The one word missing from the budget

Last week’s budget shows what a lightweight political class we have. Jim Chalmers sombrely summoned the clouds of war as his backdrop to declare:

This Budget is ambitious in the face of adversity.

It’s a responsible Budget, and a reforming Budget, which builds resilience and bolsters our economy.

That is not how I would have described a budget which spends a record percentage of GDP, outside a world war or other catastrophe like COVID, pushes debt above $1 trillion, relies on imaginary savings to the NDIS to produce a surplus in around ten years’ time, and bashes savers, and productivity, by moving to tax wealth on the same basis as wages.

Oh, and no real extra money for defence. So much for the war.

And no word of what they will do when the commodity cycle inevitably turns down and stops funding their extravagance – that’s if they and the Greens don’t shut the whole mining industry down first.

But what struck me hardest was the total absence of one word – “immigration”.

It wasn’t used even once, despite being implicated in at least half the economic mess that the government has created.

If Angus Taylor had talked about immigration, and nothing else, in his address-in-reply to the budget lastThursday night he might have started to claw back some of his own party’s support. Pauline Hanson's already done her reply and she certainly used the word.

Taylor's speech did mention immigration, but amongst a huge amount of other economic data. The problem for the Liberal Party is credibility, so I'm not sure that a policy checklist will effectively stave One Nation off. But unlike his predecessor, he certainly took on the immigration dragon, and apart from immigration numbers tweaked the tail by declaring immigrants who weren't Australian citizens would not have access to certain social welfare programs.

The treasurer talks about growth, which is projected as an anaemic 1.75% for next year, but 0.87 percentage points of that are from immigration. The economy is growing, but not by much for individuals. He needs immigration to disguise his dismal record.

Investors are taking the rap for housing unaffordability but it's immigration, not investors, that is squeezing first homeowners out of the market. It will be worse because the negative gearing and capital gains changes are projected on the government’s own figures to produce 35,000 fewer houses over 10 years.

Immigration is a significant contributor to national debt as we borrow to provide the infrastructure required amongst other things.

Over the forward estimates, gross debt is projected to rise by $267 billion, or 27 per cent, to $1.249 trillion while the Commonwealth’s net worth deteriorates by $147 billion, or 24 per cent to -$762 billion. Net interest payments rise even faster, increasing by almost 80 per cent from $17.7 billion a year to $31.7 billion. That’s not resilience, that’s rapid decay.

 Immigration is driving productivity down as we bring in low-skill workers not high-skill workers.

The Budget assumes productivity will eventually recover after the average negative growth of the last 5 years, but it’s unlikely migration is a net contributor.

A migration program weighted towards highly paid professionals and skilled tradespeople might raise output per hour, but mass migration into low-wage sectors is more likely to dilute productivity than improve it.

The recent Migrant Justice Institute report found that two-thirds of temporary visa holders surveyed were paid less than they were legally owed, and a quarter underpaid by at least $10 an hour.

That is not evidence of a high-productivity migration model. It is evidence of an economy using migrant labour to fill low-margin, low-wage roles while hoping the headline GDP number looks respectable.

ALP pollster Kos Samaras gloats that immigrants tend to vote overwhelmingly Labor. He claims this puts up a wall that will stop One Nation and the Coalition. So he's happy to see high migration, and no doubt so is Anthony Albanese.

But it shouldn’t be too hard to stop net migration dead in its tracks.

That’s what Mark Carney, former governor of the central banks of both Canada and the UK, and a paid-up member of the WEF crowd did. It’s paid dividends for both migrants and residents as house prices have come down.

If Carney, the uber globalist, can do it there’s no reason why Australian politicians can’t as well.

Peter Dutton apparently pulled his punches on immigration in the last election because he was scared of alienating the migrant vote.

I can’t see any reason why immigrants should accept mass migration any more than anyone else. If the only way an economy can grow is via an immigration Ponzi, then how are we ever to produce enough houses for their kids to buy (or anything else)? Increasing standards of living will continue to be a mirage.

One of the lessons from the Trump campaigns in the US is that if you talk to “minority voters” and address their concerns, then they will vote for you in greater numbers than they used to. Trump increased his share of the black vote from 8% to 15%, Hispanics from 28% to 46%, and Asians 27% to 40%.  

And by talk to I mean talking to them specifically and talking to them generally as Australians about values that they share with you. There is no way a majority of migrants should be voting Labor on the basis of this budget. They understand thrift, they understand pulling your weight, and many of them have had a much closer brush with war or violence than the Treasurer.

Most of them also didn’t come here to be multicultural cyphers on election propaganda. Australia isn’t an island AirBNB, it’s a home they want to be part of and have a stake in.

Pauline Hanson certainly got the memo, but we need others to as well. The more budgets that Jim Chalmers delivers, the worse things are going to get. For all of us.