This 'Jobs and Skills' Summit is sending us straight back onto the Big Australia hamster wheel

Four turbulent years after the 2007 election, the Rudd-Gillard Government undertook a fake consultation for a population strategy that always took mass migration as read.

The Albanese Government looks to be getting this job done at the outset. In the skills/migration department of a two-day Summit agenda .

Firstly, its Issues Paper excludes any direct or quantifiable questions about sustainable levels of immigration (or population growth).

As Gillard did, Albanese serves up motherhood, around the "opportunities and challenges" for immigration to "complement" the "domestic workforce". He avoids Treasury's crucial net overseas migration targets. Instead, he looks-over-there at "skilled" migration.

Secondly, the 100 Summit attendees heavily favour agencies or individuals who are all for mass migration. In this soviet, I cannot really find a single dissenting voice that would fairly represent voter concerns.

What of workers' friend, Sally McManus at ACTU? She lines up with Business Council for the 200,000 permanent migration intake the Government has put about. This would smash Gillard's all-time record.

In a sense, the guest list mimics the House of Representatives . Among 151 members there, would there be anyone in any party to publicly disavow Treasury mass-migration gospel?

Is this a democratic problem? Not if you're on the right side of the immigration cheer squad. Which, as I like to say, takes in the entire Australian circle of power, but scoffs at spoilers like the weary electorate or the depleted environment.

So how does another big immigration surge square with our remarkable unemployment achievement? It doesn't.

Sea-girt Australia usually plans and executes its immigration (even net migration) with quite some precision. But Scott Morrison's lengthy COVID border closure triggered a 100-year immigration reversal .

Much as it may be denied, it was mostly this reversal that produced the unplanned and unexpected 50-year unemployment low . Can't have that sort of thing happening - we'll smother it with more mass migration.

And then, how does a big immigration surge square with the hapless voters? It doesn't. Post COVID polls show voters wanting the opposite – low or even zero net migration. Here and here and here .