At a time when Australia is in a dire housing crisis, with a critical shortage of capacity to build new houses, only a fool or a shyster would set about importing a million more people. Yet, that’s exactly what the Albanese government is doing. And the Business Council of Australia is cheering them on.
So, who’s the fool and who’s the shyster? Or is it a bit of both, on both sides?
First off, the numbers: Australia has the highest rate of population growth in the developed world – solely due to immigration. By 2050, on current government estimates, Australia’s population will be an astonishing 38 million. All those extra migrants, we are told, “is keeping the economy ticking over”. But, by how much?
It’s hard to get plain dollar amounts out of the economic spruikers of mass immigration. Possibly, one suspects, because they’d rather keep it a guilty secret.
Instead, the government prefers to prattle about “GDP per capita growth”: precisely, an 5.9 per cent in GDP per capita by 2050.
In plain dollar amounts, that means that each Australian will be $5,522 richer in 2050 than they would have been had the Big Australia fanatics not crammed 12 million more migrants in.
Or, to put it another way: 12 million migrants equals the princely sum of just $204 per Australian, per year.
Awesome! says big business. And why wouldn’t they? They get all the upsides – cheap labour and trendy ethnic cafes – without any of the downsides. You won’t catch the CEOs of our biggest companies battling to find a house in an insane rental market, or sitting in gridlocked traffic for hours or waiting months for a GP appointment. Millions of migrants aren’t flooding into their nice, exclusive suburbs.
Opposition home affairs spokesperson James Paterson says the Business Council of Australia was “dangerously out of touch” and “tone-deaf” in its warning not to use housing as a “scapegoat” to reduce migrant intake.
The BCA, in a paper on migration reform, said Australia needed to be able to attract top international workers.
“I’m very supportive of migration to Australia … but the pace and rate of that migration is absolutely a legitimate issue for public debate, and the impact that has on services into our communities is also very legitimate, particularly housing,” Senator Paterson told Sky News.
“Frankly, I thought this was a pretty tone-deaf contribution from the business community today suggesting that the only numbers that matter were the permanent migration program and not the temporary workers and students who are coming here right now, because we know they’re coming at extraordinary numbers.”
The Australian
More, more, more! Scream the CEOs.
In the paper to be released on Thursday, the BCA says the current system needs to be reformed because Australia is “competing against other countries for the best and brightest” and that “slow or complex migration systems … put the nation at a disadvantage”.
The paper rejects the narrative that Labor is pursuing a “big Australia” policy as a myth.
Really? So increasing the population to 38 million – a growth of over 12 million – by 2050 isn’t a Big Australia?
I’d hate to see what these greedy loons think is.
And they’re flatly denying what anyone who’s tried to rent or buy a house lately can see right in front of their faces.
The national failure to free up housing supply must not be used as a “scapegoat” to reduce the migrant intake, amid escalating global competition for talent and a political deadlock over Anthony Albanese’s $10bn housing package.
The Australian
Just how much more “supply” do they want?
Put in plain terms, “supply” means more houses, more and more urban sprawl, more and more and more of Australia’s scarce arable land smothered by endless suburbia.
It also means higher and higher demand for energy – right at the time that the government is crippling Australia’s energy supplies with its demented “Net Zero” policies.
These people are out of their everlovin’ minds.