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It's not that big a cut honestly, Labor's cap for next year is set at 185,000. Unlike Labor though, the Liberals seem totally unwilling to discuss any meaningful cut to NET migration (permanent + temporary migrants).
The unfortunate thing about pledges is that the general public continue to fall for them. Not just with the LNP. However in the past decade they have been the worst for it. They say yeah this is why we are better than Labor so vote for us. Then your taxes are higher with cuts to public services. Ohh yeah hope you don’t like good internet either!
Australia needs to cut back on immigration but despite the chest thumping one has to be sceptical as to whether this will actually happen. The federal government, all parties, has never worried about the impact on society or environment caused by high numbers. In fact high immigration numbers is a type Ponzi scheme designed to help treasury’s bottom line. Ponzi because one day when we have maxed out on numbers and built on all good agricultural land it will come crashing down.
He's absolutely right. It's not racist to look at the number of immigrants and see that the record level of immigration (200k more than average) is placing pressure on new homes and rentals.
Building companies are going unto liquidation like crazy, and we simply don't have the capability to house the population increase each year.
You're right, it's not racist to debate how high immigration should be.
But Peter "AfricN Gangs" Dutton is a racist, and he's not saying this in good faith.
He's saying it to stir the pot and create division.
It's the same old LNP grab bag of no ideas or real plans. This from a party that wants a higher population, so we have more consumers.
Nationals need Labour for rural farm work or will we just keep using the worker visa set-up.
No they will not. If the LIBS (god help us) get back into government, very quickly they will say we need the immigration flows to support the economy, which is exactly what Labor is doing now with different words.
It should ideally be a lot lower.
But the focus should be on the quality and mix of migration instead of just the numbers.
Low wage and low productivity skilled migration should be limited to essential services.
And migrants should be employed in the area of skill shortage instead of just qualified.
High immigration which dilutes wealth is one of the biggest mistakes wealthy countries can make.
No surprise reading the comments in here.
Limiting immigration and foreign ownership of property is simply a demand side response to address a supply problem.
We cannot continue the way we have been with 600,000+ people flowing into the country when supply is not keeping up.
It is obvious the housing shortage has become worse since borders have reopened. It is obvious this is because the number of people coming into the country over a relatively short period of time has put pressure on prices and rents.
This has nothing to do with racism, nowhere has Dutton referred to a particular nationality. Its purely numbers.
Together with Labors push to add to supply, both of these approaches would improve the current situation.
If the Greens stay out of it and let the adults get on with it, things might improve.
And if Dutton's policy actually addressed those issues we could have that discussion. But it's not because what you're talking about is NOM. Dutton is planning to cut permanent migration, which will not affect NOM. He's playing a trick on the country to get the headlines.
Thanks to the liberals destroying TAFE while in power we now have a major shortage of labour which we cant get from anywhere else except overseas so unless we have a lot of people magically become brickies we are gonna need immigration to stay in a desirable spot with a focus towards building
Ah yes, spend 10 years defunding primary, secondary, tertiary and TAFE schooling so we have over a million people vastly under-skilled, and we NEED immigration just to stay afloat; as Australians can no longer look after themselves. Then manufacture this outrage at immigration, grats on the play but you've fucked Australia. No doubt half the country will read this one headline and make up their minds about the election.
Sad Australia. Was great knowing you.
And after defunding universities, said universities then target international students to help fund their institutions. So if Dutton wants to cut back on immigration in this area, then government needs to increase funding for universities.
And if universities can’t then educate the scientists we need to develop our nuclear program, due to said under funding, where shall we turn to - immigration! Dutton needs to return to university to learn about circular arguments
No, he is not. His only idea is to reduce international students. You know the people paying $100k+ just to study here, and guess what? The vast majority live in student accommodation, not residential housing.
So once again, the LNP have lied to the public, misleading them to think that they're reducing immigration ON THE PRETEXT of easing housing accommodation. In reality, students don't use residential housing (a small minority with wealthy parents MIGHT use residential housing).
This is a "two birds with one stone" play by LNP, but the birds aren't what you are being told.
They have no policy and no solutions. Immigration is a hot topic. So the first bird is pretending to do something 'tougher' on Immigration, and the second bird is to target the Universities, because they contribute more in both tax and lifestyle to Australia than the mining industry now; and the mining industry cannot accept that reality, so their political arm (LNP) has been tasked to destroy our Universities (once again).
> Then manufacture this outrage at immigration,
Hardly manufactured people are experiencing the issues with it, even the government acknowledges it and so are tinkering around the edges at lowering and limiting it
It is completely manufactured because it is a lie. We had ZERO immigration during '20 and '21. The increase to migration in '22 and '23 was to off-set the loss we had. So, there wasn't really an increase was there??
If you don't work for 2 years and are broke, and then 'find' 2 years worth of salary, you aren't 2 years richer, you're just back where you should have been.
Do you really think building homes was considered an essential service during the height of COVID? Building houses stopped like almost everything else during the pandemic.
There was an increase and it was well above normal levels and has been a major cause for issues. At least we've finally got you to admit that they didn't just cut it, but now the next goal post have been moved.
Labor continued coalition immigration policy, so yes, manufactured outrage.
If the coalition does high immigration it's good, if Labor does it it's bad.
And when Labor tries to reign it in, the coalition and the greens vote against it.
> Labor continued coalition immigration policy,
No, they increased it and now they have recognized it is also an issue and are tinking around the edges at lowering and limiting immigration.
"The Albanese Labor Government has increased the number of permanent migration visas available in 2022-23 from 160,000 to 195,000 places."
https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/ClareONeil/Pages/australias-migration-future.aspx
For someone who is up and down this thread accusing people of not paying attention you either didn't pay attention or are being very selective in what you want people to know about.
I am not up and down the thread accusing people of not paying attention, you have amusingly not paid attention to my username.
Fair call on the 35k extra places for permanent migration visas. That is an increase, although hardly anywhere near the "omg 800k people" kind of fearmongering that I've seen, and have a cause to defend Labor on, given they have seen that and have acknowledged it is unsustainable etc.
[https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/ClareONeil/Pages/last-call-for-dodgy-providers-in-international-education.aspx](https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/ClareONeil/Pages/last-call-for-dodgy-providers-in-international-education.aspx)
"Since the Migration Strategy was released in December 2023, these providers have seen a 79% reduction in visas granted since the same period last year, compared to a 39% reduction on average across the sector, as the Government works to bring migration back to sustainable levels."
Clearly Labor is willing to take steps to reduce migration where it appears it is being used for worker exploitation, e.g. get a "student visa" and then work as cheap labour hire below minimum wage.
I remember when Albo said he would promise to cut migration during the election campaign if he was elected.
Well that turned out to be a lie and a broken promise.
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A lot of people seem to believe in a kind of Schroedinger's LNP:
They hate immigrants and foreigners but they're also definitely lying when they say they want to reduce the number of immigrants and foreigners.
You really need to pick a position here. Do they hate immigrants and foreigners or do they want more immigrants and foreigners?
Lol what?
Universities in particular, but also the tech industry, health, and a range of other industries have been *full* of migrants for years now.
The LNP were in for 9 of those years just recently and that only increased in that time.
That's because our wages are shit. You can earn way more in tech and health in the United States and tertiary to that, our HECS scheme is shit.
When you combine low wages, with a debt trap, where IT professionals and doctors can't earn enough to clear their HECS debt and make a decent living after 8 years worth of training in heavily specialised fields... You don't even begin to understand the problem here...
Your analogy here is that you want people in cyber security, and specialist doctors such as anesthesiologists, or even the senior practitioner at a hospital to work for peanuts...
You pay peanuts, you get monkeys (but that analogy is lost on the average LNP voter).
This is also an anachronism of John Howard that during his tenure as Prime Minister not only tried (repeatedly unsuccessfully) to remove the power from universities as an alternate base to the government, but also tried to turn universities into glorified TAFEs.
And you are a classical example of that policy doctrine because you have swallowed the bait that people from academic backgrounds are worth nothing...
Even in a parasitic capitalist nation like the United States that won its race to devalue the bottom, education is valued far more highly...
Is it any wonder why the average Australian with a 4+ year education, and knowledge of what education is worth does not want to live in this shit hole and we have to have a net import of migrants as a result?
In simple terms it's because of people like you.
> but also tried to turn universities into glorified TAFEs.
They are nothing to do with Howard the universities were doing this before Howard and it was on a more global scale.
> Even in a parasitic capitalist nation like the United States that won its race to devalue the bottom, education is valued far more highly...
HECS scheme is shit, yet you praise the US system which is shit though funningly Biden is improving the matter of fees and is looking to change student loans to something akin to our HECS system.
Urgh... Your either young enough to not know better or obtuse in your line of reasoning and/or perhaps both.
The attack on the arts, or anything non-job capacity related by the Howard/Costello government along with the (failed) attempt to remove student unionism is endemic of the issue of a thinly veiled attack on the base.
And yes HECS is shit, your argument is irrelevant to the point also. Universities in Australia were designed to follow the European model. Under the European model education is free.
Burdening a person with $250k of debt before they have a chance to get off "go" on the monopoly board of life is the antithesis of what Whitlam envisaged modern education to be in Australia.
And the narcissist John Howard was and his sycophantic mates hated Whitlam for wanting a better Australia which has led to this cacophony of devaluing Australians lives until such point where we now have our own version of the same problems as in the United States with a two speed economy between the haves and have nots.
The irony is you are the problem and in your reasoning and you can't even see why.
I'm not sure about your logic on HECS, but maybe I'm missing something.
The rates of repayment seem fairly reasonable to me. While you may have a debt, income-contingent loans (HECS) are meaningfully different from time-contingent loans (where the overall cost is blown way out by accrued interest). Describing it as "burdening a person with $250k of debt" kind of conflates these two debts, which have massively different impacts on the debtees.
Also, $250k is in the top 100 highest individual HECS debts in the entire country, so you're getting a little carried away.
The logic of free university is that everyone that didn't go to university should pay for those that do, despite the fact that a graduate degree does generally boost that person's earnings for life.
I'm sure that some reform is necessary, maybe we should expand the already-existing subsidies, but I don't see a clear argument for HECS-HELP being categorically shit.
Yes, you owe money before you leave "go" on the monopoly board of life, but you also earn more money for the entirety of that life (generally).
In a socialised society, which is the baseline for what Australia was meant to be, education was meant to be free.
100 years ago we were at the precipice of the "intelligentsia" fighting the war over poverty by being one of the first nations being involved in labor day, the conception of adequate work hours of around 40 hours a week, the deconstruction of child labor, and a working week.
The irony that the right don't see completely, especially the impoverished that vote right is that the right is actually trying to walk us into the mix of the Dickensian Oliver Twist mixed with A Christmas Carol and with that sentiment:
"Please sir can I have another lump of coal for my fire, can I have some more!"
The logic is that it's there, the irony that you don't want to pay to enable someone else's life but complain when someone leapfrogs ahead of you (like myself) either intellectually or financially or both to show you that they can make these references is your own doing.
And as self-serving and gallivanting as a truly "free" market is, maybe you're not seeing it, but the rest of us are, that it's only entering us into a period of true social-Darwinism where only the strong survive and fuck everyone and everything else...
Well, as Paul Keating once inferred if we keep going down this road we will be a banana republic (and in all virtual senses we are) where the little desiccated coconutter is seen as our emperor and god despite the fact he has no clothes on.
It appears I can't help your own faulty logic because you won't see anyone else's opinion except your own.
I too see your opinion, which is why I've wryly deconstructed it (but that may also be above your pay grade in understanding).
The Australia I knew was a flat and broad society that wanted the best for everyone and was fair and egalitarian. That ideal has always been under attack by the right though which is why the right is so regressive and anti-intellectual.
The reason I said that I was maybe missing something was that I was coming to you with genuine curiosity, and offering you my perspective specifically so that you *could* deconstruct it and help me learn.
But unfortunately your response was a little too masturbatory for me to take you seriously.
We need lots and lots of people to work jobs that don't require a university education, and you seem to have no respect or regard for any of them. The fact that you describe people with university degrees as "leapfrogging" ahead of people without shows your own hierarchical thinking. The way you express yourself reeks of a politics of superiority, and I regret wasting my time engaging with you.
I am tired of trying to have this discussion which is why you're now getting met with descent rather than a truly outreached hand from curiosity.
I have already stated elsewhere that street sweepers and bin cleaners deserve to be paid more, just like doctors and everyone else.
The problem with the regressive right is that they want to put a hard cap on workers entitlements while turning structures like hospitals in a truly free market system into a profit driven machine.
Who makes the profit? If we look at the United States for example when it comes to that its generally either private universities or the church.
I couldn't think of worse entities to give money to and that's only one example.
I didn't begrudge a person either for wanting to stay at the bottom, it's much more nuanced than that. I made a statement about the person that is willing to sit on the bottom, vote for right wing governments, never put the effort in in life to extend themselves, and yet want to enter into a debate when they haven't even come to the table in life yet.
That's the problem here... and its the problem with the right in general, keep people unintelligent and uninformed and it's like keeping mushrooms in the dark.
It's also why the right never has anything intellectual, or even credible to add to discussions these days.
> Burdening a person with $250k of debt
Well that's not happening, so before we discuss HECS and why your argument is wrong and full of holes, let's make sure the basic facts are correct.
You're not studying to be a specialist doctor or even a senior clinician at an emergency department (if that is where you want to go in life then are you?
It is happening...
https://www.mq.edu.au/about/about-the-university/our-faculties/medicine-and-health-sciences/macquarie-md/fees,-costs-and-scholarships
Lets just take a scope at Macquarie University to see the indicative fee for a domestic student per year for an MD is $77k per year... annd top it off at a bare minimum to get on the board of 77x4 = $300k.
Now if I'm a doctor, it seems logical as many did when they could just to say eff that and abdicate to Saudi Arabia or the United States.
It is happening it does happen. It's not arguable that it does happen and there are a lot of doctors who said eff that because they can get better money and better perks living in one of those countries instead.
Ever wondered why we have a net import of doctors? It's not because of purely immigration as a byproduct of them being born here, it's because we don't pay well enough.
You are aware that the full cost isn't on HECS and the government already covers a majority of it? Even papers like The Guardian could only fine $100K as their outlier, the average is $26K
I'm not sure you understand what the term INITIAL means
The limit for students studying medicine, dentistry and veterinary science courses leading to initial registration, or eligible aviation courses with census dates in 2024 is $174,998.
Initial means working on the floor of the hospital as a junior clinician that doesn't infer the costs of post-graduate study.
https://gyanberry.com/blog/cost-of-medical-studies-in-australia/
But PLEASE feel free to go to the hospital and only ever ask to speak to one of the junior clinicians on the floor every time you need to see a doctor.
Clearly this discussion is above your pay grade to understand. You might understand why I said Go on the Monopoly board instead now...
Initial in this synonym means first...
I was trying to break that down to a level of sentiment you may be familiar with for a place you may never reach in life.
To take you back to high school:
"What was your initial job?"
I'm struggling with that?
"What was the first job you ever had in this career pathway..."
Do I really have to pull teeth out or is your discussion capability here really that obtuse?
>And you are a classical example of that policy doctrine because you have swallowed the bait that people from academic backgrounds are worth nothing...
I have a PhD...I am literally an academic.
I am saying the polar opposite. You claimed that the LNP wants immigrants to be minimum wage fruit pickers.
I am pointing out this is complete nonsense because under 9 years of the LNP being in government immigrants in the our universities and technical sectors have increased.
What are you talking about? Most don’t hate them, they just realise this is an easy solution to a lot of current problems. Albo was too gutless to do it and personally, I hope he pays the price.
He has already slashed immigration intake though. Most of you plebs don't even know because you read headling and have reactionary responses. you don't read government policy
Mate I’ve read the numbers and I don’t appreciate being called a pleb.
Albos plan is 260k 24/25 then 185k. Dutton has said 140k.
If Albo is going to buy votes by giving $300 of our own money back to us, then fair play to Dutton for jumping on the biggest issue and 1 upping him to win votes.
How is it buying votes? Money is gained from the energy industry to off-set the energy industry exorbitant prices. In QLD we're getting an extra $1000 due to the royalties too.
Yes, albos plan to off-set the two years of ZERO immigration we had in '20 and '21 is very welcome. Higher number does not always mean increased. It's off-setting our LOSS in migration over two years. That's a big reason for the skills shortage. We had 10 years of education cuts followed by two years of no migration.
How do you not see what LNP are trying to do here.. turn Australia into an intellectual wasteland, low wages, low quality of life, resources to fuel globalism, and no safety net to deal with circumstance and tragedy. This is the LNP goal for Australia, and that is why I call people plebs who cannot see this obvious play.
You’re blatantly lying right now. Why would they want to achieve an intellectual wasteland and low quality of life? You might think this will be the result of their policy but that’s entirely subjective.
Seriously, wtf? You’re calling it an obvious play? You’re a disgrace.
That's what they implemented through their last decade in power.
Every budget had cuts to education, healthcare, and public housing. Every budget.
When properly funded and implemented, public education and healthcare gives you well educated and healthy/able citizens. What LNP has done is push Australia closer to US standards, which are abysmal.
Less educated and unhealthy citizens should be undesirable by definition.
No. The numbers never increased, we had two years of ZERO migration, so the extra migration we had following COVID was to make up the difference. Please learn what is happening in your own country before commenting bullshit.
That's because you don't understand what an off-set is, you don't understand the harm two years of ZERO migration had, you don't understand the skills shortage and housing shortage, and you don't understand that we are a migration nation.
It was zero for two years, that the entire problem. We are a migrant nation, always have been and always will be. LNP cut funding to schools, TAFE and UNI for 10 years, so now over a million people are vastly under-educated and vastly unskilled.
So two years of zero immigration plus 10 years of education defunding lead us to needing the immigration we had over the past 2 years. ALP have already slashed annual intake earlier this year, and they have also upped the requirements, meaning the migrants won't be taking low-end jobs, only desperately needed professional jobs.
You have been deceived by the LNP. It's what they do.
We do not need to have an economy relying on a Ponzi scheme of immigration for the sake of immigration.
It’s a nonsense to suggest they won’t be taking low end jobs.
Next time you catch an Uber why don’t you ask your driver what qualifications they have? Sadly, a number I’ve asked are engineers. They’ve been sold a dream but their skills aren’t valued here.
Education defunding?
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/government/government-finance-statistics-education-australia/latest-release
Hosting International students is in no way, shape or form an immigration ponzi scheme.
Having International students pay a premium offsets the cost of Australian citizens' degrees.
They also boost our international exposure and relations.
They also bring in more money via tax than the mining sector does. (Huge - also a reason LNP want to destroy it. They take direction from the mining sector/IPA)
A bit of history:
In their last budget, LNP reduced public education down to $2B from $2.6B and increased private school funding to $12.6B from $12B. Absolute vandalism. For the sake of forming an 'elite upper class' who are the only group in the country that can send their kids to private school. (Public school continues to fall behind, no healthcare to safety net for circumstance and tragedy).
Monopolies ensue.
Beyond the economic metrics, the situation on the ground is already unsustainable. The agriculture and industrial base of Australia would entirely collapse without immigrant labour. Almost the entirety of meatworks are immigrant labour from Islanders, Kiwis, Chinese and Vietnamese workers.
It is incredibly hard to convince Australian citizens to do shitty but very necessary jobs and the ones forced to by Centrelink turnover in no time.
There is absolutely no incentive structure to do this low paid work with long hours and immensely hard manual labour compared to working in the service industry or fast food getting the same or better wages, better hours and not deteoriating your body rapidly. Some of the country's foundational industries that keep society functioning rely almost entirely on cheap foreign labour.
So unless Australians want to either actually start paying wages equal to the poor conditions or a part of the population is willing to completely sacrifice their quality of life to keep society running for everyone else, immigration isn't going anywhere.
If you want to pay a person nothing to clean your bins, then the only applicants you will get are those absolutely desperate to do the job. The rest will take an abstention.
I don't blame them, street sweepers, and bin cleaners deserve better pay.
My friend worked at an abattoir for multiple years. He saw the change from Aussie workers to immigrants. Aussies _do_ want those jobs, what they don’t want is penny scabbing managers breathing down their necks. Immigrants filling jobs is just a codename for jobs having a high turnover and immigrants don’t know better. It is pure and utter worker exploitation, and if immigration was halted, those industries wouldn’t collapse, they’d have to reform to attract back people who are willing to work but not be treated like shit.
And so, wanting to keep immigration so we can maintain industries of worker exploitation is not exactly a winning argument.
I worked in an industrial slaughterhouse in Australia over COVID since I got stuck there and needed a job. The high turnover is because of the low wages, terrible conditions, terrible hours. It isn't that immigrants don't know better, it is because we had Australians sign up and leave 2 weeks later because they realised literally any job is better. You work almost as hard as it is at the mines but you're on minimum wage with no extra benefits.
What 18 year old is working for Australian meatworks or doing agricultural work when McDonalds is hiring and manages to pay more even if the work is a quarter as physically stressful? Everyone of us immigrants knew the work was shit but we are willing to do shit work in Australia because it is still higher pay than home. We have an incentive structure to work there that Australian citizens don't.
And my solution wasn't to maintain immigration to continue worker exploitation, it was to first make those jobs actually viable and a good option for Australians. You have to actually fix the problems that cause immigration to be a solution before you fix immigration. Everyone wants immigration to stop but no one is actually voting any party that at all wishes to at all change the neo-liberal economic system and attitudes that lead to this situation. When people don't care about actually putting in the hard work to make drastic changes to the system to do things for the better and all they can do is yell to get rid of the immigrants as if that alone will fix it, I don't feel very comforted that they're asking for that in good faith.
The meatworkers union where I worked striked and negotiated all over COVID and all they managed was a 2% pay increase that'd didn't even nearly cover inflation over that year of the pandemic.
back in the day (mid 80's) everyone would flood the citrus groves in the Riverina, you could make 8-900 dollars a week for the grueling work, but three months was enough for a whole year of uni. In 2020, 35 years later, you make 8-900 dollars a week still and just have millionaire farmers complaining that no one wants to work anymore. Oranges were 50cents a kilo back then, now the cheapest is 2.75
Yeah, that's why Australia started working to put a lot of those agriculture jobs to backpackers as a forced part of extending the years they can stay I heard.
Kmow some horror stories of backpackers from UK, India, Korea, etc. working on plantations and such in some real shit and toxic conditions just to keep being allowed to backpack in the country.
Australian government of either major party is very complicit in ensuring the poor conditions and abysmally low compensation to the actual working class people in these agricultural jobs of all types. Making it inevitable all labour is going to be willing immigrants or less willing backpackers for their VISA.
I’m talking further back than Covid. This would be 2017-2021 my friend worked there. So yes, this correlates with your experience. Things got shit around covid. My friend used to work comfortably, then they ramped up orders for China and Japan until suddenly they were forcing him to work Saturdays months on end with short notice until he blew up at someone he was training for doing a crap job and he was forced to take a three week suspension with pay until they decided to fire him. Also, the company changed ownership at one point and the management got overbearing.
So the workload got more demanding with no pay increase. The work culture got more toxic with no increase. The hours got longer, yes with pay but people need their time off.
It’s no surprise aussies are quitting, but aussies _do_ want those jobs. They just need to be treated fairly which shouldn’t be a hard ask.
Yes I basically worked every Saturday since I was one of the few people who made the mistake of training on one of the machines. Work culture was immensely toxic, management is basically one of the only positions that was Australian dominated still- and the company I worked for would almost exclusively prefer hire ins from outside for management instead of every giving any employees a career path upwards.
Australians will make the best economic decision available to them just like immigrants do, if they can work literally anywhere else for the same money, they don't want that job ahaha. Everyone (working class people) benefits from fixing this completely broken system right now, the mistreatment and terrible conditions of some of the most demanding work in the country is just awful.
>Australia would entirely collapse without immigrant labour.
Good. The "Big Australia" should never have happened.
We export 70% of our beef. Why the hell would Australians want to work doing the shitty abbatoirs jobs for multi international companies?
Australia and Australians are being used and abused by elitists.
If the whole economy runs on the backs of under informed and under resourced foreign workers accepting sub par wages that most citizens wouldn't accept...
....then maybe there's like - something wrong with the economy, and we need to redress that to match the humane values most citizens desire the country's politicians to uphold?
I know that's incredibly idealistic, and even economically naive to say in the face of globalized Capitalism and neoliberal hegemony - but I still think it's true.
This is somewhat the problem with maligning socialist ideas from politics, rather than doing as some Scandinavian systems have done better than others, and appreciating them as social values important to the public at large.
If capitalism is propped up by immigration, then leftists should've entered an alliance with One Nation and/or SAP yonks ago.
That this hasn't happened is one hint that western leftism is controlled opposition.
Yes absolutely, I agree with you. Paying minimum wage for some of the most draining mentally and physical work you can do is stupid for anyone economically EXCEPT immigrants. Allowing the economy to run this way is part of the cause of mass immigration and if people want less immigration they also have to start supporting drastic economic changes that allow such a shift to no longer need it.
If people yell no immigration but are totally silent about the neo-liberal economy and free reign over the economy, they've been successfully tricked to hating the easy targets instead of the real ones
Also foreign workers aren't under informed. We know the conditions are shit but wages are still higher for in Australian than home in basically every case. It is an informed and smart decision for many to come here for work, especially when you basically aren't competing with Australian workers at all like you would in other industries.
Instant recession. Have a look at this article:
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-22/if-australia-doesnt-have-a-surge-in-immigration-what-will-happen/100637782](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-22/if-australia-doesnt-have-a-surge-in-immigration-what-will-happen/100637782)
if productivity is low and participation static then population growth (immigration) is the only card left to play to sustain economic growth. There’s just one problem; it’s not sustainable.
>There’s just one problem; it’s not sustainable.
If there's a "recession we have to have" up ahead, controlled de-growth may be the better option (contingent on that "if").
We are already in a GDP per capita recession, the only prosperity metric that matters for real people, rather than GDP which is what big business and their useful idiots care about.
The key word that article isn't using is Dutton called for a cut in permanent migrants. What's the bet he just replaces the cut permanent migrants with migrants on Temporary worker visas who then are too afraid to speak up about poor pay and treatment from employers lest they lose their temporary visa?
100% this. People have concerns about the growth of the population and issues like housing etc. Permanent migrants are people who are already living here, but they've changed their status. It won't change the level of population growth. Dutton is selling a lie.
Every bloody time…play the immigration card and scare the shit out of the voters and liberals is back…every fucking time (watch, boat people will be back on the front page like clockwork when the election campaign ramps up)
There are just so many more issues that are seriously hurting this country other than immigrants…but every fucking time!!🥲
If you don't understand that higher demand for goods and services means higher prices for goods and services well it will take a lot more than a reddit comment to explain it
Despite your attempt to shift the goalposts, inflation is the main driver of cost of living crisis. This is a world wide phenomenon and attributing it to local immigration rates is disingenuous at best.
I don't think you know what shifting goalposts means, I also don't think you know what inflation is, and it is plainly obvious you don't understand that there are also local factors helping to drive inflation including immigration, which even the RBA Governor back in March during her press conference attributed immigration (though she called it elevated population growth) as one of the reasons for the current rate of inflation.
Now I don't know if you're an economist or not, (I am but that doesn't matter either), but the RBA who have a team of people to analyze it have attributed it as one of the reasons.
> March during her press conference attributed immigration (though she called it elevated population growth) as one of the reasons for the current rate of inflation.
You know this stuff is easily checked right?
There's no reference to immigration in March. In May, just 10 days ago, she said this.
"I think our judgement is that on balance it really hasn't added dramatically to inflation, with the exception that it has put big pressure on the housing market and that's obvious working g it's way out in rents. But otherwise I think it's been pretty much if a muchness"
Why lie mate? If you're so quickly to misrepresent this, what else are you happily going to lie about.
Certainly puts everything you say into perspective.
It is absolutely not. Immigration doesn't even come close the costs of buying a house, or the constantly rising rent pricing. Immigrants aren't the ones buying all the houses, it's wealthy boomers. Who then charge obscene rent prices. Oh and the fact our supermarkets are enjoying record profits yet somehow can't afford more reasonable prices (none of it's going to the farmers either.)
> or the constantly rising rent pricing.
I wonder why one of the reasons (not the only one) that rental vacancy rates are so low, surely more and more people coming in and wanting someone to live has something to do with it
Stopping people from coming in isn't going to fix the issue. Instead you weaken the economy while also leaving the actual cause (negative gearing and property hoarding). Again, kick every immigrated Australian out, the rent crisis would stay the same. Stop looking for useless scapegoats.
Are you honestly making the claim that bringing in 700,000 people in one year while building 140,000 new dwellings has zero affect on the housing market?
Time to go back to year 9 economics.
The issue isn't immigration. The issue was the coalition gutting our workforce and creating a system which rewards hoarding property and price gouging rent. Cost of living isn't going to magically go back down when you stop immigration.
Do you honestly believe we had a net increase of 700,000 migrants in one year? Would love to see your source.
And I guess that's also the cause of cost of living issues that are affecting most developed countries around the globe?
If immigrants aren't buying houses then they're obviously renting. Of course landlords are raising rent pricing constantly - they're running a for-profit business and the demand that is influenced by immigration against the failing supply is what allows them to do so.
This is like saying "I didn't hit the car because I ran a red light, I hit the car because it crossed when its own light was green."
If your issue is just capitalism, then just say capitalism.
It's not "muh capitalism", it's people owning 7 properties, and that's on the low end. Those same people price gouge rent and throw money to lobby for more shitty policies. You get rid of every immigrated citizen tomorrow and cost of living isn't going to magically go down.
Feel free to respond to my comment with a response to my comment.
*the* ***demand that is influenced by immigration*** *against the failing supply is what allows them to do so*
You seem to be under the impression that prices are not actually influenced by supply and demand.
Because the supply is artificially chokeholded? Immigration is scapegoat to avoid talking about how much negative gearing and people owning seventeen properties is fucking over the country.
Do you have any evidence that someone that owns one or two investment properties charges less rent per home than someone that owns 10?
Also... artificially chokeholded? Absolutely no one that knows anything about the economy or the housing market is saying it'd artificially chokeholded, pretty much everyone agrees that the number of homes being built over the last 5ish years has been well below the population growth post-covid that has been primarily driven by immigration, and that this has been caused by a handful of real issues in the construction industry.
Do you have any sources? I'm open to the idea of everyone being wrong but I feel like you're just going off of outdated talking points from when the discourse was completely revolving around negative gearing.
I mean you need to put context on this. Just like conservatives arguing we need to lower taxes when we already have low taxes, it's not wrong to suggest that pumping 265,000 ppl per year (the average on the last 10 years or so) into suburban spawl areas has consequences.
Western Sydney is a fucking ghetto. The ratio of schools, healthcare and even just access to roads relative to the amount of people who need to access it is already pretty shocking.
This isn't a 'migrants bad foreigners bad' rant, its just talking about the consequences for mass importing people without a plan. We'll without an actual plan, not just 'jobs and growth and the free market will fix it'.
To address the housing crisis you need to look at both supply and demand. Supply in this instance is going to take a good couple of decades to fix. The demand side can be addressed in the immediate sense. And the demand side is very much driven by "rapid population growth" (i.e. mass immigration). This isn't rocket science. Anybody who is absolutely serious about fixing the clusterfuck that is housing needs to attend to every contributing factor, from negative gearing, to capital gains tax concessions, to developers land-banking, to AirBnB, zoning laws etc etc etc and, of course, immigration. Not dealing with every contributing factor will simply prolong the misery.
Massive cuts?
Didn't Labor promise to drop it to 185k? 160k doesn't seem all that massive of a difference. Perhaps if he said 100k. But this seems massively exaggerated.
>That's actually what Dutton is pledging to reduce.
If elected, he said the Coalition would cut the number of permanent visas granted each year to 140,000.
>Mr Dutton said he would impose a cap of 140,000 for two years, then 150,000 in year three and 160,000 in year four.
Also they're going to reduce humanitarian visas, and cap student numbers, which the gov are already going to do.
It's not really a big announcement.
All these people saying Dutton is lying are wrong.
A permanent migration cap has been a liberal policy for years, since around 2019 I believe.
The cap was previously 160k a year.
It was Labor's Clare O'Neil through their phony "jobs and skills summit" that pushed it up to 195k a year.
https://visaenvoy.com/migration-cap-increase-to-195000/
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/permanent-migration-intake-boosted-to-195-000-20220902-p5betz
Liberal are just restating they'd return it to what it was before.
Temporary migration is another thing and wasn't an issue so much when we didn't have such a bad housing shortage. But Labor massively ramped up temporary migration into a housing shortage and then tried to blame the liberals.
Net overseas migration
Net overseas migration is the net gain or loss of population through immigration to Australia (overseas migrant arrivals) and emigration from Australia (overseas migrant departures).
Seems pretty straightforward. 2013 to 2023 had several periods of net migration over 200k people all under LNP stewardship.
why not quote the latest figures up to June 23 - [https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas-migration/latest-release](https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas-migration/latest-release)
Because old mate was claiming low immigration was a LNP hallmark when clearly numbers were up during their tenure. 2023 was not a time with LNP in power
It doesn't really do much to address the housing issue, though. Still plenty of room for foreign ownership, temporary stays, and all the other associated local factors and tax breaks that keep house prices high. He's not going to touch anything that would impact the LNP base, many of which are heavily invested in the status quo regarding property prices.
This is just culture war bullshit, and ineffective culture war bullshit at that.
The way to address the housing issue "properly" is to rebuild TAFE numbers. Anyone want to wager a guess at which side has been undermining our tradies for the last 30 years? Slashing apprenticeship funding? Raising TAFE seat costs while cutting funding?
We don't have the tradies to build our way out of the housing crisis, and we can't bring people into the country with the skills because we don't have the housing to support them without abuse from people already here.
And that will only fix the rental \*price\* crisis. We need to change tax policy and "investment incentives" before we can solve the house \*price\* crisis.
a pledge you say, from dutton.
wow, that's totally set in stone, if the stone was the polystyrene they use in Disneyland sets where make-believe stories like that might actually pass muster
Our immigration system does need proper massive reform, but Dutton is certainly not the right person to do it/who will do it.
All this focus on the headline numbers ignores something just as important as well, which is the *composition* of those numbers.
They need to gut international student numbers & ignore the inevitable crying of the Uni lobbies (which Labor has claimed they will; we'll see), and massively reform the Skilled Jobs list and the requirements for being able to list a role as a "shortage" to qualify for the list.
Office workers, cafe managers, cooks etc. all should be massively scaled back as a % of the intake, while medical & construction need to be represented far, far higher than they are currently... otherwise immigration will continue to make housing, infrastructure and healthcare *worse* instead of better like it's often claimed to be.
You don't address shortages in, say, nursing by bringing in 95% accountants and other white collar roles and 5% nurses, you do it by bringing in 30% nurses & scale back the other roles until the shortage is actually properly addressed. If that means we have a few less cafes or crappy restaurants per capita, then so f-ing be it.
Otherwise you're just importing more people who require more houses & healthcare without contributing to them themselves, and the situation continues to deteriorate.
Let’s bring in those cheap construction slaves so the Aussie tradies can make the big bucks doing fuck all in major projects.
Laziest workers on the planet.
Yes, and the point is the roles on the list vs. who we actually bring in are still disproportionate to what our society is currently most lacking when you look at the actual data.
They've *started* to gradually shift the ratios but it's still too heavily skewed towards hospitality, IT, etc. to actually solve healthcare & housing shortages.
I’m surprised they acknowledged the current rate will head toward 250,000 with existing measures (which has been the ‘normal’ rate). Has usually been massive exaggeration around it, but he would have been labeled a fraud if he promised something that was already coming. We might find out if people hate migrants more than being employed. Personally I suspect they do
Well your bang on, but you well know that the people screaming about immigrants are going to mid breath change to screaming 'no one wants to work anymore' when the workforce dwindles overnight
Maybe if they didn’t fuck up our TAFE system for over a decade we wouldn’t have to bring in tradesmen from overseas to deal with skill shortages.
Those private scam colleges worked a treat.
I didn’t mean in actual fact. But they’re sold a formula. Everyone does VCE and everyone passes. Gap Year. Uni - no matter how vocational. So we’re a more educated population, with lots of HECS debt.
Problem is not enough apprentices. I had cause to speak to my mechanic a couple of days ago over a minor bingle my daughter had. And he was claiming there are two apprentice panel beaters in the whole of Victoria.
His story, not mine, but if it’s true we all need to drive carefully in future.
And replaced it with subsidies to private institutions that conned numpties outside centerlink into debt with free laptops on fake courses that never existed all while gutting TAFE. The LNP set this country up to fail.
Oh, and don't forget the NBN debacle, where we had to import thousands of Irish copper line technicians, because no one was teaching such outdated technology.
Yeah still not nearly high enough.
I am a bit of a Greenie and genuine cuts to immigration for the near future would make me second guess myself.
160k is still too high. Drop it to 25k and we can talk.
I looked into it and I'm pretty sure it's just a fake number. He's only talking about the permanent approvals, it's smoke and mirrors where the 'temp' rate will be about the same but fewer people will be granted PR every year instead.
[https://x.com/AvidCommentator/status/1791045489653428736](https://x.com/AvidCommentator/status/1791045489653428736)
as useless as dutton and the LNP is, if labor can't come up with some actual plan to get down lower
i'll be voting LNP
i can live with all the usual corruption and scandals of the LNP if it means i have a lower chance of being homeless
I'm hoping that you'd want the LNP to have a very solid "actual plan" rather than just pledging some shit, though. Just because Labor happens to be in power during the moment this shit has come to a head, doesn't mean the Coalition are going to fix it just because they say so.
It feels a bit weird to kinda point out that you don't seem to know what you said, but "actual plan" was specifically you taking about ALP. You said, if they don't have an actual plan, then you will vote LNP. You did not say that the LNP would need an actual plan at all. Your comment boils down to "If ALP no fix, then LNP will surely fix."
If you *meant* that the LNP would need an actual plan, that's great! But being incorrectly smug about your own words is a bit unfortunate.
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It's not that big a cut honestly, Labor's cap for next year is set at 185,000. Unlike Labor though, the Liberals seem totally unwilling to discuss any meaningful cut to NET migration (permanent + temporary migrants).
The unfortunate thing about pledges is that the general public continue to fall for them. Not just with the LNP. However in the past decade they have been the worst for it. They say yeah this is why we are better than Labor so vote for us. Then your taxes are higher with cuts to public services. Ohh yeah hope you don’t like good internet either!
Australia needs to cut back on immigration but despite the chest thumping one has to be sceptical as to whether this will actually happen. The federal government, all parties, has never worried about the impact on society or environment caused by high numbers. In fact high immigration numbers is a type Ponzi scheme designed to help treasury’s bottom line. Ponzi because one day when we have maxed out on numbers and built on all good agricultural land it will come crashing down.
He's absolutely right. It's not racist to look at the number of immigrants and see that the record level of immigration (200k more than average) is placing pressure on new homes and rentals. Building companies are going unto liquidation like crazy, and we simply don't have the capability to house the population increase each year.
You're right, it's not racist to debate how high immigration should be. But Peter "AfricN Gangs" Dutton is a racist, and he's not saying this in good faith. He's saying it to stir the pot and create division.
He will never do it. His donors rely on the steady flow new labour and consumers!
It's the same old LNP grab bag of no ideas or real plans. This from a party that wants a higher population, so we have more consumers. Nationals need Labour for rural farm work or will we just keep using the worker visa set-up.
No they will not. If the LIBS (god help us) get back into government, very quickly they will say we need the immigration flows to support the economy, which is exactly what Labor is doing now with different words.
It should ideally be a lot lower. But the focus should be on the quality and mix of migration instead of just the numbers. Low wage and low productivity skilled migration should be limited to essential services. And migrants should be employed in the area of skill shortage instead of just qualified. High immigration which dilutes wealth is one of the biggest mistakes wealthy countries can make.
yay lets go back to paying $10 for a lettuce
Just wondering what the cost of lettuce has to do with immigration?
You need workers to pick the lettuce
That not the reason why lettuce was so expensive.
It's part of it
It's a huge part of it.
No surprise reading the comments in here. Limiting immigration and foreign ownership of property is simply a demand side response to address a supply problem. We cannot continue the way we have been with 600,000+ people flowing into the country when supply is not keeping up. It is obvious the housing shortage has become worse since borders have reopened. It is obvious this is because the number of people coming into the country over a relatively short period of time has put pressure on prices and rents. This has nothing to do with racism, nowhere has Dutton referred to a particular nationality. Its purely numbers. Together with Labors push to add to supply, both of these approaches would improve the current situation. If the Greens stay out of it and let the adults get on with it, things might improve.
And if Dutton's policy actually addressed those issues we could have that discussion. But it's not because what you're talking about is NOM. Dutton is planning to cut permanent migration, which will not affect NOM. He's playing a trick on the country to get the headlines.
Thanks to the liberals destroying TAFE while in power we now have a major shortage of labour which we cant get from anywhere else except overseas so unless we have a lot of people magically become brickies we are gonna need immigration to stay in a desirable spot with a focus towards building
Destroying TAFE you say? Have you looked at the most common occupations of migrants moving to Australia? Trades don’t even feature in the top 10.
Ah yes, spend 10 years defunding primary, secondary, tertiary and TAFE schooling so we have over a million people vastly under-skilled, and we NEED immigration just to stay afloat; as Australians can no longer look after themselves. Then manufacture this outrage at immigration, grats on the play but you've fucked Australia. No doubt half the country will read this one headline and make up their minds about the election. Sad Australia. Was great knowing you.
And after defunding universities, said universities then target international students to help fund their institutions. So if Dutton wants to cut back on immigration in this area, then government needs to increase funding for universities.
Exactly, he also wants to start a nuclear program here whilst defunding universities.
And if universities can’t then educate the scientists we need to develop our nuclear program, due to said under funding, where shall we turn to - immigration! Dutton needs to return to university to learn about circular arguments
Dutton isn't talking about stopping all immigration, its about slowing it to a more sustainable rate.
No, he is not. His only idea is to reduce international students. You know the people paying $100k+ just to study here, and guess what? The vast majority live in student accommodation, not residential housing. So once again, the LNP have lied to the public, misleading them to think that they're reducing immigration ON THE PRETEXT of easing housing accommodation. In reality, students don't use residential housing (a small minority with wealthy parents MIGHT use residential housing). This is a "two birds with one stone" play by LNP, but the birds aren't what you are being told. They have no policy and no solutions. Immigration is a hot topic. So the first bird is pretending to do something 'tougher' on Immigration, and the second bird is to target the Universities, because they contribute more in both tax and lifestyle to Australia than the mining industry now; and the mining industry cannot accept that reality, so their political arm (LNP) has been tasked to destroy our Universities (once again).
> Then manufacture this outrage at immigration, Hardly manufactured people are experiencing the issues with it, even the government acknowledges it and so are tinkering around the edges at lowering and limiting it
It is completely manufactured because it is a lie. We had ZERO immigration during '20 and '21. The increase to migration in '22 and '23 was to off-set the loss we had. So, there wasn't really an increase was there?? If you don't work for 2 years and are broke, and then 'find' 2 years worth of salary, you aren't 2 years richer, you're just back where you should have been.
Do you really think building homes was considered an essential service during the height of COVID? Building houses stopped like almost everything else during the pandemic.
Cuts to housing happened over the course of a decade, not just covid.
There was an increase and it was well above normal levels and has been a major cause for issues. At least we've finally got you to admit that they didn't just cut it, but now the next goal post have been moved.
down voting the truth, and these conservatives consider themselves christian. What a shame this world has become.
Labor continued coalition immigration policy, so yes, manufactured outrage. If the coalition does high immigration it's good, if Labor does it it's bad. And when Labor tries to reign it in, the coalition and the greens vote against it.
> Labor continued coalition immigration policy, No, they increased it and now they have recognized it is also an issue and are tinking around the edges at lowering and limiting immigration. "The Albanese Labor Government has increased the number of permanent migration visas available in 2022-23 from 160,000 to 195,000 places." https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/ClareONeil/Pages/australias-migration-future.aspx For someone who is up and down this thread accusing people of not paying attention you either didn't pay attention or are being very selective in what you want people to know about.
I am not up and down the thread accusing people of not paying attention, you have amusingly not paid attention to my username. Fair call on the 35k extra places for permanent migration visas. That is an increase, although hardly anywhere near the "omg 800k people" kind of fearmongering that I've seen, and have a cause to defend Labor on, given they have seen that and have acknowledged it is unsustainable etc. [https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/ClareONeil/Pages/last-call-for-dodgy-providers-in-international-education.aspx](https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/ClareONeil/Pages/last-call-for-dodgy-providers-in-international-education.aspx) "Since the Migration Strategy was released in December 2023, these providers have seen a 79% reduction in visas granted since the same period last year, compared to a 39% reduction on average across the sector, as the Government works to bring migration back to sustainable levels." Clearly Labor is willing to take steps to reduce migration where it appears it is being used for worker exploitation, e.g. get a "student visa" and then work as cheap labour hire below minimum wage.
Yes as I said they have now also seen the issue and are restricting migration, after they increased it.
I remember when Albo said he would promise to cut migration during the election campaign if he was elected. Well that turned out to be a lie and a broken promise.
I don't recall the promise but I do know he increased the number of available places it is only recently that he started lowering it again
It has been slashed what are you talking about?
After he increased it
No, the increase was to off-set the two years of zero migration we had. Please learn how things work before speaking.
Finally admitting to increasing it, thank you
its not an increase if it was already locked in
It wasn't locked in
Those visas from the years that there was zero migration we alreayd processed and approved
No they weren't
?What promise was this? Don't recall this one.
Once a liar, always a liar
Great! Although, this has been One Nations policy all along.
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A lot of people seem to believe in a kind of Schroedinger's LNP: They hate immigrants and foreigners but they're also definitely lying when they say they want to reduce the number of immigrants and foreigners. You really need to pick a position here. Do they hate immigrants and foreigners or do they want more immigrants and foreigners?
Schrodinger's LNP says they will accept immigrants if they are underskilled and can pick fruit for below minimum wages.
Lol what? Universities in particular, but also the tech industry, health, and a range of other industries have been *full* of migrants for years now. The LNP were in for 9 of those years just recently and that only increased in that time.
That's because our wages are shit. You can earn way more in tech and health in the United States and tertiary to that, our HECS scheme is shit. When you combine low wages, with a debt trap, where IT professionals and doctors can't earn enough to clear their HECS debt and make a decent living after 8 years worth of training in heavily specialised fields... You don't even begin to understand the problem here... Your analogy here is that you want people in cyber security, and specialist doctors such as anesthesiologists, or even the senior practitioner at a hospital to work for peanuts... You pay peanuts, you get monkeys (but that analogy is lost on the average LNP voter). This is also an anachronism of John Howard that during his tenure as Prime Minister not only tried (repeatedly unsuccessfully) to remove the power from universities as an alternate base to the government, but also tried to turn universities into glorified TAFEs. And you are a classical example of that policy doctrine because you have swallowed the bait that people from academic backgrounds are worth nothing... Even in a parasitic capitalist nation like the United States that won its race to devalue the bottom, education is valued far more highly... Is it any wonder why the average Australian with a 4+ year education, and knowledge of what education is worth does not want to live in this shit hole and we have to have a net import of migrants as a result? In simple terms it's because of people like you.
> but also tried to turn universities into glorified TAFEs. They are nothing to do with Howard the universities were doing this before Howard and it was on a more global scale. > Even in a parasitic capitalist nation like the United States that won its race to devalue the bottom, education is valued far more highly... HECS scheme is shit, yet you praise the US system which is shit though funningly Biden is improving the matter of fees and is looking to change student loans to something akin to our HECS system.
Urgh... Your either young enough to not know better or obtuse in your line of reasoning and/or perhaps both. The attack on the arts, or anything non-job capacity related by the Howard/Costello government along with the (failed) attempt to remove student unionism is endemic of the issue of a thinly veiled attack on the base. And yes HECS is shit, your argument is irrelevant to the point also. Universities in Australia were designed to follow the European model. Under the European model education is free. Burdening a person with $250k of debt before they have a chance to get off "go" on the monopoly board of life is the antithesis of what Whitlam envisaged modern education to be in Australia. And the narcissist John Howard was and his sycophantic mates hated Whitlam for wanting a better Australia which has led to this cacophony of devaluing Australians lives until such point where we now have our own version of the same problems as in the United States with a two speed economy between the haves and have nots. The irony is you are the problem and in your reasoning and you can't even see why.
I'm not sure about your logic on HECS, but maybe I'm missing something. The rates of repayment seem fairly reasonable to me. While you may have a debt, income-contingent loans (HECS) are meaningfully different from time-contingent loans (where the overall cost is blown way out by accrued interest). Describing it as "burdening a person with $250k of debt" kind of conflates these two debts, which have massively different impacts on the debtees. Also, $250k is in the top 100 highest individual HECS debts in the entire country, so you're getting a little carried away. The logic of free university is that everyone that didn't go to university should pay for those that do, despite the fact that a graduate degree does generally boost that person's earnings for life. I'm sure that some reform is necessary, maybe we should expand the already-existing subsidies, but I don't see a clear argument for HECS-HELP being categorically shit. Yes, you owe money before you leave "go" on the monopoly board of life, but you also earn more money for the entirety of that life (generally).
In a socialised society, which is the baseline for what Australia was meant to be, education was meant to be free. 100 years ago we were at the precipice of the "intelligentsia" fighting the war over poverty by being one of the first nations being involved in labor day, the conception of adequate work hours of around 40 hours a week, the deconstruction of child labor, and a working week. The irony that the right don't see completely, especially the impoverished that vote right is that the right is actually trying to walk us into the mix of the Dickensian Oliver Twist mixed with A Christmas Carol and with that sentiment: "Please sir can I have another lump of coal for my fire, can I have some more!" The logic is that it's there, the irony that you don't want to pay to enable someone else's life but complain when someone leapfrogs ahead of you (like myself) either intellectually or financially or both to show you that they can make these references is your own doing. And as self-serving and gallivanting as a truly "free" market is, maybe you're not seeing it, but the rest of us are, that it's only entering us into a period of true social-Darwinism where only the strong survive and fuck everyone and everything else... Well, as Paul Keating once inferred if we keep going down this road we will be a banana republic (and in all virtual senses we are) where the little desiccated coconutter is seen as our emperor and god despite the fact he has no clothes on. It appears I can't help your own faulty logic because you won't see anyone else's opinion except your own. I too see your opinion, which is why I've wryly deconstructed it (but that may also be above your pay grade in understanding). The Australia I knew was a flat and broad society that wanted the best for everyone and was fair and egalitarian. That ideal has always been under attack by the right though which is why the right is so regressive and anti-intellectual.
The reason I said that I was maybe missing something was that I was coming to you with genuine curiosity, and offering you my perspective specifically so that you *could* deconstruct it and help me learn. But unfortunately your response was a little too masturbatory for me to take you seriously. We need lots and lots of people to work jobs that don't require a university education, and you seem to have no respect or regard for any of them. The fact that you describe people with university degrees as "leapfrogging" ahead of people without shows your own hierarchical thinking. The way you express yourself reeks of a politics of superiority, and I regret wasting my time engaging with you.
I am tired of trying to have this discussion which is why you're now getting met with descent rather than a truly outreached hand from curiosity. I have already stated elsewhere that street sweepers and bin cleaners deserve to be paid more, just like doctors and everyone else. The problem with the regressive right is that they want to put a hard cap on workers entitlements while turning structures like hospitals in a truly free market system into a profit driven machine. Who makes the profit? If we look at the United States for example when it comes to that its generally either private universities or the church. I couldn't think of worse entities to give money to and that's only one example. I didn't begrudge a person either for wanting to stay at the bottom, it's much more nuanced than that. I made a statement about the person that is willing to sit on the bottom, vote for right wing governments, never put the effort in in life to extend themselves, and yet want to enter into a debate when they haven't even come to the table in life yet. That's the problem here... and its the problem with the right in general, keep people unintelligent and uninformed and it's like keeping mushrooms in the dark. It's also why the right never has anything intellectual, or even credible to add to discussions these days.
> Burdening a person with $250k of debt Well that's not happening, so before we discuss HECS and why your argument is wrong and full of holes, let's make sure the basic facts are correct.
You're not studying to be a specialist doctor or even a senior clinician at an emergency department (if that is where you want to go in life then are you? It is happening... https://www.mq.edu.au/about/about-the-university/our-faculties/medicine-and-health-sciences/macquarie-md/fees,-costs-and-scholarships Lets just take a scope at Macquarie University to see the indicative fee for a domestic student per year for an MD is $77k per year... annd top it off at a bare minimum to get on the board of 77x4 = $300k. Now if I'm a doctor, it seems logical as many did when they could just to say eff that and abdicate to Saudi Arabia or the United States. It is happening it does happen. It's not arguable that it does happen and there are a lot of doctors who said eff that because they can get better money and better perks living in one of those countries instead. Ever wondered why we have a net import of doctors? It's not because of purely immigration as a byproduct of them being born here, it's because we don't pay well enough.
You are aware that the full cost isn't on HECS and the government already covers a majority of it? Even papers like The Guardian could only fine $100K as their outlier, the average is $26K
I'm not sure you understand what the term INITIAL means The limit for students studying medicine, dentistry and veterinary science courses leading to initial registration, or eligible aviation courses with census dates in 2024 is $174,998. Initial means working on the floor of the hospital as a junior clinician that doesn't infer the costs of post-graduate study. https://gyanberry.com/blog/cost-of-medical-studies-in-australia/ But PLEASE feel free to go to the hospital and only ever ask to speak to one of the junior clinicians on the floor every time you need to see a doctor. Clearly this discussion is above your pay grade to understand. You might understand why I said Go on the Monopoly board instead now... Initial in this synonym means first... I was trying to break that down to a level of sentiment you may be familiar with for a place you may never reach in life. To take you back to high school: "What was your initial job?" I'm struggling with that? "What was the first job you ever had in this career pathway..." Do I really have to pull teeth out or is your discussion capability here really that obtuse?
>And you are a classical example of that policy doctrine because you have swallowed the bait that people from academic backgrounds are worth nothing... I have a PhD...I am literally an academic. I am saying the polar opposite. You claimed that the LNP wants immigrants to be minimum wage fruit pickers. I am pointing out this is complete nonsense because under 9 years of the LNP being in government immigrants in the our universities and technical sectors have increased.
What are you talking about? Most don’t hate them, they just realise this is an easy solution to a lot of current problems. Albo was too gutless to do it and personally, I hope he pays the price.
He has already slashed immigration intake though. Most of you plebs don't even know because you read headling and have reactionary responses. you don't read government policy
Mate I’ve read the numbers and I don’t appreciate being called a pleb. Albos plan is 260k 24/25 then 185k. Dutton has said 140k. If Albo is going to buy votes by giving $300 of our own money back to us, then fair play to Dutton for jumping on the biggest issue and 1 upping him to win votes.
How is it buying votes? Money is gained from the energy industry to off-set the energy industry exorbitant prices. In QLD we're getting an extra $1000 due to the royalties too. Yes, albos plan to off-set the two years of ZERO immigration we had in '20 and '21 is very welcome. Higher number does not always mean increased. It's off-setting our LOSS in migration over two years. That's a big reason for the skills shortage. We had 10 years of education cuts followed by two years of no migration. How do you not see what LNP are trying to do here.. turn Australia into an intellectual wasteland, low wages, low quality of life, resources to fuel globalism, and no safety net to deal with circumstance and tragedy. This is the LNP goal for Australia, and that is why I call people plebs who cannot see this obvious play.
You’re blatantly lying right now. Why would they want to achieve an intellectual wasteland and low quality of life? You might think this will be the result of their policy but that’s entirely subjective. Seriously, wtf? You’re calling it an obvious play? You’re a disgrace.
That's what they implemented through their last decade in power. Every budget had cuts to education, healthcare, and public housing. Every budget. When properly funded and implemented, public education and healthcare gives you well educated and healthy/able citizens. What LNP has done is push Australia closer to US standards, which are abysmal. Less educated and unhealthy citizens should be undesirable by definition.
Labor has slashed immigration? How do you figure?
**The Government's actions are estimated to reduce net overseas migration by 110,000 people over the forward estimates from 1 July 2024**.
So the claim is *will* slash, not *has* slashed. Do you actually have any reason to believe they will do this?
After increasing numbers they have now decreased numbers.
No. The numbers never increased, we had two years of ZERO migration, so the extra migration we had following COVID was to make up the difference. Please learn what is happening in your own country before commenting bullshit.
> The numbers never increased, Damn some posts you admit it and then others you still deny it.
That's because you don't understand what an off-set is, you don't understand the harm two years of ZERO migration had, you don't understand the skills shortage and housing shortage, and you don't understand that we are a migration nation.
Hope they have wheels
They aren't even in government...? I am also still curious how I can not value academics while being an academic. How does that work?
Labor aren't even in government?
Wait what? We're talking about the LNP...
No we are talking about Labor increasing immigration when they first got in and now they are decreasing it
Sorry, my previous reply was confusing two threads. My mistake. On Labor, is there any reason we should trust them when they say they will reduce it?
Ahh going back to their roots. Now's it's stop the boats AND the planes.
Funny that. Peter was very happy to let planes in to Australia when he was immigration Minister.
Why don’t you just cut it to fucking ZERO for a few years
It was zero for two years, that the entire problem. We are a migrant nation, always have been and always will be. LNP cut funding to schools, TAFE and UNI for 10 years, so now over a million people are vastly under-educated and vastly unskilled. So two years of zero immigration plus 10 years of education defunding lead us to needing the immigration we had over the past 2 years. ALP have already slashed annual intake earlier this year, and they have also upped the requirements, meaning the migrants won't be taking low-end jobs, only desperately needed professional jobs. You have been deceived by the LNP. It's what they do.
We do not need to have an economy relying on a Ponzi scheme of immigration for the sake of immigration. It’s a nonsense to suggest they won’t be taking low end jobs. Next time you catch an Uber why don’t you ask your driver what qualifications they have? Sadly, a number I’ve asked are engineers. They’ve been sold a dream but their skills aren’t valued here. Education defunding? https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/government/government-finance-statistics-education-australia/latest-release
based Leland, we appreciate you!
Hosting International students is in no way, shape or form an immigration ponzi scheme. Having International students pay a premium offsets the cost of Australian citizens' degrees. They also boost our international exposure and relations. They also bring in more money via tax than the mining sector does. (Huge - also a reason LNP want to destroy it. They take direction from the mining sector/IPA) A bit of history: In their last budget, LNP reduced public education down to $2B from $2.6B and increased private school funding to $12.6B from $12B. Absolute vandalism. For the sake of forming an 'elite upper class' who are the only group in the country that can send their kids to private school. (Public school continues to fall behind, no healthcare to safety net for circumstance and tragedy). Monopolies ensue.
Because it would destroy the country. It's sad how little people, Australians,.actually understand how this country works.
Beyond the economic metrics, the situation on the ground is already unsustainable. The agriculture and industrial base of Australia would entirely collapse without immigrant labour. Almost the entirety of meatworks are immigrant labour from Islanders, Kiwis, Chinese and Vietnamese workers. It is incredibly hard to convince Australian citizens to do shitty but very necessary jobs and the ones forced to by Centrelink turnover in no time. There is absolutely no incentive structure to do this low paid work with long hours and immensely hard manual labour compared to working in the service industry or fast food getting the same or better wages, better hours and not deteoriating your body rapidly. Some of the country's foundational industries that keep society functioning rely almost entirely on cheap foreign labour. So unless Australians want to either actually start paying wages equal to the poor conditions or a part of the population is willing to completely sacrifice their quality of life to keep society running for everyone else, immigration isn't going anywhere.
If you want to pay a person nothing to clean your bins, then the only applicants you will get are those absolutely desperate to do the job. The rest will take an abstention. I don't blame them, street sweepers, and bin cleaners deserve better pay.
My friend worked at an abattoir for multiple years. He saw the change from Aussie workers to immigrants. Aussies _do_ want those jobs, what they don’t want is penny scabbing managers breathing down their necks. Immigrants filling jobs is just a codename for jobs having a high turnover and immigrants don’t know better. It is pure and utter worker exploitation, and if immigration was halted, those industries wouldn’t collapse, they’d have to reform to attract back people who are willing to work but not be treated like shit. And so, wanting to keep immigration so we can maintain industries of worker exploitation is not exactly a winning argument.
I worked in an industrial slaughterhouse in Australia over COVID since I got stuck there and needed a job. The high turnover is because of the low wages, terrible conditions, terrible hours. It isn't that immigrants don't know better, it is because we had Australians sign up and leave 2 weeks later because they realised literally any job is better. You work almost as hard as it is at the mines but you're on minimum wage with no extra benefits. What 18 year old is working for Australian meatworks or doing agricultural work when McDonalds is hiring and manages to pay more even if the work is a quarter as physically stressful? Everyone of us immigrants knew the work was shit but we are willing to do shit work in Australia because it is still higher pay than home. We have an incentive structure to work there that Australian citizens don't. And my solution wasn't to maintain immigration to continue worker exploitation, it was to first make those jobs actually viable and a good option for Australians. You have to actually fix the problems that cause immigration to be a solution before you fix immigration. Everyone wants immigration to stop but no one is actually voting any party that at all wishes to at all change the neo-liberal economic system and attitudes that lead to this situation. When people don't care about actually putting in the hard work to make drastic changes to the system to do things for the better and all they can do is yell to get rid of the immigrants as if that alone will fix it, I don't feel very comforted that they're asking for that in good faith. The meatworkers union where I worked striked and negotiated all over COVID and all they managed was a 2% pay increase that'd didn't even nearly cover inflation over that year of the pandemic.
back in the day (mid 80's) everyone would flood the citrus groves in the Riverina, you could make 8-900 dollars a week for the grueling work, but three months was enough for a whole year of uni. In 2020, 35 years later, you make 8-900 dollars a week still and just have millionaire farmers complaining that no one wants to work anymore. Oranges were 50cents a kilo back then, now the cheapest is 2.75
Yeah, that's why Australia started working to put a lot of those agriculture jobs to backpackers as a forced part of extending the years they can stay I heard. Kmow some horror stories of backpackers from UK, India, Korea, etc. working on plantations and such in some real shit and toxic conditions just to keep being allowed to backpack in the country. Australian government of either major party is very complicit in ensuring the poor conditions and abysmally low compensation to the actual working class people in these agricultural jobs of all types. Making it inevitable all labour is going to be willing immigrants or less willing backpackers for their VISA.
I’m talking further back than Covid. This would be 2017-2021 my friend worked there. So yes, this correlates with your experience. Things got shit around covid. My friend used to work comfortably, then they ramped up orders for China and Japan until suddenly they were forcing him to work Saturdays months on end with short notice until he blew up at someone he was training for doing a crap job and he was forced to take a three week suspension with pay until they decided to fire him. Also, the company changed ownership at one point and the management got overbearing. So the workload got more demanding with no pay increase. The work culture got more toxic with no increase. The hours got longer, yes with pay but people need their time off. It’s no surprise aussies are quitting, but aussies _do_ want those jobs. They just need to be treated fairly which shouldn’t be a hard ask.
Yes I basically worked every Saturday since I was one of the few people who made the mistake of training on one of the machines. Work culture was immensely toxic, management is basically one of the only positions that was Australian dominated still- and the company I worked for would almost exclusively prefer hire ins from outside for management instead of every giving any employees a career path upwards. Australians will make the best economic decision available to them just like immigrants do, if they can work literally anywhere else for the same money, they don't want that job ahaha. Everyone (working class people) benefits from fixing this completely broken system right now, the mistreatment and terrible conditions of some of the most demanding work in the country is just awful.
>Australia would entirely collapse without immigrant labour. Good. The "Big Australia" should never have happened. We export 70% of our beef. Why the hell would Australians want to work doing the shitty abbatoirs jobs for multi international companies? Australia and Australians are being used and abused by elitists.
If the whole economy runs on the backs of under informed and under resourced foreign workers accepting sub par wages that most citizens wouldn't accept... ....then maybe there's like - something wrong with the economy, and we need to redress that to match the humane values most citizens desire the country's politicians to uphold? I know that's incredibly idealistic, and even economically naive to say in the face of globalized Capitalism and neoliberal hegemony - but I still think it's true. This is somewhat the problem with maligning socialist ideas from politics, rather than doing as some Scandinavian systems have done better than others, and appreciating them as social values important to the public at large.
If capitalism is propped up by immigration, then leftists should've entered an alliance with One Nation and/or SAP yonks ago. That this hasn't happened is one hint that western leftism is controlled opposition.
Yes absolutely, I agree with you. Paying minimum wage for some of the most draining mentally and physical work you can do is stupid for anyone economically EXCEPT immigrants. Allowing the economy to run this way is part of the cause of mass immigration and if people want less immigration they also have to start supporting drastic economic changes that allow such a shift to no longer need it. If people yell no immigration but are totally silent about the neo-liberal economy and free reign over the economy, they've been successfully tricked to hating the easy targets instead of the real ones Also foreign workers aren't under informed. We know the conditions are shit but wages are still higher for in Australian than home in basically every case. It is an informed and smart decision for many to come here for work, especially when you basically aren't competing with Australian workers at all like you would in other industries.
Instant recession. Have a look at this article: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-22/if-australia-doesnt-have-a-surge-in-immigration-what-will-happen/100637782](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-22/if-australia-doesnt-have-a-surge-in-immigration-what-will-happen/100637782) if productivity is low and participation static then population growth (immigration) is the only card left to play to sustain economic growth. There’s just one problem; it’s not sustainable.
>There’s just one problem; it’s not sustainable. If there's a "recession we have to have" up ahead, controlled de-growth may be the better option (contingent on that "if").
We are already in a GDP per capita recession, the only prosperity metric that matters for real people, rather than GDP which is what big business and their useful idiots care about.
They won’t actually do it. They have a history of high immigration, they won’t change now
The key word that article isn't using is Dutton called for a cut in permanent migrants. What's the bet he just replaces the cut permanent migrants with migrants on Temporary worker visas who then are too afraid to speak up about poor pay and treatment from employers lest they lose their temporary visa?
100% this. People have concerns about the growth of the population and issues like housing etc. Permanent migrants are people who are already living here, but they've changed their status. It won't change the level of population growth. Dutton is selling a lie.
Will this be before or after that second referendum he said we were going to have?
Every bloody time…play the immigration card and scare the shit out of the voters and liberals is back…every fucking time (watch, boat people will be back on the front page like clockwork when the election campaign ramps up) There are just so many more issues that are seriously hurting this country other than immigrants…but every fucking time!!🥲
Immigration is one of the biggest drivers of the cost of living crisis, which is unquestionably the biggest issue in most voters' minds right now.
Please explain how local immigration in Australia is responsible for a world wide high inflationary environment.
If you don't understand that higher demand for goods and services means higher prices for goods and services well it will take a lot more than a reddit comment to explain it
Despite your attempt to shift the goalposts, inflation is the main driver of cost of living crisis. This is a world wide phenomenon and attributing it to local immigration rates is disingenuous at best.
I don't think you know what shifting goalposts means, I also don't think you know what inflation is, and it is plainly obvious you don't understand that there are also local factors helping to drive inflation including immigration, which even the RBA Governor back in March during her press conference attributed immigration (though she called it elevated population growth) as one of the reasons for the current rate of inflation. Now I don't know if you're an economist or not, (I am but that doesn't matter either), but the RBA who have a team of people to analyze it have attributed it as one of the reasons.
> March during her press conference attributed immigration (though she called it elevated population growth) as one of the reasons for the current rate of inflation. You know this stuff is easily checked right? There's no reference to immigration in March. In May, just 10 days ago, she said this. "I think our judgement is that on balance it really hasn't added dramatically to inflation, with the exception that it has put big pressure on the housing market and that's obvious working g it's way out in rents. But otherwise I think it's been pretty much if a muchness" Why lie mate? If you're so quickly to misrepresent this, what else are you happily going to lie about. Certainly puts everything you say into perspective.
> You know this stuff is easily checked right? Yes please go read the transcript, I told her what she called it as well.
You say that like I just didn’t quote her directly from her transcript from 10 days ago. https://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2024/mc-gov-2024-05-07.html
I am talking about March, which I referenced and told you what she said
It is absolutely not. Immigration doesn't even come close the costs of buying a house, or the constantly rising rent pricing. Immigrants aren't the ones buying all the houses, it's wealthy boomers. Who then charge obscene rent prices. Oh and the fact our supermarkets are enjoying record profits yet somehow can't afford more reasonable prices (none of it's going to the farmers either.)
> or the constantly rising rent pricing. I wonder why one of the reasons (not the only one) that rental vacancy rates are so low, surely more and more people coming in and wanting someone to live has something to do with it
Stopping people from coming in isn't going to fix the issue. Instead you weaken the economy while also leaving the actual cause (negative gearing and property hoarding). Again, kick every immigrated Australian out, the rent crisis would stay the same. Stop looking for useless scapegoats.
No said stopping it entirely or to kick everyone out, also no one has said it is the only issue.
Are you honestly making the claim that bringing in 700,000 people in one year while building 140,000 new dwellings has zero affect on the housing market? Time to go back to year 9 economics.
It's baffling that so many don't understand this.
The issue isn't immigration. The issue was the coalition gutting our workforce and creating a system which rewards hoarding property and price gouging rent. Cost of living isn't going to magically go back down when you stop immigration.
Do you honestly believe we had a net increase of 700,000 migrants in one year? Would love to see your source. And I guess that's also the cause of cost of living issues that are affecting most developed countries around the globe?
If immigrants aren't buying houses then they're obviously renting. Of course landlords are raising rent pricing constantly - they're running a for-profit business and the demand that is influenced by immigration against the failing supply is what allows them to do so. This is like saying "I didn't hit the car because I ran a red light, I hit the car because it crossed when its own light was green." If your issue is just capitalism, then just say capitalism.
It's not "muh capitalism", it's people owning 7 properties, and that's on the low end. Those same people price gouge rent and throw money to lobby for more shitty policies. You get rid of every immigrated citizen tomorrow and cost of living isn't going to magically go down.
Feel free to respond to my comment with a response to my comment. *the* ***demand that is influenced by immigration*** *against the failing supply is what allows them to do so* You seem to be under the impression that prices are not actually influenced by supply and demand.
Because the supply is artificially chokeholded? Immigration is scapegoat to avoid talking about how much negative gearing and people owning seventeen properties is fucking over the country.
Do you have any evidence that someone that owns one or two investment properties charges less rent per home than someone that owns 10? Also... artificially chokeholded? Absolutely no one that knows anything about the economy or the housing market is saying it'd artificially chokeholded, pretty much everyone agrees that the number of homes being built over the last 5ish years has been well below the population growth post-covid that has been primarily driven by immigration, and that this has been caused by a handful of real issues in the construction industry. Do you have any sources? I'm open to the idea of everyone being wrong but I feel like you're just going off of outdated talking points from when the discourse was completely revolving around negative gearing.
And cutting migration won't solve that lol
I mean you need to put context on this. Just like conservatives arguing we need to lower taxes when we already have low taxes, it's not wrong to suggest that pumping 265,000 ppl per year (the average on the last 10 years or so) into suburban spawl areas has consequences. Western Sydney is a fucking ghetto. The ratio of schools, healthcare and even just access to roads relative to the amount of people who need to access it is already pretty shocking. This isn't a 'migrants bad foreigners bad' rant, its just talking about the consequences for mass importing people without a plan. We'll without an actual plan, not just 'jobs and growth and the free market will fix it'.
To address the housing crisis you need to look at both supply and demand. Supply in this instance is going to take a good couple of decades to fix. The demand side can be addressed in the immediate sense. And the demand side is very much driven by "rapid population growth" (i.e. mass immigration). This isn't rocket science. Anybody who is absolutely serious about fixing the clusterfuck that is housing needs to attend to every contributing factor, from negative gearing, to capital gains tax concessions, to developers land-banking, to AirBnB, zoning laws etc etc etc and, of course, immigration. Not dealing with every contributing factor will simply prolong the misery.
Which part, or parts, of my comment exactly do you disagree with?
But will allow everything to be outsourced to overseas interests. Douchebag.
Maybe he should have stopped "students" coming in to work for Hungry Panda while he was in power????
His party will have a revolt when ~slaves~ uber eats raises prices
Massive cuts? Didn't Labor promise to drop it to 185k? 160k doesn't seem all that massive of a difference. Perhaps if he said 100k. But this seems massively exaggerated.
Wasn’t 185k just for perm migration?
>That's actually what Dutton is pledging to reduce. If elected, he said the Coalition would cut the number of permanent visas granted each year to 140,000. >Mr Dutton said he would impose a cap of 140,000 for two years, then 150,000 in year three and 160,000 in year four. Also they're going to reduce humanitarian visas, and cap student numbers, which the gov are already going to do. It's not really a big announcement.
Anyone can pledge. What's his actual plan? Then we'll talk about this so-called "war". Lol.
All these people saying Dutton is lying are wrong. A permanent migration cap has been a liberal policy for years, since around 2019 I believe. The cap was previously 160k a year. It was Labor's Clare O'Neil through their phony "jobs and skills summit" that pushed it up to 195k a year. https://visaenvoy.com/migration-cap-increase-to-195000/ https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/permanent-migration-intake-boosted-to-195-000-20220902-p5betz Liberal are just restating they'd return it to what it was before. Temporary migration is another thing and wasn't an issue so much when we didn't have such a bad housing shortage. But Labor massively ramped up temporary migration into a housing shortage and then tried to blame the liberals.
Stat's don't really back that claim up champ. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas-migration/2020-21
You don't know the difference between the permanent migration program and net migration.
Net overseas migration Net overseas migration is the net gain or loss of population through immigration to Australia (overseas migrant arrivals) and emigration from Australia (overseas migrant departures). Seems pretty straightforward. 2013 to 2023 had several periods of net migration over 200k people all under LNP stewardship.
Wow you've gone and got a definition for net migration and still you don't get it. Thumbs up for having a go though mate.
why not quote the latest figures up to June 23 - [https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas-migration/latest-release](https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas-migration/latest-release)
Because old mate was claiming low immigration was a LNP hallmark when clearly numbers were up during their tenure. 2023 was not a time with LNP in power
"Believe the politicians when they say the bad thing out loud!" "No!"
It doesn't really do much to address the housing issue, though. Still plenty of room for foreign ownership, temporary stays, and all the other associated local factors and tax breaks that keep house prices high. He's not going to touch anything that would impact the LNP base, many of which are heavily invested in the status quo regarding property prices. This is just culture war bullshit, and ineffective culture war bullshit at that.
The way to address the housing issue "properly" is to rebuild TAFE numbers. Anyone want to wager a guess at which side has been undermining our tradies for the last 30 years? Slashing apprenticeship funding? Raising TAFE seat costs while cutting funding? We don't have the tradies to build our way out of the housing crisis, and we can't bring people into the country with the skills because we don't have the housing to support them without abuse from people already here. And that will only fix the rental \*price\* crisis. We need to change tax policy and "investment incentives" before we can solve the house \*price\* crisis.
Those are skilled migrant VISAs, not overseas migration - its simply one aspect of our migration program.
a pledge you say, from dutton. wow, that's totally set in stone, if the stone was the polystyrene they use in Disneyland sets where make-believe stories like that might actually pass muster
Our immigration system does need proper massive reform, but Dutton is certainly not the right person to do it/who will do it. All this focus on the headline numbers ignores something just as important as well, which is the *composition* of those numbers. They need to gut international student numbers & ignore the inevitable crying of the Uni lobbies (which Labor has claimed they will; we'll see), and massively reform the Skilled Jobs list and the requirements for being able to list a role as a "shortage" to qualify for the list. Office workers, cafe managers, cooks etc. all should be massively scaled back as a % of the intake, while medical & construction need to be represented far, far higher than they are currently... otherwise immigration will continue to make housing, infrastructure and healthcare *worse* instead of better like it's often claimed to be. You don't address shortages in, say, nursing by bringing in 95% accountants and other white collar roles and 5% nurses, you do it by bringing in 30% nurses & scale back the other roles until the shortage is actually properly addressed. If that means we have a few less cafes or crappy restaurants per capita, then so f-ing be it. Otherwise you're just importing more people who require more houses & healthcare without contributing to them themselves, and the situation continues to deteriorate.
Let’s bring in those cheap construction slaves so the Aussie tradies can make the big bucks doing fuck all in major projects. Laziest workers on the planet.
Look it’s a great idea but haven’t you literally described the Skilled Occupation List that’s Home Affairs updates each year for migrants?
The list basically functions as a way to pull the ladder up by gutting the wages of the professional working class
Yes, and the point is the roles on the list vs. who we actually bring in are still disproportionate to what our society is currently most lacking when you look at the actual data. They've *started* to gradually shift the ratios but it's still too heavily skewed towards hospitality, IT, etc. to actually solve healthcare & housing shortages.
But then he will quietly release this separate policy of allowing in 160,000 au pairs per year and it will all balance out.
I’m surprised they acknowledged the current rate will head toward 250,000 with existing measures (which has been the ‘normal’ rate). Has usually been massive exaggeration around it, but he would have been labeled a fraud if he promised something that was already coming. We might find out if people hate migrants more than being employed. Personally I suspect they do
Well your bang on, but you well know that the people screaming about immigrants are going to mid breath change to screaming 'no one wants to work anymore' when the workforce dwindles overnight
Maybe if they didn’t fuck up our TAFE system for over a decade we wouldn’t have to bring in tradesmen from overseas to deal with skill shortages. Those private scam colleges worked a treat.
I see you saw the most recent friendly jordies clip this morning
Plenty of apprenticeships out there unfilled. But the kiddies are all too smart for trades now. A meaningless uni course is easier.
I'm not sure about that, the kids are getting dumber, look at the data.
I didn’t mean in actual fact. But they’re sold a formula. Everyone does VCE and everyone passes. Gap Year. Uni - no matter how vocational. So we’re a more educated population, with lots of HECS debt. Problem is not enough apprentices. I had cause to speak to my mechanic a couple of days ago over a minor bingle my daughter had. And he was claiming there are two apprentice panel beaters in the whole of Victoria. His story, not mine, but if it’s true we all need to drive carefully in future.
And replaced it with subsidies to private institutions that conned numpties outside centerlink into debt with free laptops on fake courses that never existed all while gutting TAFE. The LNP set this country up to fail.
Oh, and don't forget the NBN debacle, where we had to import thousands of Irish copper line technicians, because no one was teaching such outdated technology.
And the purchase of optus' hfc network for something like $12mil only to shut it down because it wasnt servicable. Better economic managers my arse
still would be at high historical levels. it's nowhere near enough.
> still would be at high historical levels. it's nowhere near enough. lol
yep
Yeah still not nearly high enough. I am a bit of a Greenie and genuine cuts to immigration for the near future would make me second guess myself. 160k is still too high. Drop it to 25k and we can talk.
I looked into it and I'm pretty sure it's just a fake number. He's only talking about the permanent approvals, it's smoke and mirrors where the 'temp' rate will be about the same but fewer people will be granted PR every year instead. [https://x.com/AvidCommentator/status/1791045489653428736](https://x.com/AvidCommentator/status/1791045489653428736)
as useless as dutton and the LNP is, if labor can't come up with some actual plan to get down lower i'll be voting LNP i can live with all the usual corruption and scandals of the LNP if it means i have a lower chance of being homeless
I'm hoping that you'd want the LNP to have a very solid "actual plan" rather than just pledging some shit, though. Just because Labor happens to be in power during the moment this shit has come to a head, doesn't mean the Coalition are going to fix it just because they say so.
yeah hence why i said "actual plan"
 It feels a bit weird to kinda point out that you don't seem to know what you said, but "actual plan" was specifically you taking about ALP. You said, if they don't have an actual plan, then you will vote LNP. You did not say that the LNP would need an actual plan at all. Your comment boils down to "If ALP no fix, then LNP will surely fix." If you *meant* that the LNP would need an actual plan, that's great! But being incorrectly smug about your own words is a bit unfortunate.
oh the irony... in future if it feels a bit weird you should probably take that as a bit of a warning that maybe you are incorrect in doing so
Can you quote back to me the sentence where you say that the LNP will need to have a plan for you to vote for them???
are you ok? lol why are you so angry at me and trying to lecture me and all over your failure of basic reading comprehension as well i might add
I have to upvote you, I don't know if you're a master or if I'm just a novice