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Reasons why Albanese's immigration deluge is virtually unstoppable

By Stephen Saunders - posted Friday, 16 December 2022


His Budget Overview is decorated with "climate action" and "protecting the environment" tinsel. This cannot offset his population drive. He offers nothing direct to tackle aggressive logging and land clearing. He's "light touch" on fossil fuel extraction.

Labor's sparkly new environment watchdogand climate statementI would say are only playing catch-up football.

It seems paradoxical. Since NetZero was unveiled over 2015-18, the gulf between Australia's population policy and environmental evidence has only widened.

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As usual, mass migration trumps wages and welfare

With population neutered as a political issue, huge and exploitative immigration intakes go unchecked.

Nominally, we remain among the world's richest folks. This honeypot is another reason why huge intakes are even doable. The budget can afford to shift resources to "visa backlogs".

Nevertheless, the gap between citizens' welfare and the population drive is growing.

The unexpected 100-year immigration low was decisive in producing the50-yearunemployment low. It suits Albanese to let Morrison take credit. The Liberal Opposition still fibsabout it.

Now, Albanese cranks immigration to all-time levels while purportedly keeping unemployment low, boosting real wages, and solving the housing crisis. His airy promise of a million extrain new homes before 2030, is nixed by the near certainty of 1.5 million extra in net migration. Probably more.

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Youth unemployment, which also fell during COVID, will rise again. Labor will continueto prefer cash-cow international students, ahead of domestic students and skills.

On first glance, the post-election economic indicators look jollywhile Treasury has unveiled Measuring What Matters, their "wellbeing" framework.

But real wages aren't keeping pacewith productivity growth. They've gone backwards. Per capita recessionbeckons.

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About the Author

Stephen Saunders is a former APS public servant and consultant.

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