As long as there's no Flat Tax, budgets are a mere deflection of fiscal mismanagement & corruption !

Me a "big gun", Paul? Hilarious. Far-fetched. Lying Jim's 1m migration driving too many Australians into homelessness? Cruel. Treacherous.

Steve, here is an opportunity for you to extol the virtues of Dud Dutton's housing shortage fix, as he put it in his budget reply. Please explain how cutting much needed skilled migrants is going to boost the Australian economy, and fix the housing shortage at the same time. While you're at it, could you give us a run down on that other bit of Noalition madness, another wonder policy, nuclear power generation.

There are certainly benefits to having some immigration. The question is how much. According to the ABS we were growing at 2.5% for the year ending in September 2023, nearly 660,000 additional people, overwhelmingly from immigration. Our own fertility rate has been below replacement level since 1976. Even if Albanese really does cut immigration in half, it is still far too high.

http://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population

If continued, this implies a 27.7 year population doubling time. Idiot is too kind a word for anyone who thinks that either population or consumption can grow without limit on a finite Earth or within the borders of a finite country.

It is easy to see why the politicians' big business mates want this sort of growth. (1) They get a bigger aggregate economy creating more wealth to siphon up to the top. The bulk of the population don't benefit. The pie is bigger, but it has to be shared with more people, so the average person's slice stays the same, may even be shrinking, and no longer has a cherry on top. We have been in a per capita recession for the last 4 quarters. (2) The population growth creates immense demand for housing, infrastructure, and public services, well beyond our ability to provide it, helping to drive up house prices and rents, so that the investors and property developers can squeeze middle and working class people dry on the cost of a necessity of life. (3) The population growth keeps competition for jobs high and wages low. The business elite get a cheap, compliant work force that has already been raised and trained at someone else's expense.
Look at profits versus labour share of the economy since 1975.

http://theconversation.com/underlying-australias-inflation-problem-is-a-historic-shift-of-income-from-workers-to-corporate-profits-200700

The extra pressure on the environment is a whole other story.

I hope that Steven Saunders will go on telling the truth.

The article is a mash of talking points that are written to confuse and mask the fact that there is no credible support for the claims made?

Further the author is with Tanton Network linked Sustainable Population Australia (in turn linked to Birrell & Betts' TAPRI), not exactly a font of humanity, multiculturalism or non skips? Tanton Network, inc TSCP, misrepresent data, demography and science, using techniques with Koch Network's climate science denial*.

https://population.org.au/stephen-saunders/

Further, he has published via the Zero Hedge (pro-Russian) inspired MacroBusiness, that cut and pastes RW 'libertarian' Mont Pelerin or Austrian/Chicago School (see Atlas - Koch Network), all to wedge and denigrate the centre e.g. ALP govt.; agitprop masquerading as media content for further distribution to RW MSM and influencers online.

*Focus on short term 'data noise' of high temporary border movements via NOM i.e. like the weather, but ignore long term demographic decline i.e. like increasing temperatures; too easy.

What does the writer ignore? First a permanent migration cap, then 7+ million boomers and oldies transitioning to, through and past retirement till mid century, with increasing old age dependency ratios; NOM churn esp. students etc., are 'free' money paying GST etc. to support more oldies.

Alternative? Increase taxes and decrease service delivery including health care, pensions etc. and lower or drop investment in infrastructure and related services.

Example of corrupt white Christian nationalist faux 'free market trap' that Koch & Tanton Networks which 'own' the GOP, Tories & LNP, in US with 'Christianists' in between, while Murdoch's Fox News leads on messaging, comms and PR for the same (in fact employed a friend of Tanton's).

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/if-you-are-business-fox-news-you-are-hook-its-white-nationalism

The NOALITION's centre piece of reducing migration is in a state of confusion, with Dud Dutton plucking a figure of 40% out of the air, only to have that countermanded by his shadow treasurer Doppy Taylor claiming nah its only 25%. Similar with the NOALITION nuclear power "policy" totally shambolic, they can't say how much it would cost, or where or when these power plants would be built. AND they want to run the country, Me thinks not!