Why facts (voters) can’t get a look-in against ‘Huge Australia’ groupthink

Late 2022, Treasury held the Jobs and Skills Summit. 140 handpicked participants for Big (now Huge) Australia. No dissidents. Federal agencies and media weren't direct participants either.

The summit endorsed a 195,000 (now 190,000) "permanent" migration intake plus band-aids for "training" and "housing".

Albanese Labor romped to an unheard of 518,000 net-migration in 2022-23, probably 400,000 this year. Canada and Australia are world outliers, in the low-immigration OECD bloc.

Sez Labor, mega migration's catching up for COVID (misleading). Not government policy (yeah right). Sorting visa backlogs (hilarious). Coalition had higher migration (nope).

Late 2023, Clare O'Neil released guru Martin Parkinson's Migration Strategy which boasted of generational reforms fixing a broken system and halving migration.

Stakeholders accept this abysmal propaganda. Or wouldn't undermine it publicly.

Their "conversation" ignores Albanese's 60% hike, on Rudd Labor's crazy 24-month immigration record based on his one-sided qualifications and immigration deals with ultra-nationalist Modi India.

They dine on Treasurer's talking points (budget surplus, inflation, cost of living "relief") and the perennial immigration fibs.

Like - we're "migration nation", importing "skilled" migrants, it's boosting "jobs and growth", better "planning" neutralises immigration, emissions shrink as population swells, immigration counteracts ageing, only racists oppose mass migration.

Actual mass-migration impacts – historic productivity and per capita fails, struggling infrastructure and environment, collapsing household incomes and real wages, all-time rental crisis and housing unaffordability – are off the table.

Greens-Labor theatrics misrepresent housing as a wicked supply-problem. Hullo, wicked politicians have superheated the demand side with endless migration and tax incentives.

Who are these stakeholders?

Electors and environment have never been worse served by Huge Australia. Yet it's all-powerful. This poses historic challenges for voter-friendly voices. Evidence bounces off the stakeholder mafia.

As an experiment, I skimmed the "cream" from the summit list. Then added in essential stakeholders, particularly federal agencies, and mainstream media.

This yielded eight stakeholder groups and 100-plus agencies/individuals including 40 Summiteers. It was hard to find a dozen notable agencies challenging the Huge Australia narrative. None attended the summit. The groupthink is less stifling in the US and certain EU nations where low-migration parties can turn or win elections.

Despite five major blocs in our federal politics - Liberal, Labor, National, Greens, Teal – voters have no low-migration option. The time-stained Liberal-Labor duopoly locks them out.

Federal Agencies are notable propagandists for Huge Australia. In Treasury portfolio, Home Affairs/Environment, ABC/SBS, ANU/CSIRO.

Treasury, Reserve Bank, Productivity Commission mandarins enjoy lush salaries, for un-seeing the massive migration. Treasurer's fatwa denies Huge Australia is any drag on productivity.

The federal budget absorbs GDP benefits of migration, while states and cities absorb costs. Yet states adore their Huge Australia debts – Victoria almost unto bankruptcy.

States are reliant on Commonwealth grants, also captured by industry and developers who dominated the summit. More population = bigger business + flatter wages.

In their spare time, corporates like Atlassian and Fortescue "save the planet". No mention of population.

Economists, urban planners, and demographers are well-paid soothsayers of Huge Australia. "Better planning" is their default prescription.

A couple of (actually) independent economists query endless population growth.

While guru Ross Garnaut bemoans Australia's "lost decade" for productivity and wages. Never mind the mega migration, we can leapfrog to being an "energy superpower" with "zero carbon" exports. Music to the treasurer's ears.

Media is compromised. The federal press gallery and the National Press Club (NPC) tend to repeat government's line and lob marshmallow questions. They love their advance drops.

Migration martinet Katharine Murphy parachuted from the Guardian into the prime minister's office. NPC President and ABC Board Member, Laura Tingle, has always been an immigration partisan.

Outfits like News Corp, Nine, ABC/SBS, Ten, Seven, Guardian, and The Conversation, normalise Huge Australia. Some (News Corp/Nine again, Canberra Times, Sky, Daily Mail) also cover the negatives.

Good for News Corp, and Nine. Means little, unless paramount chiefs Lachlan Murdoch, and Peter Costello put the screws on Huge Australia. Wait on - Costello as Treasurer started it.

Universities and unions are meant to serve our students and workers. Now Huge Australia comes first, especially overseas students. In the 1980s, even 1990s, professions and trades would have queried those Modi agreements. Not now – that might be racist.

UN climate policy has hijacked our population policy. Taking UN "net zero emissions" as gospel, our university herd recommends (convoluted) climate mitigation not (easy) population mitigation. Even though unchecked population growth greatly increases our ecological footprint.

Climate not population policy motivates think tanks and interest groups. TAPRI and SPA push back.

Some think tanks (CEDA , CIS , Grattan ) are growth lobbyists. Others (Academy of Science, ACF, Australia Institute ) have strategically ditched the population issue. Greens caved first, in 1998.

Low migration? That would be racist. Climate/green/housing/women's/religious lobbies are virtually (virtuously) obliged to reject it. Tough luck, for equality and opportunity .

These backflips indicate the 21^st century dominanceof the identity-based left-liberal culture of wokeness. Identity measures (and politics) replace equality measures (and politics).

How to counter stakeholders?

The disastrous Albanese legacy will be 250,000 minimum as the Treasury "normal" or floor for net migration, four to five times our 20^th century average.

For virtue-signalling Greens, even 300,000 is discriminatory. Earth to Max Chandler-Mather, we never topped 200,000, before 2007.

Only a global pandemic disrupted Big Australia – what on earth could derail Huge Australia? At least, know thine opponent. Visibly, Huge Australia groupthink covers the spectrum of power players, public and private, "left" and "right".

Little use targeting landlord-politicians alone. To win pre-selection is to favour open borders. Industry and developers dominate (buy) them.

Revenue-sensitive mainstream media offers limited windows to counter the lies.

But also, be sceptical of "public" service, universities, unions, economists, planners, and lobbyists. Their mega-migration equity stiffs fellow Australians. Call out their hypocrisy.

Stakeholders generally seem uncaring that Huge Australia depreciates living standards and natural environment. They're buoyed by newer orthodoxies on racism and climate.

But most Australians want low migration - and low population growth isn't racist.

In my own suburbs, I get this 1-2. Dislike Huge Australia? You're an extremist (racist).

There's lots of us. Hundreds of millions in the OECD (whose chummy reports endorse Albanese's climate policy and open borders). But most member nations practise very low immigration.

Check Australia's 17-million electoral roll. With poll after poll supporting low migration, are they racists?

Conceding the 7-1 Voice debacle, Albanese noted indigenous inequalities. But refused to acknowledge the division between powerful city-enclaves (Yes) and the rest (No).

This power, not the people, loves mega migration. Voters have no voice or choice.

But climate policy doesn't fix overpopulation – and overpopulation doesn't fix the economy.

Despite our population mushrooming to 27 million, educated groupthink says water-challenged Australia can carry on to 40 million. UN "climate action" and "net zero" will fix it.

Wait on - population growth drives growing emissions and a failing environment. This is the Anthropocene. Ignoring chronic over-population and under-productivity, the treasurer and elite stakeholders romance the green superpower as our economic homerun.

By design, few of us can absorb the sheer mass of UN IPCC climate-crunching. But it's not rocket-science. Huge Australia is divisive economics and lousy "climate policy".

Takeaway

Albanese's Huge Australia is dug in. Stakeholders riff on curated immigration fibs. To inconvenient facts and evidence - even the stark housing misery - they give short shrift. Awfully difficult to counter, when their prevailing mindset is open borders and "net zero".

Despite Opposition gestures of concern, low migration won't be offered at Election 2025. Huge Australia is unstoppable, unless massed stakeholders flip. They're too selfish for that.