufacturing industry able to hold its own with all comers?

If I were a bookie I'd give you 50 to 1 odds that powerful vested interest will take the day ahead of our best possible recovery/the national interest/cooperative capitalism?

And sold to us by the (fiscal illiterate) marketer at the helm pretending to care/understand the economc realities/best-case scenario?

Then there are the xenophobic, know-nothings, who know all the BS reasons it can't be dome,or can only add their asine, Run of the mine, absurdities, who want to knock down the tall poppies and our best and brightest and their better ideas?

No names, no pack drill, Mr Opinion.
Alan B.

It just proves what many of us have been saying for a very long time. The 'Growth' mentality is wrong, terribly wrong !
The Lake Eyre proposal has been on the lips of many for very long but when will we get a few politicians to put the Nation before their Superannuation ?
When will we get young Australians to front up for a non-military national Service ? When will an Australian Govt put a Flat tax before their Superannuation ?
It's all quite achievable, it's only the self preservation mode of those we give the privilege of governing who are the stumbling block. Instead of pandering to the hangers-on they must put the productive workforce (conservative voters) ahead of the non-productive ! Once we have a system that rewards effort instead of bleating for more, it can be done !

Good to at last see someone questioning the prevailing mantra of endless population and economic growth.

Watching ABC The Business t'other night I see Aunty is pushing the high immigration agenda. If that comes from the neoclassical economic hymn sheet perhaps the ABC should henceforth rely on advertising.

Late last year or pre-Covid our per capita GDP was in decline, 722,000 were on NewStart, 1.4m were underemployed, people couldn't afford to buy homes with a short commute and elective surgery waiting times were getting longer. The solution? More people it seems. Fix all that and renounce public funding Aunty then we'll listen.

Had the chance to ask several Germans & a couple of French women & I asked them what they thought of Multiculturalism.
If verbal explanations could kill I'd have been dead on the spot !
Same to my question what they thought about Merkel.
Our predominantly Leftist Media is simply not reporting the truth as Paul1405 claims they do.
I just wonder how much longer the hood-winking can continue before even Lefties wake up ?

individual,

The Multicultural experience in Europe is different to ours.

Australian Multiculturalism is all about the Asianisation of Australia. And I think we would all agreed that it has achieved this goal.

What does it feel like to be Asian?

What does it feel like to be Asian?
Mr Opinion,
You need to ask those Labor voters who spend their money & time in places like Phucket & Bali where they make any decent Australian cringe & wish they were Asian !

Yes Individual! I'd cringe as well!

However, I'd take a straw poll to esabish the fact that few labor voters are our tourist or cruise ship devotees. That all the places you've mentioned ar frequented by the cashed-up baby boomers as the largest cohort and most of them wouldn't vote labor in a fit! I Nor lean to the left! But may do it once in a lifetime, because it isn't the conservative incumbent?

But do lean/expect others to earn their incomes for them as they covort and make decent Aussies cringe?

If it looks ugly? It probably leans too far to the left or ultra-priviledged right? None of them a good fit for traditional Aussie fair-mindedness/fair-go, egaliterian mindset!
Cheers, Alan B.

individual,

But you do acknowledge that the Asianisation of Australia has been a success story and that Australia is now an Asian nation-state.

Embrace your Asian identity individual.

...the fact that few labor voters are our tourist or cruise ship devotees.
Alan B,
If you believe that then you believe ANYTHING !
It's MAINLY the Superannuation loaded Public Service bureaucrats that make the cruise ships bulge at the frames.
And, show me a surfer in Bali who is not a Labor supporter.
Just remember, selfish people snub their nose at self-restraint & conservatism !
Most people I speak with re a National Service scheme openly declare their conservative stance, Labor supporters instantly howl at the suggestion of doing a little something for the good of the Nation.
That is a fact !

acknowledge that the Asianisation of Australia has been a success
Mr Opinion,
I was around when Pauline Hansen was vilified for warning against that very scenario. Abbott put her in jail & ALL Lefties hounded her to no end & most still do.
It is a success if you're not a Patriot !

Interesting analysis, however it conflates medium term temporary 'churn over' of temp workers, students, back packers etc. with long term permanent migration via the 'nebulous' NOM Net Overseas Migration.

The latter has declined in real terms while the permanent population is ageing, and more to the point, back grounded by a real decline in the work force age of PAYE etc. taxpayers.

Accordingly, the temporary churn over component consists of mostly net financial contributors whom have no pathway to permanent residency nor citizenship, while they would support property investors through renting mostly apartments and/or shared housing (versus buying property).

Another point 'I cannot see a Federal Government supporting NOM at the same levels'. The NOM is a barometer with many inputs or factors but it is not a target, as UK PM Cameron's government (and advisors) learnt after being led into making bold statements on immigration restrictions and lowering the NOM before Brexit (like juggling jelly).

Ultimately, if the Australian electorate and/or government are led into permanent decline in any immigration then long term budget health, services, etc. will be impacted negatively by increasing numbers of retirees/pensioners, unless govt. spending and services are cut back (further), or taxes increased e.g. for middle class self funded retirees and pensioners.

Be careful what you wish for..... much radical right libertarian economics can lead to an economic death spiral, except for the top 10% for whom the impact would be negligible. See Turkey, Hungary and other parts of the less developed world....

much radical right libertarian economics can lead to an economic death spiral
Andras Smith,
Educating Dills & over-educating pseudo intellectuals has already lead to an economic death spiral !