The Coalition rightly believes that permanent residents should be “encouraged” to become citizens. The ‘encouragement’ should take the form of sign up or leave.

Some countries, e.g China and India, do not ‘permit’ dual citizenship. So what! Sign up or go back to China or India if you want to stay in Australia permanently.

Albanese came up with the ridiculous, “Permanent residents are people who have made a commitment to Australia to be permanent residents”!!

How about committing to Australia? Permanent residents do not make any oaths or undertakings to Australia. All they have to do to get a permanent visa is sign an Australian Values Statement.

Albanese then goes into the arse wiping, nursing, cleaning usefulness routine of permanent residents. No mention of tax collection, the main reason.

These permanent residents only wait 4 years to access most social benefits, and “up to” 10 years for a disability pension. All they can't do is vote or get an Australian passport.

NB The Coalition wouldn't take away any benefits from existing residents. Weak.

Hi AC,

What you say sounds fine in theory, surveys with lots of questions and answers, with opinions on all sorts of matters canvased. The problem is, these things can never be totally quantified, one idea opposed by another. Nor can they be made compulsory, then sectional interests and pressure groups are organised to skew results in their favour. On the logistical side, who actually measures the results and in what form is it presented, and to whom. When and how is action taken on these results.

The hypocrisy of One Nation and its supporters. They make a song and dance about the 1% of residential property which is foreign owned in Australia, yet not a peep out that mob about the 13% of Australian agricultural land (about 50 million hectares, much of it US and British) foreign owned. The politics of hate that these people engage in is evident, why are they talking about the small amount of residential property foreign owned, and not the 13% of agricultural land, power through hate and division that's why!

Cracks are appearing on the far right, with Clive Palmer being super critical of Barnaby Joyce and what he said about foreign investment in Australia.

Hi Paul,
I understand and accept your valid arguments, but I'm not sure that necessarily means we shouldn't try.
It's just means we need to find a way to foolproof it before we actually do it.
(something the government never does and often resulting in debacles)
Recognising the issues you suggested shows what we have to guard against in the planning if or when we do.

"The politics of hate that these people engage in is evident, why are they talking about the small amount of residential property foreign owned, and not the 13% of agricultural land, power through hate and division that's why!"

I'm not certain that what you see as an 'attack' by the far right, is at it's core essentially a 'defence' by the far right, and it's probably important to make this distinction...

They're defending what they see as the good parts of this country the way it used to be and what was lost and where it's headed, and it's not hard to be critical, thinking your kids can't afford homes or that Islam might one day take over, and a thousand other things they see as all adding up to the complete erosion of what was once good and 'ours' in this country.
- And not knowing who or what to point the finger of blame at, become an angry mob.
We've seen it on both sides from time to time.

"Cracks are appearing on the far right, with Clive Palmer being super critical of Barnaby Joyce and what he said about foreign investment in Australia."

Foreign investment can be both a blessing and a curse.
- Their investment ties their national interests to the extraction of wealth from our shores.

Look at Ukraine, they won't stop the war or stop Ukrainians from being fed into the meat grinder, because Western people in high places interests aren't served by the war stopping, and they might lose out on their investments.

Actually, One Nation believes in "an outright ban" on further sales of agricultural land to foreigners.

Currently-owned land should be converted to lease-hold for a maximum of 25 years. Owners who refuse to sell land after that would have that land confiscated.

No foreigners should own Australian water rights.

That's just a quick summary of their policies.

No need for shouting about ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘hate’, or projecting your own hatred of just about everything and everybody onto other people.

When you have nothing to offer than some half baked populist policy like;

"Currently-owned land should be converted to lease-hold for a maximum of 25 years. Owners who refuse to sell land after that would have that land confiscated."

How do you achieve this miracle, without severe backlash from foreign governments, particularly the bit about "confiscated". For the federal government to purchase the 1% of foreign owned residential property at market value would cost between $40 and $60 billion today. the cost of purchasing the 50 million hectares of foreign owned agricultural land would be around $600 billion today. Where does the money come from? Then when the government has this massive amount of houses and land, what do they do with it. Look for local buyers at fire sale prices. Typical airhead politics from One Nation. If that is their un-costed, un-thought-out policy!