The first three months do not bode well for the next three years. However, both parties are big on immigration, and the Coalition would have been going down the same track.

Complacent Australians continue to get the governments they deserve. There doesn't seem to be much point in talking about it anymore. Australia is rooted.

Voting for your own extermination is not smart!: Don’t vote!

Dan

Great article.Australians are finished with immigration fueled population growth. Albanese has no mandate for the proposed increase in immigration and the political careerists should take heed of the many polls which show a solid opposition to a big Australia.Whats more facilitating population growth shows a lack of commitment to stated climate concerns

Dan,

Sadly, our fate is sealed; not voting will not save us while all the drones continue voting for the same sorts of unvarying people who want to be politicians. Politics is just a business these days. We are buggered.

Where do we house these migrant? In social housing earmarked for the poor? Who will go where? Tent cities, al la the Great Depression?

And how do we address The high unemployment of indigenous Australians? By replacing them with transient backpackers?

And what of young Australians still unemployed? And how many migrants will come and face our rising energy and cost of living increases? This is cart before horse writ super large by the super inept!

As automation replaces worker as it will and must! All of the above issues magnify massively!

Before any more permanent workers migrate here we need to address all the above! Starting will not just affordable energy but the world's safest, cleanest and cheapest energy, namely, MSR thorium that's both the world's cheapest by carbon-free baseload power as well!

Simply put, renewables supported by mega batteries/pumped hydro will not support energy dependent production let alone value adding or a steel and metals smelting industries!

Nice words at press club luncheons by tin eared recalcitrants, will address none of the real issues, but may add profoundly to them!?
Alan B.

In 2019, Shorten openly overbid the Coalition on mass immigration, and lost.

This time, Albanese said not a word, until he was safely in power. Now, his treacherous intentions are entirely clear. He and Chalmers intend to deliver the highest levels of net migration that Australia has ever seen, and that is really saying something.

Quite deliberately, they are serving up another decade of wage stagnation, falling living standards, failing infrastructure, and rising house prices. The unions too are perfectly happy to go along with it.

There are 151 MPs in the House of Reps, and none in any party that is willing to oppose this open assault on voters. Democracy sausage is being shoved right up our backsides

On the other hand, a primary reason for the last few decades of economic growth was due to a steady population increase, creating a demand for domestic goods and services.

The increase in Real Estate was more due to low interest rates and taxation rorts for existing dwellings than immigration levels. Immigration cutbacks due to COVID had no effect on house prices.

The median age of new arrivals was 26.5 while the median age of the population was 37 so we have an ageing population and workforce.
For example, Japan is reaching levels where the available workforce will soon be unable to support their ageing population.

Fewer people working means higher taxes because people coming in add to the workforce which means more available funds to help support infrastructure and government.

However the economy generally has always been like a Ponzi Scheme and cannot keep growing forever when available resources are limited but that's what we're stuck with. Slashing immigration will simple speed up the inevitable.

rache.

All very academic rache, but more interesting is a study of the winners and losers of high immigration levels.
With the anticipated rise in real estate values and rents, the winners outnumber the losers marginally.

But when the current winners are forced to study their navel and consider the reality of impact to family members of obvious negatives attributed to high immigration numbers, the mood will swing in the opposite direction.

The big losers are growing numbers of all generations, disenfranchised from affordable accommodation by Government policy. To them the Governing classes are the enemy.

The ever increasing swathes of losers are ignored and silenced as policy.
News of this impact on society is thin on the ground in Au, but more obvious in places like UK and US. I don’t need to repeat it.

Instead of sitting on the fence and waffling on, try taking a stand on the issue.

Dan

Australia is a net-importer of water.

The business class are deranged.
They jump up and down about climate change, and at the same time they want more people.
How on earth does one hold these two conflicting positions at the same time.
They are openly promoting that the poorest amongst us will eat house crickets, flies and mealworms.
http://research.csiro.au/edibleinsects/wp-content/uploads/sites/347/2021/04/CSIRO-Edible-Insect-Roadmap.pdf

What do they care about?
Climate change or profits via growth?
- We can't have both.

There's not enough water to sustain a reasonable standard for the people already here.
STOP IMMIGRATION NOW.

AC.

If I were an Aboriginal, I’d be real scared…very scared!
Here is a glimpse of the next Orwellian nightmare to be foisted on them!

Your link to the article featuring the glories of insect ingestion, In Management Speak from the “Lilliput Daily”, is a credit to you.

You’ve educated me in the spending habits of the Aboriginal industry and it’s $60b annual budget.

Dan.

One can only hope that if nothing else any future migration will stir up the stale Gene pool here !

The only policy that makes any sense at all to me is 'Unity in self sufficiency'
- And the rest is all just complete rubbish.

All brought to you by idiots with green and purple hair that scream at you and demand we recognise their sexual identity and feelings.

It feels like were living in an alternate universe run by nutcases.
- And maybe we actually are.

AC

Interesting.

I sense your frustration with a deteriorating civil life in this country which has descended into an unrecognisable rabble of madness of ideas presenting as ideological opposites.

We are living more in a societal mental asylum specialising in Schizophrenia.

If you read up on symptoms of Schizophrenia, you’ll immediately recognise our Government and it’s leaders. It’s unmistakable!

I’m afraid this is one Cukoos nest you can’t fly over!

Where it leaves the individual is floundering around in a world where we are fighting a “war of all against all”.
Particularly those with a conservative stable outlook on a past ordered and recognisable society; where this current one isn’t at all recognisable.

Dan.

Diver Dan
What sort of "stand" can one take on this issue when both sides of politics hold essentially the same position?

They may pretend to be selectively different for politically opportunist or populist reasons when it suits but in the end they both accept that immigration is an essential component of a growing economy. The concept is here to stay and only the levels are debated.

We are now seeing the effect of the recent temporary halt of immigration due to COVID - a shortage of workers (especially skilled ones) and a struggling economy. Until steps are taken to return to upskilling and training more local workers in a fair and accessible system we will always be at the mercy of importing others to fill in the gaps we have created for ourselves. Education is seen as a financial expense rather than a national investment in its own future.

I'm actually the product of two European post-WW2 refugees and on just my side of the family Australia has been "repaid" with a generation that includes a Medical Sonographer, a midwife, cyber-security expert and an environmental scientist - all "home grown" but at significant personal financial cost for each. It's far harder now to get into some areas so I'm not surprised that numbers have dropped in some disciplines.

Likewise, until wage growth is allowed to match increasing productivity consumption will continue to fall.

With a falling and ageing population eventually each aged pensioner will be supported by the taxes of just a few workers and the prediction of Australia becoming the "poor white trash of the Pacific" seems ever more likely. Remember Costello's comments about "one for mum, one for dad and one for the country?" That's what he was talking about but immigration is really their solution because our birth rate is simply too small.

immigration is an essential component of a growing economy.
rache,
Why does everything need to "grow", why not work on need & sustainability ?
With so many "educated" people all around surely there'd be some with intelligence as well who could work on a sustainability plan ?

rache.

Your quite confused on this issue.

You say gaining economic advantage of a foreign workforce translates into an immigration path to permanent citizenship as an automatic consequence.

To gain additional workers it is not necessary to offer permanency as reward. Your confused.

Saudi Arabia is a classic example of how to increase the workforce without citizenship as reward.
There are 13 million foreign workers in SA out of a total population of 34 million; IE one third of the population are temporary workers, and most of them are sponsored by employees, this is done without adding a burden to the general population.

That is the example of what Au should do. A mobile temporary workforce which caters effectively with low pay labouring employment, keeps poverty from entering the general population and becoming a burden on housing, healthcare and education primarily, but not exclusively.

The birth rate could be improved vastly if the cost of living were to be addressed, giving workers the ability to plan for a future inclusive of a family. Instead, because of the demands in couples attempting to buy into a permanently overheated housing market, exacerbated by over supply of immigrants impacting on a housing shortage, mere survival is the top priority.

A whole latest generation of our population is effectively excluded from owning stable accommodation, a prerequisite to family planning.

Dan

Indyvidual
You may not have noticed the fetish for constant growth is part of the Capitalist system. Nowadays it seems that unless a company posts ever-greater profits each year than the previous year they are seen to have "failed". I think it's ridiculous because a profit is still a profit and nothing in nature grows forever but that's how it is.

Diver Dan
I never said anything about all current immigration being a permanent path to citizenship and I'm quite aware of the Saudi system of importing labour, knowing Aussies who have worked in Riyadh. The wealth of the Saudis means they can import all workers and their citizens live off welfare but we don't have that luxury.
We import temporary foreign workers too on a much smaller scale and their current absence has been noticeable. Even temporary workers need accommodation too.

The local birth rate isn't likely to increase until workers earn enough to be able to raise a family. The rising costs of rent, real estate, education and childcare make it difficult.

It's also interesting that rents have increased because of rising interest rates but somehow they forgot to drop rents when interest rates were falling. Try blaming that on immigrants.

If you are not data literate, then you could inform yourselves on demographics and decline by looking at the OECD data, especially working age.

Australia like elsewhere passed the 'demographic sweet spot' pre Covid, hence, working age and potentially the tax base, are in decline, see OECD:

https://data.oecd.org/chart/6NUp

Solutions to support the tax base? Tax wealthy retirees more & pensioners, tax working age more, increase GST, decrease services, scrap Medicare, charge university/TAFE fees (whoops, that was done decades ago) etc.; be nice to young people and hope they help?

Or, simply continue with modest permanent skilled migration (< 0.8% population), with more significant NOM net overseas migration churn over of 'net financial budget contributors' e.g. students, backpackers etc., or cut our noses to spite our faces and go into demographic decline aka Balkan nations?