"Australia's largest immigration program ever. Voters get no say". And less than a third of voters actually wanted Labor. But, so what? The other mob is hooked on mass immigration, too. They wouldn't have given voters a say either.

Do voters even deserve a say? They have no interest in anything much more than themselves and indulging themselves. Younger voters don't even believe in democracy. It is the voters who have enabled these trashy politicians to do as they please.

Perhaps Diver Dan is right. Voting by plebs makes no difference. Democracy is dying; and there are enough useful idiots for extreme Socialism in Australia to kill it right off. Australia is rooted. Rooted by Australians.

There's something wrong with a system where the existing population doesn't want something but the dominant political parties do. A misconception is that some current conditions (eg ample water supply) are permanent while others (eg expensive energy) are temporary. When Covid, fuel trading and weather patterns settle down I think it will become clearer Australia could better handle a population of say 15m not 26m and rising.

Note the various back door ruses that enable temporary visas to be expanded into permanent residence. They include students, farm workers and family re-unions. Most have little hope of buying a house. As they get older and sicker they will burden the health care system. The current solution seems to be more migrants including health professionals who are taken away from the needs of their home countries. See what happens as conditions return to normal.

Addressing comment of ttbn:

Israel to the polls today.

Let’s see how bright they are.

The most stable governments are totalitarian.
The most unstable government is the US.

Nuclear arm Iran one day, disarm it the next. The Israel dilemma.

Dan.

Agree! During the war years indolent employers had no other choice than train and employ the people we had. If skills were missing, we had to train those we had with the missing skills.

I mean one can take a year twelve train them for three months to have a reasonably competent nuclear technologist. Other trades and technologies can be similarly managed with responsible oversight.

We have many older folks with skill sets who were shown the door after 45 or so. simply young Turks thought that that was the use by date, and we have lots of young people that these older people could mentor but for the (shite for brains) management policies of the aforementioned.

What we need and missing is a sensible/sane energy policy. And couple the world's cheapest energy, not renewables, but rather, MSR thorium to automation, as an automated or perish policy.

And assist that transformation with funded and facilitated cooperative capitalism. Co-ops are never overloaded at the top with overpriced executives and do not carry unproductive drones or union officials. (Same people)

Those who own the enterprise operate the enterprise and makes co-ops the most productive business models we can create. And the sole reason why co-ops stood alone during the Great Depression as the only private enterprise, free market, business model to survive largely intact!

What we do not need is more of the same, same old, ideologically driven mad hatter paradigms that simply compound current problems rather than fix a patently broken economic paradigm that relies on packing and stacking people as the only economic paradigm on the table! COVID demonstrated an economic model with significant economic growth and wealth building without evermore gridlocked cities but repopulating the regions and the bush!

If the politicians want increased PERMANENT migration, then let them flag it before we vote! No ifs, buts or maybes!
Alan B.

Dan

I read recently that the most stable governments are all monarchies. Probably why the totalitarian-leaning Albanese wants us to vote against the monarchy, and replace it with a politician's republic.

To ttbn

Maybe this point should be debated out in future, on the forum in its own context.
It’s a temptation to be drawn away from this article here.

Dan

"I (ttbn) read recently that the most stable governments are all monarchies"

The country with the worlds largest and most expensive monarchy, Britain, is politically as stable as a three legged cow in a tornado. ttbn where do you get your information, how long did the Conservative nark Liz Trash last in office?

The biggest bleeding heart bleat today on all media is the housing crisis.

Where the hell are Albo's hundreds of thousands going to live other than to displace the bottom end of renters. This immigration will increase homelessness by a huge margin, & add hugely to the welfare budget.

Of course this is of no interest to the left, they need to import more left voters to shore up their numbers, & to hell with the rest of us.

Hasbeen.

The disconnect is rather simple to explain. I live in a very affluent town on the East Coast.
If this is any example, it explains the disconnect of politicians.

From roughly five years ago, rents in this area were increasing more than the normal ten percent bunged onto renters for no particular reason.

First came a highway upgrade and a need to house the workforce which stayed in the area for a couple of years. There was no provision to accommodate this workforce apart from crashing in on the local rental availability.

Next came Covid lockdowns and the rental and the housing market stabilised.
What followed was all hell braking loose at the easing of Covid restrictions.

At this point, the town was subjected to a merciless plunder where housing , in most cases doubled in price along with similar rises in rents, rents which in many cases known to me, tripled. Prices of rents and property values would be on parity with any similar city locations.

Now moving around town, the renter classes have evaporated and an obviously replaced by an up market middle cass have landed.
These are the environments the political class (elitists) move in.
This “cleansed of the grubby poor” is the environment which promotes fantasies of ecological disasters and remedies which promote panicked reactions to imagined catastrophies.

From this view of the perfect life, so incredibly divorced from the life of those under the hammer of unfettered and unregulated rents and unaffordable housing costs, policies are drawn up by politicians with not just total disregard to the pain and humiliation of homelessness, being forced from above with a lack of empathy and lack of normal human care, that we that are left to grow old will be visited by the vision of ignorance and total unfathomable stupidity.

Don’t vote.

Yes, Hasbeen. Bring in more migrants when we don't have enough homes for the current population and a rising shameful, homeless cohort!

Build a million new homes is the promise. How? Got to be mass produced in factories and then trucked onsite and connected/plugged in to pre-installed services.

This limits the need for trades, their prices and BS contracts that always blow out halfway through.

Get conscripts and the army involved and their increased apprenticeship program that sets young recruits up for life in civvy street.

For mine the frames would be steel, and the yards would be surrounded by colourbond steel fences. And give our own steel industry an extended and enduring shot in the arm.

Water tanks would be both mandatory and large (2 million litres) (fire insurance) as would septic tanks that allow black and grey water to be recycled, via underground (hygiene safety) tapes.

Flood plains would be farmland only and for labour intensive farming/market gardens etc.

Rapid rail would allow a lot more suitable adjacent urban lots to be rezoned and as such, all but pay for the rail project from the sale of the newly rezoned land!
Alan B.

In the last five years of the 'Morrison Mob' a million new dwellings were constructed in Australia, NO BIG DEAL! This is a slight of hand by Labor, a million new dwellings in the next five years, YES! And they were going to be built in the normal course of events anyway.

Love em' or hate em', its the GREENS who have a solid, workable, housing policy. The big two are offering NOTHING!

We see decent housing as a right not an aspiration for a select few.

http://greens.org.au/policies/housing-and-homelessness

Although most definitely not a Labor supporter, I didn't think they'd start stuffing up so early !
Even Abbott & Turnbull took longer before they lost direction !

They haven't lost their way Indyvidual, they are simply crazy.

To give them their due, they even told us they were going to follow these ratbag policies, proven failure where ever they have been used, before they were put into power.

If anyone is to blame it is those who voted teal & green.

Not a credible argument blaming undefined 'immigration' nor using non expert sources i.e. legacy Oz media, MacroBusiness and TAPRI channeling deceased white nationalist John 'passive eugenics' Tanton.

Basic maths? One of the most pressing and contradictory issues was ignored, i.e. how to support increasing numbers of seniors vs decline in the permanent workforce taxpayers due to below replacement fertility and fewer youth?

OECD data shows very clearly the past, existing and future trends e.g. working age and comparisons with other nations

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

Solution that is deemed to be a problem is leveraging temporary churn over of 'net budget contributors' e.g. students and other long term residents, including temporary workers, backpackers etc., supporting budgets.

Alternative, suggested here? Cut or stop immigration &/or services while demanding low taxes and smaller government; a la US GOP and UK Tories?

Not a problem Andras Smith, just dice Gillard's revenge, the most shonky NDIS, & money will no longer be a problem.

Hi AS,

"how to support increasing numbers of seniors" forget all that complected stuff. Once my "Seniors National Service" is up and running the problem of old folks will be a thing of the past. In the vanguard will be the OLO Regiment, under the command of Captain Issy Mannering, ably assisted by by Sergeant Hasbeen Wilson, along with privates Indy Walker and ttbn Godfrey plus others. The regiment with picks and shovels at the ready will sally forth to do battle with pot holes and noxious weeds etc etc and of course etc. Toiling in the hot sun will be a comfort, they will be recompensed by the thought that they are "doing their bit at last" and aged welfare handouts have gone forever for these heroic soldiers of hard work. What a great idea! Agree?