Any government or private organisation calling for immigration or guest workers to fill skills ‘shortages’ is up to no good.

In Australia, there are 400,000 or more people on the dole or on varying types of disability pensions. These people should be looked at very carefully. While there are some people who are genuinely unable to work or learn new skills, it is unbelievable that there are nearly half a million people in this category.

Australian governments talk about training, and that’s about all they do. Most of the ‘training’ is Mickey Mouse stuff with no relevance to overcoming the claimed skill shortages.

There are limits to growth, and they should be recognised. The greed of developers, in the housing industry in particular, and other industries already bulging with wealth needs to be recognised also. It is big business that is always trying to con governments into increasing the population.

Australia does not need any more people! We already have twice the population our mostly arid country can carry. Apart from environmental reasons limiting population, we simply don’t have the infrastructure to cater for more people, and it is quite clear that governments will not spend money on providing infrastructure. They don’t do anything about public transport. They don’t do anything about roads until traffic comes to a halt.

Australia should be seriously working towards reducing population, not increasing it

In Australia, Hudson and Julia Ross have successfully campaigned to increased skilled migrant visas for IT workers because there are many advertised positions that are not filled. True! Take an example, Telstra needs 135 programmers so it puts the tender out to 5 agencies who all place online advertisements, so now there are 675 advertisements for 135 positions. Then of course there are "fishing" advertisements placed for which there are no current vacancies to see if there are any candidates out there.

The Australian Computer Society started a jobs filled index in 2007 that surveyed employment agencies and counted the numbers of jobs filled. The jobs could be full time, part time, contract or only last a week. The survey covered about a quarter of the market. Extrapolating out the figures there was probably 25000 jobs filled and there are 6000 to 12000 IT graduates per year.

It has been very easy to manipulate the Australian IT figures so that we import Indians on skilled migrant visas while Australian graduates are not able to find work.

Unless you work in IT, please don't post about the Indians having better qualifications because I have listened to their chatter and they don't and they often have the impediment of poor language skills.

Mr Right,

You don't know what you are talking about. Australia's fertility rate is currently 1.76 births per woman. Replacement rate to keep your population stable is 2.1 at a minimum. That is, no population growth, just maintaining what you have. What this means for us is that increasingly we are going to be a nation of old people. And once the baby boomers are gone our population will halve every forty to fifty years. Favourite programs of the soft left like universal health care, gov't funding for the arts and unemployment benefits will have to go. Their just won't be enough workers to pay for them.

To suggest that Australia can't handle 20 million people or 50 million people for that matter is just enviro-lunacy and societal vandalism.

Paul.L
By the time you find out that it is you who are wrong, it will be too late.

With your arrogant attitude you will be in a fine old mess – so sure that other people are ‘enviro-lunatics’ and ‘societal vandals’, you will not have a clue how to survive when everything you are used to having handed out to you is gone.

The Australian population is replacing itself, and this old chestnut about an ‘ageing population’ comes from an aberration concerning ONE generation only – immediate post-WW11 young adults who had it tough and were tough. There is no evidence that future generations will be long-lived.

So, there will be young people to carry on, and the old people will live and die the same way they always have.

In your great wisdom, haven’t you checked the countries with half the population of Australia who have always done very well?

As for your “soft left”, my alias Mr. Right, has nothing to with right or wrong; it is to with my politics.

You need to get out of your bubble.

Spain is a better place to look to see the consequences of an economy based on population growth industry. With its population now stabilising and set to decline, there is no longer the need for construction and infrastructure. As there has been no consideration of economic alternatives after a fourteen year construction boom, Spain now faces bleak times.

Australia could avoid this by cutting immigration now. The resultant surplus of construction workers could satisfy the huge demands for mining and the construction of mining infrastructure. The measure could make housing more affordable, greatly ease the infrastructure crisis, improve the current account deficit, and reduce inflation and interest rates.

Unfortunately, the idea that high immigration is economically beneficial is not questioned by politicians. All options need to be explored if the most beneficial option is to be found.

When environmentalists say we are running out of clean water, cheap fossil fuels, good farmland, natural ecosystems and biodiversity and in 40 years it will be much worse, the don’t-worry-it-will-all-be-okay bunch say “It’s impossible to predict the future 40 years away,” but when it comes to population growth (which is 130,000 per year without any immigrants), the don’t-worry-it-will-all-be-okay bunch say “Oh my God. In 40 years we could have a population that isn’t increasing anymore. Catastrophe. Armageddon. Societal vandalism. We must do everything we can to insure that population continues to grow forever.”

We’ve had an increasingly ageing population for the past 60 years. During that time our standard of living has increased substantially. That will probably continue if we can learn to live sustainably. Living sustainably is easier with a stable population than with a rising population. Population growth can’t go on forever. Some generation has to face that fact. How ‘bout if it was this generation, so we can give our kids a chance to live sustainably.

The ideas in the article are well put. Nobody would even consider saying “There is a shortage of Microsoft computer software. Let’s lobby congress to get them to lower the price, so we can afford more.” It’s easier to take the best people from developing countries and pay them half the market price.

Mr Right,

You’re not very bright are you.

>” The Australian population is replacing itself”

A minimum fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman is required to maintain a countries population at a stable level, That is, to replace itself. With 1.71 births per woman Australia’s population will start declining as soon as the baby boomers are gone. There is NO doubt about that. “Population projections by the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate that continued low fertility, combined with the increase in deaths from an ageing population, will result in natural increase falling below zero sometime in the mid 2030s”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Australia

That means negative population growth. It’s a really simple concept. If you start out with 4 people, 2 women and 2 men, unless the women have two children each then the population will eventually start going backwards.When a population is falling that means fewer people are being born than are dying. This in turn leads to a greater percentage of the population being older. This will kill off all gov’t funded welfare ( ie free health care, free education, free babysitting) as the ratio of workers to benefit receivers reaches tipping point.

> “In your great wisdom, haven’t you checked the countries with half the population of Australia who have always done very well?

Population size isn’t the issue at all. It’s the fall in population and the related aging of the population that is the problem. If Australia had only a 1/2 of the people it now has but they were at the very least maintaining their numbers then Australia would be in a much healthier situation. In the history of the world there has never been a civilization that survived a prolonged period of population decline. The societal problems which such a scenario raises have always been overwhelming and irrecoverable.

“There is no evidence that future generations will be long-lived.”

Oh you have evidence for this do you? Or are you just making it up as you go along?
Currently the ABS has life expectancy at birth of .
Male: 78.5 years
Female: 83.5 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Australia

Eric,

The ABS thinks that we will have zero population growth by the 2030’s. That’s just over 20 years away. After 2030 we will have population decline with the population halving every 50 years.

“We’ve had an increasingly ageing population for the past 60 years” This is true, its getting worse and only helps make my point. Those people have until now been productive members of the community. However these people will be entering retirement soon, placing massive strain on our economy. A society that continues to become older by its very definition will start to shrink as old people start to die. Population growth doesn’t need to go on forever. I’m certainly not arguing for neverending growth, however there is real danger in population shinkrage.

I agree that there is nothing liberal or progressive in strip mining the poorer countries of their doctors, engineers and teachers. However your understanding of economics is somewhat lacking. If there is a shortage of software, lowering the price will make that shortage more acute, by increasing demand and lowering production.

BTW, we don’t run out of water, we can’t destroy it and all water is recycled. What is in difficulty is the infrastructure through which we supply ourselves with water. The disappearance of cheap fossil fuels will be good for the environment.

How about technology coming to the rescue? It always seems to be just around the corner to solve any population growth problem. And why make out that all the oldies are a useless burden? I mean, really, aren't human beings under 20 years far less useful and far more capital intensive than human beings over 60 years? And when is this "grey catastrophe" likely to hit? In ten years? In twenty?

Global warming zealots could learn much from the grey catastrophists. All this extrapolation will surely test their eyesight.

While our children are being educated they are a cost to society as we pay for their schools, their teachers etc for 20 years on average. An elderly person is a burden on society if their last few years of life when they are no longer capable of independent living, on average about 2 years. In those last 2 years of life will use most of the health care dollar spent on them through out their life.

Research has shown that 1950s immigration was very beneficial to the large factories that employed the migrants especially the car plants at Broadmeadows, Elizabeth and Geelong. Society paid for the migrants by constructing government housing, building schools and educating their children. Because the migrants took the lowest paying jobs, the existing [white] Australians benefitted from improved social status.

Today's skilled migration pushes existing Australians down the socio-economic ladder. Increasing migration levels is being pushed by large retailers, like Jerry Harvey, and the housing industry who want to keep up demand for their product by increasing the numbers of consumers.

China has become an economic giant 30 years after implementing their one child policy. Both China and India restrict the number of babies a woman has, both have negative population growth.

PaulL,

Replacement level fertility (or below) will stop or reverse population growth over the long term, but only if there is no significant net immigration. Currently, from ABS figures, approximately two babies are born and one net migrant arrives for every death. You are worried about something that isn't going to happen for more than 20 years from now, and even then only if we eliminate net immigration. Where is your evidence that the politicians will do anyting of the kind? Rudd is increasing immigration numbers. No numerate person thinks that either population or consumption can increase without limit on a finite Earth. Why not call a halt while there is still something worth saving?

Take a look at the Measures of Australia's Progress reports for the damage we are doing to the environment right now with the existing population. Quality of life has deteriorated in many important aspects over the past 30 years as well, with inflated housing costs, crumbling infrastructure and public services, shrinking open space, more congestion, declining personal freedom, etc., etc. On a global scale, it would take the resources of 3 Earths to give everyone on the planet a modest European standard of living, even if all the wealth were divided equally. (See the Redefining Progress site or the graph on page 10 of the Oct. 6, 2007 New Scientist.) Why add to our contribution to climate change and other global problems?

Paul.L,

"The ABS thinks that we will have zero population growth by the 2030’s. That’s just over 20 years away. After 2030 we will have population decline with the population halving every 50 years."

The ABS thinks what?

While it's certainly true that the domestic fertility rate has dropped below replacement level, Australia is set to reach 30 million by 2050, with about 80 percent of this population growth due to imigration. To suggest that Australia is facing outright population decline when the most recent demographic trends indicate we are in the midst of a population explosion is a stretch — even for an immigration enthusiast.

"Population growth doesn’t need to go on forever. I’m certainly not arguing for neverending growth, however there is real danger in population shinkrage."

Population 'shrinkage' would only occur if net immigration was permanently cut to zero. Even then, it would take some time for the population to stabilize and then gradually go into decline.

The real demographic challenge facing Australia is population aging — a problem which cannot be solved by immigration for the simple reason that immigrants also grow old. More immigration simply means a larger dependent elderly population in the future. Ever-increasing, unsustainable levels of immigration would thus be required to maintain a stable ratio of workers to pensioners. In other words, never-ending population growth.

"The societal problems which such a scenario raises have always been overwhelming and irrecoverable."

Using mass immigration from the Third World to reverse an imagined population decline because of lower birth rates is a temporary and highly dangerous expedient, with irreversible and potentially disastrous consequences. In the history of the world there has never been a civilization that has survived a prolonged period of mass immigration on the scale you're advocating. The societal problems caused by mass immigration have always been overwhelming and irrecoverable.

Displacing a nation's existing population and culture through mass immigration is societal vandalism at its worst.

Farnswort

Population projections by the ABS indicate that continued low fertility, combined with the increase in deaths from an ageing population, will result in natural increase falling below zero sometime in the mid 2030s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia

you say " The real demographic challenge facing Australia is population aging — a problem which cannot be solved by immigration for the simple reason that immigrants also grow old"

You seem to have very little understanding of the mathematics of demography. A population ages and then declines when the fertility rate falls below replacement levels. Many immigrant groups do not suffer from this affliction. Many developed countries are not aging due to the high fertility rates of their large immigrant minorities.

You say “Population 'shrinkage' would only occur if net immigration was permanently cut to zero.”

This is incorrect. If more people die or emmigrate than are born or immigrate, then your population will start to decline, whether you have net immigration or not. In Germany, Hungary, Poland, Japan, Russia and many ex-soviet republics their populations are declining. “According to the UN, below-replacement fertility is expected in 75% of developed world by the year 2050” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline

But I’m not part of the cheersquad for more third world immigration. In fact I’m fairly adamantly opposed to increasing some of our ethnic and religious minorities beyond their current numbers. I totally agree there is nothing liberal or progressive about stripping the third world of its doctors and engineers AS I HAVE ALREADY SAID in previous posts.

My point is that I think WE should be having more babies. Not necessarily to increase the population but to ensure that it doesn’t decline. The lefts mortgaging of our futures by displacing the responsibility of social programs into the future, in order to reap prosperity now, means we are at risk of dire economic outcomes.

Furthermore, France and Britain are two examples where large minority groups are seizing the chance to reorder the social landscape in their favour by means fair and foul. That is our future if we continue to rely on immigration to stabilize our population.

PaulL,

I agree with you about the damage that is being done to social cohesion by mass migration around the world. The problem is that the corporate elite, who own the politicians, benefit from high real estate prices, bigger markets, a cheap, compliant work force, etc., so unless we are prepared to vote out growthist politicians, the present situation will continue. Bringing the fertility rate up to replacement level then makes a bad situation worse.

If we cut immigration back to near zero net, we would (in the long run) need to do a bit more to make life easier for people who want to have more children. (In opinion polls people say that they want enough children to stabilise the population, even without immigration.)

However, you need to consider whether current populations are sustainable. As I posted before, there are too many people globally to give all of them a decent standard of living, even if we conserve, and share and care some more. Given the risk of food shortages with climate change, agricultural land diverted to biofuels, etc., it is probably not a smart idea to have a bigger population than you can feed yourself. Britain has 6 times as many people as in the 18th century. They nearly starved during and just after WWII with a smaller population than now. There is a big difference between an anorexic starving herself and going on a diet when you are almost too obese to walk.

Firstly, High real estate prices are the result of middle class families purchasing housing for the rental market as an investment. This competition with home buyers not only drives up the cost of housing it also puts it out of reach of many first home buyers.

Secondly, Due to globalization Australian businesses have access to huge markets in Asia, Europe and America. By comparison our domestic market is almost irrelevant to large business.

Thirdly, Cheap compliant workforces don’t exist to any real extent in the Australian labour market. Protection under the law ensures this. The shortage of labour also helps ensure good wages for the employed.

Fourthly, To our north 222 million people live and feed themselves in a country about the same size as Queensland. I am unsure what analogy you would use for them if we are considered to be “too obese to walk”

Fifthly, you presentation of GDP divided evenly amongst the people of the world is a massive oversimplification of the issue. The 3 earths scenario is pure rubbish of the type beloved of the eco-chondriacs. And the very idea that all wealth should be divided equally is absurd although it fits well with the free-money policies of the lunatic-left.

Sixthly, The most likely scenario that will cause food shortages is the conversion of large tracts of farmland to bio-diesel production. The impact not of global warming, but fear of global warming.

Finally, there are huge swathes of farm land across the planet that are used for cotton, rubber and other non food production. These could be turned over to food production if needed. As food becomes more expensive, low quantity but high margin crops will be dumped in favour of higher volume crops. Fish farming has massive potential to produce food and is expanding rapidly. If need be suburban lawns could be turned over to agriculture as the local Vietnamese do where I used to live. In a country the size of Australia, 50 million people can easily be accomodated.

PaulL

"Firstly, High real estate prices are the result of middle class families purchasing housing for the rental market as an investment."

You hilariously funny fellow, you. That great Aussie comedian, Paul Keating, showed what a wonderful joke your theory was when he removed negative gearing. Maybe you could provide the forum with an explanation of why the funster's action had an effect opposite to that which your theory would predict? Then you could explain how high immigration and great restrictions on development by secretive councils is of no significance to housing affordability?

"In a country the size of Australia, 50 million people can easily be accomodated."

Haven't there been instances of bird flu in Vietnam caused by people eating birds killed by illness? That doesn't strike me as an affluent lifestyle. It might be affluent compared to the Phillipines, where, if a dog dies, the argument is not about who gets rid of it, but who gets to eat it. Perhaps your definition of "easily" differs from mine. Perhaps you mean "easily" as in, "The elephant in the living room passed easily through the mincer."?

PaulL,

Housing would be worthless as an investment unless there were people to live in the houses, whether they are buying them or renting them. The politicians have abandoned decentralisation, so land for housing needs (for most people) to be within commuting distance of a major city, the place where the jobs are. At the same time, the politicians have driven up population through mass migration. That is why it is the land component that is driving up the cost of housing, which has risen from 3.5 times the median wage in 1973 to 7.5 times in 2005 and higher in some cities. The people who own the land are doing very nicely. That is why the real estate interests are pushing for more immigration. Do you dispute this?

Profits have been increasing faster than wages for quite some time. Not all businesses operate globally, and not all jobs can be outsourced. Every year the business lobby argues against increases in the minimum wage.

When I spoke about too obese to walk, I was referring to very crowded European countries, not Australia. Here in Australia, however, we already have permanent water restrictions in every major city, except possibly Hobart, with people encouraged to spy on their neighbours, and there are constant disputes over water between the various interest groups. The water could certainly be better managed, but I don't see how 50 million would be possible without playing hell with the environment and with the quality of life of ordinary people, who might prefer not to have to grow vegetables in their front gardens. There is no comparison between the carrying capacity of Australia, which is mostly desert and has very little really good soil, and Indonesia, which has plentiful water and deep rich volcanic soils. See the CIA World Factbook for percentages of arable land for different countries.

You might read about environmental footprints before assuming that they are all a plot by radicals like the editors of New Scientist. I never suggested dividing GNP equally, just that doing so would not solve problems of global poverty.

Fester

THE tax concession for investment housing is booming, with big beneficiaries of negative gearing found in outlying "aspirational" suburbs as well as traditional wealthy areas. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23399807-25658,00.html?from=public_rss

In June, 1996, Australians owed the banks $159 billion in mortgages, almost 80 per cent of it for our own homes. Then in the next four years, we borrowed another $96 billion, almost 50 per cent of it for housing we would not live in. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/10/1022982818188.html

First home buyers are particularly disadvantaged in this market as they are competing against property investors who can take advantage of generous tax concessions. The purpose of this article is to compare the value of the tax advantages available to property investors against the Federal Government’s first home buyers’ grant and various State Government grants and benefits available to first home buyers. This article reveals that not only are wealthy property investors better off in the longer-term by over $100,000, but their presence in the housing market is distorting housing prices. Journal of Australian Taxation http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/JATax/2005/4.html

I am not denying that immigration and council intransigence are contributing factors, merely that they are subsidiary to the main problem

Divergence,
CIA factbook says that Australia has 6.15% of arable land. Indonesia has 11.03%. Australia is 7.741 million kilometers square. Indonesia is 1.019 million square kilometers. Therefore total arable land in Australia is 467,000 square kilometers. In Indonesia that figure is 110,000 square kilometers. Considering that we have 1/10th the population of Indonesia that means we have 40 times more arable land per person.

I don’t read enviro magazines because the environment has become a quasi religious topic where feelings have replaced facts. As for the news scientist I would like to see the link.

Water restrictions in most of our capital cities mostly affect those who want a quarter acre of cooch or buffalo grass. That is definitely an unsustainable situation and the sooner we se the end of it the better. Any population growth in Australia should be channeled towards Northern Australia as I would agree that the South East is beginning to press its boundaries.

PaulL

"I am not denying that immigration and council intransigence are contributing factors, merely that they are subsidiary to the main problem."

I believe the converse to be true, but I would use something a little less euphemistic than "intransigence". I find your claim to be deficient on several grounds.

Firstly, negative gearing has been a feature of the Australian housing market for many years. Paul Keating's abolition of negative gearing in 1985 resulted in increases in house prices and rents, as the resultant removal of capital from housing reduced supply more than demand. This real world example implied that negative gearing is in fact a housing market subsidy. Why would your theory be any less invalid today?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5490/is_199906/ai_n21449586

Secondly, in any commodity, for a given cost of supply, the only way to cause a sustained increase in the price of that commodity in the face of increased demand, is where supply is restricted. Historically, instances of speculative buying of commodities, while often causing spectacular price increases, have ultimately collapsed as new supply found its way to market. In the case of the Australian housing market, there is ample evidence that the cause of unaffordability is the failure of supply to meet demand. e.g.

http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiry/housing

As Divergence has alluded to, it is not the cost of the building that is the problem. So if councils suddenly gave landholders more rights to develop their land, the housing affordability crisis would quickly resolve. Similarly, if immigration were substantially reduced, demand would substantially reduce, with similar effect. And yes, Melbourne in the 1890's provides a real world example of the latter, with a recession and plague outbreak thrown in for good measure.

"I don’t read enviro magazines because the environment has become a quasi religious topic where feelings have replaced facts."

In light of your belief in a theory which has proved to be false in practice, would you say that you have been hoist by your own petard old bean?

"Therefore total arable land in Australia is 467,000 square kilometers. In Indonesia that figure is 110,000 square kilometers. Considering that we have 1/10th the population of Indonesia that means we have 40 times more arable land per person."

Isn't this a good thing? Is it a bad thing? And I would point out that your calculation ignores the fact that Indonesian arable land has about four times the yield of Australian arable land, and that the daily energy intake of Indonesians is only a little over half that of Australians. Then there is the consideration of the meat component of the respective diets. One unit of energy of meat takes about seven units of energy to produce. And will Australia's agricultural production increase or decrease in future? So in reality your fanciful 40 may in fact be three or less.

PaulL,

The environmental or ecological footprint essentially converts consumption per person to notional hectares of land so that comparisons can be made. The Footprint Network

http://www.footprintnetwork.org

defines it as a way to measure "how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its wastes under prevailing technology". This is quite respectable, although there are criticisms of specific methods, as discussed in the Wikipedia article "Ecological Footprint". The University of Sydney does footprint calculations at its Centre for International Sustainable Analysis, and so do a number of NGOs, such as Redefining Progress

http://www.rprogress.org

New Scientist is a weekly science and technology news magazine. It covers environmental issues, but this isn't its main focus.

http://www.newscientist.com

The article and graph I referred to (the source of the "3 Earths to give everyone a European standard of living") was by Daniele Fanelli and on p. 10 of the 10/6/07 issue, but not available for free on the Web. You can work it out yourself from the Redefining Progress numbers though. The Wikipedia article has a graph showing footprint per person for different nations versus rank on the UN Human Development Index.

Indonesia's footprint per person is approximately one tenth that of Australia. Since they have about 235,000,000 people, they could therefore support a population of 23.5 million at an Australian standard of living. As Fester said, their arable land is much more productive than ours.

Fester,

For the past week the Sydney Morning Herald has been running stories about commuters wanting to be paid for time spent on the train, if they can show that they have spent it working. It seems that there are a surprising number of people who spend 4 hours a day commuting in the Sydney area. Many of them open up their laptops and get to work. Naturally the employers don't want to pay. Unpaid overtime is one way that they can take advantage of the greater bargaining leverage the government has given them via mass migration and other means.

The problem with just abolishing planning controls is that people with little or no choice are going to be forced into situations that will make them miserable. In modern cities it is too dangerous (mostly because of traffic) for children to be allowed out to play without constant adult supervision. Prof. Bill Randolph has studied (in Sydney) some of the damage high density living does to children's physical and social development

http://www.aracy.org.au/AM/Common/pdf/2006_ChildFriendlyCities/2006301006%20Children%20in%20the%20Compact%20City.pdf

I also recall a happiness survey by Robert Cummins of Deakin University, showing that people are happier on average at lower densities, even if they have less money. This isn't surprising. Humans didn't evolve as hive animals.

A better solution might be to stop driving up the population and to create opportunities elsewhere for the population growth that is locked in. The tropical North perhaps?

Fester.

After reading the productivity commissions inquiry into first home ownership I could find little in the way of support for your conclusion. Indeed in the key findings there was this comment

“in the last couple of years … house prices surpassed levels that are explicable …, with some additional investment seemingly predicated on unrealistic expectations (in a ‘supportive’ tax environment) of ongoing capital gains.”

And this.

Interactions between negative gearing, ‘capital works’ deductions, post-1999 capital gains provisions and marginal income tax rates have lent impetus to investment demand during the housing boom.
http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/56302/housing.pdf

No mention at all about immigration, I suspect that this is because the increased labour force of builders and tradespeople from targeted immigration outweighs the effect on the market of slightly increased demand.

Your simplistic analysis of the effects of two years without negative gearing during the Keating era does not stand up to any scrutiny. Your point, that prices didn’t drop during that time, therefore negative gearing doesn’t increase the cost of housing is not in any way scientific, relying as it does upon mostly anecdotal evidence. There were many aspects of the Keating changes which were perhaps inappropriately implemented, for example the limiting of the negative gearing provisions to housing, which without a doubt shifted new investment to other more favourable markets. And the introduction at the same time of Capital Gains Tax also had a negative effect.

“In the case of the Australian housing market, there is ample evidence that the cause of unaffordability is the failure of supply to meet demand. e.g.”

Well aren’t you the one for pointing out the obvious. High prices are the inevitable result of supply not meeting demand. In my opinion, and that of the Australian journal of taxation and the productivity commisions’ inquiry, demand is being fueled by the middle class welfare that includes negative gearing and capital gains exemptions.

In light of having your head stuck up your arse you might like to rethink your position or at least attempt to gather some evidence for it, old bean.

www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23393323-601,00.html

Thanks billie, Fester, Divergence, Paul L and others for interesting posts and of course, thaks Tim for the article. Articles by Tim Murray can also be found on his own web site at http://sinkinglifebot.blogspot.com and mine at http://candobetter.org/tim This article can also be found at http://candobetter.org/node/365

I see that Murdoch's Australian Newspaper is using figures which which, seemingly contrary to Tim's evidence about Canada, purportedly show that immigrants earn more, rather than less than their Australian equivalents, to further bolster its clamouring for larger numbers of skilled immigrant workers.

See the article "Migrant workers scoring top pay" of 18 March 2008 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23393323-601,00.html

SKILLED temporary migrant workers are earning on average
$15,000 more than their Australian counterparts, undermining
trade union claims that the system is being abused to undercut
local wages.

Figures obtained by The Australian show that holders of 457
visas, which allow temporary skilled migrants to work in Australia
for up to four years, are earning more than the average salaries
of local workers across all industries in which they are employed.

The figures have reignited the debate over the use of foreign
workers, with the Opposition seizing on the data as "dispelling the
myth" that temporary skills workers are driving down wages, but
unions and the Rudd Government insist that many visa holders are
exploited by unscrupulous employers.

As this is more than I can fit in here, I have turned it into a short article 'Do claims of higher immigrant wages answer objections to record Australian immigration levels?' and put it on my own web site at http://candobetter.org/node/376

Comments here or there are welcome.

PaulL

"No mention at all about immigration,"

Simply untrue. Immigration is discussed as a demand factor.

"I suspect that this is because the increased labour force of builders and tradespeople from targeted immigration outweighs the effect on the market of slightly increased demand."

Untrue again.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=59380

You might like this quote:

"The HIA chief also said the industry suffered from a skills shortage because only a tiny fraction of immigrants had training in residential construction."

"Your simplistic analysis"

The report considered your idea not to be actionable "for reasons that are self evident".

"Well aren’t you the one for pointing out the obvious."

The "obvious" is the fact that speculative investment does not in itself have a long term effect on supply. This is what the report considered "self evident".

"In light of having your head stuck up your arse you might like to rethink your position or at least attempt to gather some evidence for it, old bean."

As GrahamY said, "a rule on this forum appears to be that the more abusive the poster the less they are likely to know, and you're demonstrating this law at the moment."

The forum with the topic "Martin Luther King a population control advocate" at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1645&page=0 may be of interest today, 4 April 2008, being the fortieth aniversary of King's assassination on 4 April 1968.