Could the US election result dent the 'Huge Australia' plan?

Forever, powerful pro-migration stakeholders have wrung their hands in mock distress. By golly, if only we had a "population plan". We should have an "immigration plan".

Of course, we do have such a plan – Big (or Huge) Australia. Labor and Liberal have been devoted to it. Could the US Democrats immigration-trainwreck tempt Peter Dutton to genuinely shift?

Treasury writes the plan, OK?

It doesn't matter how much cost-of-living hardship and real-wages freefall that Australian households endure - Treasurer Chalmers soft-soaps them with Treasury Building talking-points.

Memo to ABC – naturally, said Treasurer maintains a national population plan. As does any major OECD economy. Despite our resources cornucopia, lazy population growth is a (the) major driver of economic "growth":

Australia's low-publicity population plan requires mega (1.5-2.5%) population growth by OECD norms (0.5%), powered by immigration. This allows Budget to assume expansive economic benefits from population growth, discounting the obvious economic and environmental costs.

Every year, this pernicious plan soft-shoes into Budget Paper 3, as Appendix A.

No justification is offered. Treasurer doesn't discuss it. Not even on Budget night.

Consolation prize, at least it lights a guttering candle on the massive Treasury targets for net-migration, plus the resultant estimates for population growth. Of which, the "natural increase" or non-migration component is very low, currently 20% and less, and highly predictable.

The plan doesn't even publish population growth estimates, percentage wise. DIY.

The latest Appendix (May 2024) implies population growth about 2% over 2023-24, though the actual is more like 2.5%. That's way higher than economic growth 1.5% over the same period, with ABS advising a "sixth consecutive quarter of GDP per capita falls". Ouch for voters.

Labor's all-time immigration betrayal

In its reform agenda, Whitlam Labor was not so concerned with revving population growth. But Hawke-Keating Labor celebrated "multiculturalism", openly suggesting population numbers were a fiefdom for politicians not voters.

However, mega-migration didn't really take off, until the 21st century. Net migration of 200,000 was unknown to Australia, before 2007. Then we topped 300,000, the following year.

Between 2008 and COVID, spanning five Labor and Liberal prime ministers, net migration averaged rather more than 200,000, with annual population growth 1.5% and higher.

Post COVID, Albanese Labor has taken the deluge to another level:

Labor's near 1.5 million net-migration over 2022-25, signing sweetheart deals with sectarian BJP India as Australia's preferred immigration partner, is radical engineering.

Point of order: It's Albanese, not the inconvenient handful of Huge Australia objectors, that's the racially oriented disrupter. Were his 2022-25 immigration tally not six times higher than the long-term average, I for one would drop the subject. Anyone for hockey?

Population isn't just a "wicked problem"

The Huge Australia set, especially media, economists and mandarins, enjoys mystifying and obfuscating the population issue, as a wicked problem.

Like, it's a complex problem that is multidimensional and achingly difficult to solve within any reasonable time frame, so sad we couldn't help.

What they really mean is this: we're on a nice earner, to perpetuate problems, at the expense of ordinary folks. Yep, as in prolonging Australia's all-time housing unaffordability crisis.

In spades, the ABC punditry illustrates this irritating "wicked problem" trope:

"There are many dimensions to consider…a range of connected issues…projections for climate change, demographic trends, biodiversity, water usage, food security, energy, infrastructure, geopolitics, immigration, and more…some say Australia's population isn't much of a sustainability issue…global heating is getting worse"

If you duck and weave like that, you're not really espousing prudent immigration/population management, are you? You don't really want to fix it, any time before 2050.

While the real solution is as simple – and as difficult – as this. Unlike ABC and other "experts", you start from the voters, most of whom want low migration.

The ABS is allowed to advise us indirectly, that under One Nation's zero net-migration scenario, our population would stabilise then fall slightly, maybe after 2040.

Or Sustainable Population Australia or Dick Smith can say, population might stabilise over some years, if net migration didn't exceed 60,000-70,000 say.

There's your rational, national, popular, population plan – go sub six-figure migration.

For Election 2025, the lowest offer thus far is Liberals' 160,000. But was this a "core" promise?

Even that level of contraction wouldn't be straightforward. Labor has carpet-bombed the country with way past two million temporary visa-holders, including more than three-quarters of a million "students". Just because they could.

Then note here, as even pro-migration ABC concedes, the arrogant and highly visible Biden-Harris immigration-overload might have been their "major misstep".

While just this week, Australia's million-dollar Treasury Secretary admitted what he's always known. Whoops, his 2024-25 migration estimate of 260,000 will "overshoot…as students attempt to stay in the country".

Overshoot? You can't make this stuff up. That 260,000 was bogus, the day it was first published in May last year.

"Better planning" is a political cop-out

Five years ago, Albanese advocated a "mature debate" on immigration. Just now, here's ACT Senator David Pocock, claiming Australia should have a "sensible, inclusive conversation" to "develop a [population] plan".

Yeah right. But David – first respond to the two-party plan we already have.

The ABC article coopts notable environmentalist David Lindenmayer. "It's crazy that Australia doesn't have a population plan." But second David – check the one we have.

The plan, this David continues, ought to be backed by a "dedicated, independent" body. Or even a commissioned "report" from the Academy of Science. Hullo, that Academy has long since squibbed, on arid Australia's population constraints. In favour of UN climate rainbows.

Despite lower-migration advocate Crispin Hull calling for a "hung parliament", any Australian parliament is heavily stacked for mega-migration. Just ask Senator Pauline Hanson, her two population-plebiscite proposals overwhelmingly canned by a scornful Senate.

The only type of "dedicated" population planning that parliament and Treasury would readily countenance is a rubber-stamp for mass migration. Like Treasury's Centre for Population.

Finally, here's ANU "expert" Alan Gamlen. Never mind any population "agency", let's make one for immigration too.

His thought-bubble is a national migration institute. This "central, authoritative body" would counteract recrudescent "misinformation" and "moral panic" with reassuring "research".

Research? High minded academic propaganda, more like it. Taking at face value Treasury's "huge return" on investment, from mega-migration.

Gamlen, echoing former migration-mandarins Abul Rizvi and Peter Hughes, urges "better governance" of immigration.

As if, rearranging the deck chairs (sorry, organisation charts) at what used to be Peter Dutton's Home Affairs, that'll fix thing.

Instead of a corrupted agency, rooting for "migration agents" and international immigration, suddenly we'd have a squeaky-clean outfit, prioritising the welfare of Australians. Bingo.

And Dutton himself?

Don't buy, the hackneyed promise of "better planning".

That "conversation" is code for Labor-Liberal collusion on mega-migration. Instead of just supporting voters and their standards of living – via low migration.

This article takes me back to its predecessor. In our "democracy of stakeholders", Huge Australia can't be remedied by democratic process. Scarcely even, by "extraordinary developments". Political unicorns, such as an "environmental calamity" or "exceptional leader".

Is Dutton exceptional? Would he have the bottle, to defy the conventional two-party connivance? And make a dead-set commitment to beleaguered Australians, to slash the immigration numbers, and wind back the come-one come-all student-migration rort?

If Trump doesn't incline Dutton that way, nothing else will. But the likelihood still doesn't look all that great, running a line through all the latter's past immigration and political form.