Treasury tacks a 'wellbeing' framework onto their endless-growth framework

Statement 4, like the rest of Budget, buries Australia's radical population settings. Which only surface as Appendix A of Budget Paper No. 3.

Population growth strongly influences wellbeing across other domains. Particularly in Australia, it should be its own domain.

Politicians weaponise population growth

Albanese Labor takes its licence for mass migration from, you guessed it, "stakeholders". The in-crowd of Jobs and Skills Summit. Mere voters aren't consulted - despite the wellbeing implications. More reason than ever, to canvass population, in any framework.

COVID border closure shrank net migration to negative 85,000. The lowest figure in a century. Unemployment sank to a fifty-year low – some fillip.

Yet the previous and present governments raced to reboot mass migration. Disregarding the 2050 environmental prospect – 10 million extras for the arid continent of great extremes.

Budget and the Population Statement target 235,000 in net migration. With visa processing in overdrive, unprecedented student intakes, even that will be swamped.

Treasurer Chalmers and his strident propagandists (notably ex-Treasurer Costello's Nine media) imply that 235,000 is "normal" trend. It's three times our historic average. Canada (hi, Justin) is the only rich nation with a more intensive immigration program.

Chalmers and Home Affairs are deploying COVID as the smokescreen for our biggest immigration drive ever. While the Statement and its supporters gaslight us, that population is slumping smaller and older than expected.

With the Statement ink barely dry, Chalmers allows to a helpful media stenographer, he's not stopping at 235,000. As Melbourne mate Dan Andrews sings harmony.

A worry, having unreconstructed Treasury, as wellbeing czar towards 2050. Their Sydney's a triumphal global city. Not the sprawling but congested burg of socioeconomic polarisation.

Even Appendix A divulges population aggregates only. By calculation, target population growth is 1.4%, as far out as 2025-26. Two-three times higher, than sensible OECD nations.