
Australia, it’s time to curb immigration
ArticleEnvironment
BY Satya Marar 3 MAY 2019
A majority of Australians welcome immigrants. So why then do opinion polls of young and old voters alike across the political divide, now find majority support for reducing our immigration intake?
Perhaps it could be for the same reason that faith in our political system is dwindling at a time of strong economic growth. Australia is the ‘lucky country’ that hasn’t had a recession in the last 28 years.
Yet we’ve actually had two recessions in this time if we consider GDP on a per-capita basis. This, combined with stagnant real wage growth and sharp increases in congestion and the price of housing and electricity in our major cities, could explain why the Australian success story is inconsistent with the lived experience of so many of us.
The decline of the Australian dream?
Our current intake means immigration now acts as a ponzi scheme.
The superficial figure of a growing headline GDP fuelled by an increasing population masks the reality of an Australian dream that is becoming increasingly out of reach for immigrants and native-born Australians alike.
We’ve been falsely told we’ve weathered economic calamities that have stunned the rest of the world. When taken on a per-capita basis, our economy has actually experienced negative growth periods that closely mirror patterns in the United States.
We’re rightly told we need hardworking immigrants to help foot the bill for our ageing population by raising productivity and tax revenue. Yet this cost is also offset when their ageing family members or other dependents are brought over. Since preventing them from doing so may be cruel, surely it’s fairer to lessen our dependence on their intake if we can?
A lack of infrastructure
Over 200,000 people settle in Australia every year, mostly in the major cities of Sydney and Melbourne. That’s the equivalent of one Canberra or greater Newcastle area a year.
Unlike the United States, most economic opportunities are concentrated in a few major cities dotting our shores. This combined with the failures of successive state and federal governments to build the infrastructure and invest in the services needed to cater for record population growth levels driven majorly by immigration.
A failure to rezone for an appropriate supply of land, mean our schools are becoming crowded, our real estate prohibitively expensive, our commutes are longer and more depressing, and our roads are badly congested.
Today, infrastructure is being built, land is finally being rezoned to accommodate higher population density and more housing stock in the outer suburbs, and the Prime Minister has made regional job growth one of his major priorities.
But these issues should have been fixed ten years ago and it’s increasingly unlikely that they will be executed efficiently and effectively enough to catch up to where they need to be should current immigration intake levels continue for the years to come.
Our governments have proven to be terrible central planners, often rejecting or watering down the advice of independent expert bodies like Infrastructure Australia and the Productivity Commission due to political factors.
Why would we trust them to not only get the answer right now, but to execute it correctly? Our newspapers are filled daily with stories about light rail and road link projects that are behind schedule.
All of it paid for by taxpayers like us.
Foreign workers or local graduates?
Consider also the perverse reality of foreign workers brought to our shores to fill supposed skill gaps who then struggle to find work in their field and end up in whatever job they can get.
Meanwhile, you’ll find two separate articles in the same week. One from industry groups cautioning against cutting skilled immigration due to shortages in the STEM fields. The other reporting that Australian STEM graduates are struggling to find work in their field.
Why would employers invest resources in training local graduates when there’s a ready supply of experienced foreign workers? What incentive do universities have to step in and fill this gap when their funding isn’t contingent on employability outcomes?
This isn’t about nativism. The immigrants coming here certainly have a stake in making sure their current or future children can find meaningful work and obtain education and training to make them job ready.
There’s only one way to hold our governments accountable so the correct and sometimes tough decisions needed to sustain our way of life and make the most of the boon that immigration has been for the country, are made. It’s to wean them off their addiction to record immigration levels.
Lest the ponzi scheme collapse.
And frank conversations about the quantity and quality of immigration that the sensible centre of politics once held, increasingly become the purview of populist minor parties who have experienced resurgence on the back of widespread, unanswered frustrations about unsustainable immigration that we are ill-prepared for.
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BY Satya Marar
Satya Marar is an Indian-born, Sydney based writer, public commentator and Director of Policy at the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance. He took part in the IQ2 debate, ‘Curb Immigration’
10 Comments
enough, enough, enough this is not about advancing Australia but good old fashion Profit or zero sum formula.
We forget my dear Australians, that Politicians should be working for us, instead we have professional Politicians that are more driven by side self interests and being seen to be doing something. I am of the opinion that today we are working for the Politician who is now redundant as it is obvious that technology trends now dictate the future.
Why should we the people bail out an airline that is owned by multi billionaires from China and Singapore spurred on by a guilt trip instigated by retired Politician. Sorry to offend, but enough is enough.
ReplyDrought people, please building homes where food use to grow more people to feed and less and less food will lead to starvation
ReplyInteresting topic and conversation, as always. In some ways it’s a conversation that Australia has been having at least for the past 70 years, and it’s one where public opinion seldom if ever connects with real policy. I worked on this issue for several years at ACF, and ultimately came to the conclusion that trying to affect federal government policy on immigration is even harder than trying to get it to act on habitat destruction, climate pollution and water over-extraction. Population growth is easy money for property developers, drives property prices up, and provides low-cost labor for a range of industries. Business is always very strongly pro-growth. There are just too many short-term economic gains. And while public opinion is sometimes slightly for, sometimes slightly against, population growth, these are weakly held opinions for most people, and don’t really affect voting. Politicians correctly surmise that they have far more to lose than gain politically by reining in migration levels.
As a migrant myself (like the author of this piece), it’s a strange position to be in, urging reductions in migration. Some would say hypocritical…
Environmentally, steady population growth has definitely contributed to increased habitat pressure on peri-urban fringes and tree-change / sea-change areas within about 500km radius of major cities. But the proponents will always say “it’s all fine as long as we plan better”, even though we never actually plan better!
ReplyAustralia was said to have reached it’s natural population levels years ago. The soils are fertile for so far in from the coast and the rest is semi desert to desert, and so the number of humans living here should be so much. What is the point in reaching the over populations of third world countries? All those dense slums is not a desirable thing. If there is uncontrolled human breeding, that is so silly. To say that it is racist not to let large third world families live here, wake up.
ReplyThank you for this clear article, Satya. Anything that drives up the cost of land also raises costs and narrows profit margins by creating pressure on wages to meet costs. Many, like me, are especially concerned about loss of natural spaces and access to nature, and the plight of native animals, which are losing their habitats. To cite the most obvious, the situation of koalas is very concerning as are local extinctions of various kinds of kangaroos and wallabies. The latter are also treated like pariah, encouraging gratuitous and expeditious cruelty towards them as new roads and suburbs force them onto dangerous road-sides and starve them out. https://www.academia.edu/36309047/CONTRADICTIONS_IN_THE_GO-TO_KANGAROO_POPULATION_SCIENCE You might also be interested in the subject of this article, https://candobetter.net/node/5759 – “How overpopulation destroys fine art, engagement and fun, in Australia.”
ReplyDollar for dollar more human welfare can be found by spending what we now spend on new infrastructure for our high immigration program on greatly increased foreign aid especially for education and health. Currently we spend about five times as much on building infrastructure: houses, roads, hospitals, schools, electricity and utility services etc for the 200,000 immigrants each year than we spend on foreign aid. This is in no way to blame migrants for any of our ills. It is the policy of all the major political parties to support very high immigration intakes where the blame lies.
ReplyHi William, Just what does keeping the economy strong actually mean? If you think that”s just growth in GDP you would be surprised to find we are doing very poorly more importantly the per capita GDP growth – which is a more useful indicator indicator – is only 0.3% compared to the UK’s 1.2%, US 1.6%, Japan 1.9% and Germany’s 1.7% . The last two nations managed this with declining populations and declining greenhouse gas emissions, Germany 31% reduction since 1990 and Japan 8.2% in the last 4 years while Australia’s emissions continue to increase. Australia’s unemployment rate is now well above other comparable nations including the United States (3.6 per cent), Britain (3.7 per cent), New Zealand (4.2 per cent), Germany (3.2 per cent) and Japan’s 2.4%. It is also not uniform across the nation or demographics with unemployment youth in rural areas reaching over 20% and does not consider that around 2 million Australians are working multiple jobs or high levels of unpaid overtime. A study by the Australia Institute found that Australian employees will work a total of about 3.2 billion hours in unpaid overtime this year, that’s an average of six hours’ unpaid work a week in 2018 – up from 5.1 hours in 2017 and 4.6 hours in 2016.
ReplyAustralians live very unsustainably with high consumption of natural resources. If anything, ethically we have an obligation to make changes to the way we live to reduce our waste, energy and water. I think it is selfish to suggest that over population is too blame for our inability to make changes. Population growth has many benefits such as keeping the economy stronger so we can afford to invest in innovation. We also have both an international legal and ethical obligation to take some of the 7.3 billion people to share the load. Lastly, there are rural communities which are screaming out for growth. Darwin for example has recently initiated a campaign to attract residents.
ReplyA fantastic article that explores how following a the pursuit of a ponzi growth scheme affects everyone, immigrants and non-immigrants alike.
Thank you Satya, and very refreshing to have this perspective from someone who was born overseas.
Michael from Sustainable Population Australia (SPA)
We need immigration – young and educated – Not elderly and not from countries which have a history of violence….
We need to have compulsory, thorough Inductions for all immigrants:
As with inductions for entering a mine site:
We must spend Many days of inductions to learn the laws, rules and customs.
Each point of learning must be understood and signed off, as 100% correct.
All members of the family must attend.
Breaking of the contract will mean expulsion from site/country.
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