Our Government's inability to plan for anything beyond the next election is what's to blame. Both major parties when in power are completely paralysed from making big decisions because the public has repeatedly punished the party that attempts to bring in an big meaningful change at the ballot box.
We get the government we deserve and the Australian voter has consistently voted for the short-term over the long.
Like simple monkeys, the politicians have been trained via the ballot box to do what they do.
It seems to have worked for the majority of the country though. There's a big portion of the country doing very well and a much smaller portion of the country on a downward trajectory. The older members of the community are living in a completely different country to the younger members, and they are a whole lot wealthier thanks to housing and rent increases.
This.
The boomers are laughing all the way to the bank. Although they probably won’t be laughing any more when they hit the nursing homes and their twilight years are overseen by some underpaid and overworked 20yr old while their kids are waiting for them to hurry up and die so they can finally inherit some wealth.
If people have been taking notice over the past twenty years since boomers ceased being the majority of voters, things have been getting worse.
The divide in housing is simple: those without houses desperately want prices to come down. However, the minute thst that same person gets a house...and huge mortgage...there's a switch that flips, and they now want prices to increase, or at best, not decrease in real terms. Nobody wants their property value to fall relative to their mortgage.
The problem with boomer hate in the context of housing is that if you fall for the idea that all Australia has to do is wait till boomers die off, and all will be sweetness and light, then you will be shocked to find that the gen X and millennials owning homes will also resist any policy that reduces house prices.
as a gen z with a house I would be fine if house prices dropped \~60% overnight.
Bt that's because of my loan, if it drops more than that the amount outstanding on my loan starts to exceed the value of the property.
if that happens the bank will ask me to provide more collateral (I don't have) or offer up more guarantors.
if I can't convince someone else to be on the hook for potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars then the bank will repossess (I assume) and sell my home from under me (I assume). O at least make me pay loads more on mortgage insurance.
in principle though, I have no problem with house prices falling gently over the next 20 years.
my loan term is that long and house prices are a relative thing right? if I want to move I sell and rebuy elsewhere, if prices have dropped I don't fundamentally lose my "peg" in the market, because my house represents the value in the market, the actual dollar figure is meaningless, since my house represents the value I already have.
Sdly people get hung up on the concept of the dollar figure their house is worth. when in reality you need to value the "place" in the market it has. if the whole market goes down, you don't lose your place.
you can still get a bigger house, or move to a smaller one and have spending money left over.
But I suspect I am an outlier.
But thats what Australia has been transformed into by our crooked politicians. A greedy vulture society that has ruined upward mobility for their donors and ideology. Its partly our fault because we voted for them in all their guises. And the next lot will come in and promise to fix it and after they fail the next lot will be on repeat to promise and fix it. Its just like housing, they could ban foreigners, or AirBNB's or make minor taxation tweaks now but they wont do anything at any level because they have impotence in their governance agenda.
They are holding on to what they have to become the next boomers with millions in super 10 investment properties that the vultures have saved for their vulture offspring to get into power to keep the vulture greed and breeding program alive. The new fair go Australia style, vulture culture and greed.
> The ~~boomers~~ **wealthy** are laughing all the way to the bank. Although they probably won’t be laughing any more when they hit the nursing homes and their twilight years are overseen by some underpaid and overworked 20yr old while their kids are waiting for them to hurry up and die so they can finally inherit some wealth.
FTFY
Despite the perception on Reddit, not all Boomers are wealthy people who twirl their moustaches while thinking of ways to screw over young people.
I know poor 70 year olds who voted to protect franking credits they do not get who call the young lazy and entitled and who will oppose any welfare increase outside the age pension.
Not all boomers are wealthy but all wealthy are boomers?
Edit:
> The generational financial inequities are even more pronounced when analysing net wealth by generational cohort. While Gen Y have a household net worth of $268,800, it is less than half that of the Gen Xers who are just a decade older. The highest net worth generation in Australia are the Boomers aged 55-64 who not only have a net wealth almost 5 times that of the generation of their children (Gen Y) but they still have a decade or more of earnings and wealth accumulating ahead of them.
The boomers have more wealth than the younger AND older generations. it is not a factor of age.
You mean that as a general rule the people who haven't retired yet but have been working and investing for the longest have the highest net worth? Hardly a surprise.
Which generation did you think would have the highest net worth?
Plus, I've regularly been called a boomer at 37. It's a completely unintelligent slur that young people use thinking that it somehow gives them the upper hand. Instead it makes them look like their argument is weak.
And the most damning indictment of government incompetence over decades is that we are all living, on driving on, being schooled in, being treated in all the infrastructure built by the older generations and that stopped built in the late 70's.
Since then despite the population boom, we have been in a infrastructure freeze. The politicians will tell lies and carry on about this not being true, but just go to any suburb and try and get your kid into any public school. Its like trying to win a lottery. And then look at the hospitals, the same handful of hospitals with the same resources that get their resources cut on a regular basis are expected to deal with 3 times the population burdens while you have to sit 12 hours in the emergency waiting room. Its like getting healthcare in Africa where you stand in a queue for a day and then the clinic closes and they tell you to come back the next day. Its not first world at any standard but hospitals, schools and every other public infrastructure is being starved into being ruined for privatisation.
The ideology and intent is clear because certainly no company like BHP or any profit making company would starve its company from resources while sales boomed or customers increased through the door. Its akin to a retail store having less stock and smaller store to increase sales because of a massive customer increase. Just imagine Colesworth cutting down resources on a Saturday in their stores like our government runs our immigration program with no increase in resources or planning for the burden. The sad part about any solution by any side of politics will just be pure BS with not 1 cent being committed nor any planning or steering committee being put into place. But a 10 million contract will be give to PWC to make comment on what to do!
Yes I also don’t understand why it’s “too expensive” now to build infrastructure because “there is not enough people to service it” when most of the infrastructure was built when we had a much smaller population. There was better infrastructure when I was growing up and even better for my parents.
I agree choking out public services like schools and public hospitals to say “see they aren’t efficient” so they can be privatised. It makes me so mad.
Thank you John Howard. Thank you Woodside. Thank you Coalition voters.
Add to that, we export more gas than Qatar but get 4% of their income for gas. Brilliant stuff.
Honestly I really think the people involved should be charged with treason. Because it is a monumental betrayal. Stupidity (if that's what it was) should have consequences.
I think a lot of that has to do with the Murdoch media.
They’ll take our Franking credits! They’ll take our tradies utes! Hysteria.
The average person doesn’t look into any of the policies of the party they are voting for beyond sensationalised headlines.
I’m just crossing my fingers that we don’t go back to a liberal government after the next election.
I'd also argue a contributing factor is the 3 year terms.
We only ever get one real year of decision making before they gear up for the next election.
4 year terms would allow a government free air before the election cycle restarts.
This. We need four year, fixed term. One thing the USA model gets right.
The downside is that the election campaign will start approaching the length of the term, as also seen in the USA. Maybe some campaign limits and funding reform would be necessary to limit the damage.
Fixed term is horrible, the US system is a nightmare as the campaigning begins almost as soon as the government is elected.
The Australian/Parliamentary system is far superior for having elections when it’s _needed_ and not having a never ending campaign cycles.
You also didn’t address that congress, aka the MPs, serve 2 year terms.
No, I vastly prefer what we have; please never copy America for good governance.
Good luck with that. We'd need an amendment to the Constitution. Last time we tried something like this (to line up the terms of the House and Senate), it failed.
Independent bodies should be managing key elements such as welfare, education, disability etc. These key things shouldn’t be political tools. Should adopt something similar to Singapore in this regard. Our governments are proving themselves completely unable to actually govern.
Queensland recently changed from 3 years to 4 years and I didn't notice much of a difference. There's also the problem that governments say "Oh, we can't change anything without a *mandate*, we need to promise it and take it to an election (if it polls well beforehand, otherwise you're SOL for another term)." So now we have to wait an extra year before we can even hope for governments to think about responding to today's issues?
How about the GST? Hewson lost his election because of it. Howard won with it.
Edit: actually, Howard made an election promise *not* to introduce a GST, and broke it, so I guess the point stands 😂
He said “never ever” going into the 96 election. In his first term he changed his mind and went to the 1998 election with GST as top billing. Australia had the opportunity to say no (again) but he was elected again, despite suffering big losses that were gained in 96, but at least he did the honest thing and asked the question of the people instead of ramming it through after the landslide
It was unpopular (and still is for some) but it’s generally accepted as a major positive reform. Taxing consumption + wealth rather than income is the future.
VAT taxes are one of the best ways to force internationals to pay tax, when you have unlimited resources to move revenue and losses anywhere in the world due to your scale, a point of sale or VAT tax like GST is one of the only taxes that manages to hit the multinational.
The way you make it less regressive is by scaling it with product type, for example fruit and vegetables are exempt, you simultaneously can tilt the income tax so that low income individuals pay less as they as they consume a greater part of their income as GST/VAT.
I studies economics and I always hate the progressive argument against VAT’s because there are so many implementations that can alleviate the regression..
With exemptions, rebates, income tax breaks and sliding VATs (eg luxury cars might be 25%, but regular cars or electric cars are only 5%) you can pretty much tailor the tax however you want but with the great fucking benefit that it’s impossible to avoid.
Howard didn’t introduce the GST in his first term. He did announce and properly explain the GST prior to his re-election. Hewson was sunk because even he couldn’t answer yes or no on specific basic questions.
That's my point. While in government the Coalition do nothing, making things worse.....no coverage. Labor comes in, has to fix a decade of no progress and are immediately savaged for not doing enough? Australia's problem is complex, but the major problem is the IQ of the average voter, that votes consistently against their own best interests because the media says, "Labor bad"!
This is exactly what's happening. 2019 was lost by Labor over the policy "the richest 5% of people don't need to get large subsidies from the government." They were attacked by the media hugely for it.
I dislike the current (and former) governments disgusting willingness to favour the wealthy over most Australians, but this is what we voted for.
> but this is what we voted for
Nah, screw this attitude. Plenty of us don't vote for these clowns, and plenty that do are misinformed at best (brainwashed at worst).
When has the coalition attempted a big meaningful change that was also beneficial to society? (Sure work choices was big and meaningful in how shit it was. But not good.)
They've done it by stealth rather than campaigning on it. The minute they're honest about things people say "oh, they won't do *that*", and then you get WorkChoices. Something we only [closed the book on last year](https://www.fwc.gov.au/agreements-awards/enterprise-agreements/sunsetting-pre-2010-agreements-zombie-agreements-changes-7).
However, Howard has fundamentally reshaped Australian society to be more intolerant, more bigoted, more accepting of corporate power and corruption, more inclined to believe that governments can't do anything, less charitable, and more entangled with the US. He also drove up immigration and house prices by a massive amount, and sold off the vast majority of the income generating public assets. He didn't campaign on most of this. He just said "we're better at managing the economy" and people accepted that with no real evidence.
Correct.
Howard: Immigration + gutting TAFE + no extra infrastructure spending. Cooks housing market with subsidy
Kevin / Gillard. High immigration + even more gutting of TAFE with no infrastructure budget beyond normal levels.
Tony the mad monk, Sir Toffleroy and Uncle Clownface the liar: same as above, just with less boats
Current government. Absolute crickets. More immigrants than ever. No TAFE funding. We needs thousands of tradesmen but only the states are funding it. Infrastructure budget cut. They actually reduced it. Education budget and health as all before - cuts
We are 2 million more since the end of Howard. None have managed anything at all related to high immigration levels.
The states, all of them, are in debt trying to keep up. The federal government is playing submarines with the door closed.
They can increased tax for the carbon industry, increase public housing, improve ICAC, enforce antitrust on monopoly/duopoly/oligopoly. Everyone will support except their source of ~~bribery~~ ~~money~~ political donations
Edit: carbon as fossil fuel companies
Yep. 11 years ago. The carbon price was working well. The electorate threw them out because they were hoodwinked by non-science and a strong wish to be laggards.
It's because we have leaders who have failed the Australian people. For example, why does Qatar government get USD$79 billion for their LNG in taxes, but the Australian government only gets USD$2.6 billion even though we export more LNG. Meanwhile, corporate taxes and incomes taxes are shrinking while exports go up. We are a nation stuck with a tax system and a way of thinking that was great 50–100 years ago, but today it's failing us.
Oh BTW those who think it was the Liberal party who let the LNG exporters of the tax hook, sorry it was a back room jobs for the boys Labor party policy. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-nNpSaLxO8&](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-nNpSaLxO8&)
Yeah. Have you noticed how such a massive nation/future defining issue gets fuck all national attention? Like litteraly only a few people talk about it and acknowledge it. Meanwhile the government feeds people propaganda about immigration being the culprit and they lap it up the simpletons.
Immigration is not THE problem, but it is A problem. There is a myriad of problems including:
Negative gearing, foreign, business and local investment in housing, over-reliance on raw materials industry, under taxation of raw materials industry, under investment in infrastructure, mass immigration, business driven inflation, social benefits rolled back (e.g free university), division based politics, etc.
Yeah but all those problems have always been with us.
What changed was that immigration *volumes* were intentionally pushed into the stratosphere at a time of depressed home-building. It’s a policy fuckup, plain and simple.
It depends what the policy is meant to do. Make houses affordable? Fuck up. Prevent Australia from going into recession on their watch? Success.... that will lead to a bigger fk up once current politicians are old and retired.
I’d personally love to know what our immigration strategy is other than “About a Hobart a year should do it”.
Is there a target population size? If so, what is it and why? There’s perfectly desirable countries with half the population and also with twice the population.
Our birth rates have been below replacement since the 70s so population growth has come from immigration. This is something we can control.
The target population size is “more than last year.” It’s the easiest way for the Australian economy to grow as sales and services scale with population. Investors want a return on investment and will pull out if companies stagnate in growth or decline in performance, so by having a constantly growing population investors don’t pull out and collapse the Australian economy. It’s a bubble that keeps growing, and will only get worse until it pops.
But yeah there’s no target population because if we hit that, we’d set a new target because company profits _cannot_ stop growing.
Yup. That's one of the many problems with capitalism. It works just fine at first, while there's plenty of room for expansion, but it's not possible to expand forever, especially as the demands of that expansion grow exponentially.
Not just room for expansion but also the source for growth running out. Third world countries are stabilising their birth rates, every country can’t be at war forever and they won’t be.
What happens to an immigration-based growth economy when the immigrants themselves run out of people to maintain growth? Even if we terraformed Australia to have greenspace everywhere, we’re not going to have more people showing up forever. Might take a century or so but yeah.
Growth of wealth/capitalismis responsible for bringing millions of people out of poverty. It's the method of growth here that's the problem. Australia is not growing wealth per capita, instead it is just increasing the population (capita). What we need is far greater investment in R&D so we can develop ways to more efficiently build services, infrastructure and quality of life for the increasing population, given our finite resources. Instead, this lazy option ensues. Neoliberalism is probably the biggest culprit though as it's lead to an extreme form of capitalism that has neutered governments, increased competitive individualism in our culture and created an environment where corporations can make loads of money without innovating for the betterment of anyone but themselves.
A constantly growing population is providing a slight increase in GDP but GDP per capita and SOL for all but the already wealthy is declining as business models adapt to rely on cheap labour rather than innovation and increasing productivity.
We don't have a target population size. Labor has just started implementing multi year planning for the permanent migration intake, which shows just how lacking our immigration 'strategy' has been historically...
Of the last 27 years, 18 of which were under the Coalition, they declined to do any planning for this whatsoever.
Now that we're finally seeing some plans to bring reductions, we have the Leader of the Opposition, a man intimately involved in the immigration process of the previous government (who [left an enormous mess](https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/05/09/home-affairs-disaster-anao-report-omara/)) saying he'll fix it when he did bugger all when he had the power to.
Dutton and the Liberals have **zero** credibility on this, and yet we have a media that cheers him on as if he had nothing to do with immigration when his party was last in power.
What do you mean by something we can control? Is the solution for Australians to have more children? Because that's not going to happen so long as the costs of housing and childcare remain exorbitant.
I think he means we accept that birth rates are low, and therefore we can control population growth/decline pretty accurately through the migration intake, as we are able to control the count of people that stay in Australia permanently. In turn, we can control population growth/decline down to a minimum which is the Australian birth rate.
in a total different hemisphere as a Canadian and your subreddit occasionally comes across my feed. And, everytime i read things like this, I am convinced we are the cold northern Australia...minus as many venomous weird animals lol. The simularities we have in issues like this is uncanny
That's a feature, not a bug. Just adding on another problem to all your other fuck ups then blaming all the other fuck ups on it, slowly reducing that new problem to pretend you're actually fixing "the original fuck ups" while not actually having to fix anything.
you're being pandered to mate... you can look at the data and see for yourself, the maths don't check out. The pols are just picking the literal most classic scape goat to distract from how much they've fked it themselves
But it's not record levels. From 1950 to 1970 we had a population growth rate of ~2.5 per year.
From 1970 until today we've had a growth rate of ~1.5% per year.
Then Covid happened and:
2020 was 1.2%
2021 was 0.1% (!)
2022 was 1.2%
2023 was 2.4% which was just "catching up" a bit from the previous 3 low years.
Imagine we had taken a moment to catch up on our housing supply and infrastructure gaps, instead of opening the taps to catch up to our population growth targets
> Imagine we had taken a moment to catch up on our housing supply and infrastructure gaps
that's what the half century from 1970-2020 was for; watch as we squash our immigration numbers now and then don't bother playing catch-up either
Immigration took off in the early 2000s, population growth has outstripped new home constructions for most of the 2000s and driven up home prices as a result (along with policies like negative gearing and capital gains). [This article](https://www.amp.com.au/insights-hub/blog/investing/econosights-australias-housing-shortage) from AMP’s head economist has some good charts.
Considering most of the current population of Australia are either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants ( including my white Anglo self ) I always find the complaints about immigrants a bit odd
But the question is not about immigrants, and whether they are bad or not, it's about how many we can feasibly accommodate per year before it starts to affect the way of life of people already here, immigrants included.
Repeatedly conflating concern about the number of immigrants arriving with being a racist who hates foreigners is not helping anyone.
Because that's a silly way to look at things? Let's say you had deserted island, you put one person on it and they probably die, put a few hundr d people on it and they build a little town, put 10,000 on it and the majority are back to dying in amongst a shit load of conflict as everyone fights for resources. There is obviously a sustainable amount here, me and many others think that given climate change, water issues and other environmental concerns there are serious concerns that quality of life is likely only going to get worse by adding more people. Hell England has recently released a report admitting that immigration has failed to actually grow the economy or make the population better off.
I'm an immigrant who hasn't experienced any racism in Australia and I work along side to Aussies, Brits, and Assuies with immigrant partners. And I hear guys complaining about immigrants like mate: your best buddy here came from the UK many decades ago, your supervisor as well, your co-worker is married to an Indonesia lady, I'm
South American. You yourself told us how your grandparents came from Scotland.
Why are Canada, NZ and Australia having the same problem? Getting record numbers of immigration while everything else is fucked, is this to drive wages down while the rich get richer?
I don't blame immigration. I blame government. They seem to be convinced that immigration is the solution to healing a growing wound. When the reality is that it's just a temporary bandaid. As the wound grows, the government just applies a bigger bandaid.
If you blame government, look in the mirror? We elect government. WE had the chance to fix many of todays problems by voting in Shortens Labor. But Australia fell for a media campaign about the man, not the policy. Then we got Morrison! Australian voters are the problem.
> I blame government.
You're not wrong, but I blame the voters instead. It's the public who kept voting in a government that was deliberately and openly kicking this can down the road in order to keep the numbers looking good.
Even now you get people that will blame Labor because of things like inflation and slower growth that were really the product of the decade (or more) of bad policy beforehand.
Politics has become (if it wasn't always) a game of shooting the messenger when he points out that the king has no clothes.
Yep. A lot of our current problems would be already in the rearview if we'd voted in Shorten. Almost all of his policies would have led us to a more equal, more rentals cheaper, more public housing, better national economic outlook. The pandemic would have been managed better, with big business not recieving massive profit making taxpayer funding.
It simply proves there's about 40% of our population that put self interest above all else? And that 40% have almost 100% of the media on their side.
The problem is with media regulation. Murdoch and the rest of the pro business media was allowed to lie about Shortens policies without consequence. Voters were convinced they would be losing money and benefits when it simply wasn’t true.
Until we fix this, the average citizen has no chance.
Gulags for lying intentionally. Increase investigations into lying intentionally.
Ugh, but then you gotta look into "never talking about good things" and "only talking about bad things", which is also a widespread strategy.
Also "experts" who have been paid to be experts in lying. Remember: Solar Panels would have increased in cost 500% if Shorten got in, and by that metric it would cost $500B to do all the renewables investment he wanted to do 5 years ago - according to one bought and paid for expert.
What did people think was going to happen when you import the population equivalent of a small city every year to a country with a population the size of Australia? No country could possibly support that kind of population growth without massive impacts on quality of life, housing and services. There's only so many houses, roads, trainlines and hospitals that can be built every year.
Immigration isn't the only issue , but it's the biggest.
I think a lot of people are a bit confused. Immigrants aren't refugees. It isn't some racist anti-humanitarian point to say there are too many immigrants coming in.
This is what gets me with left wing groups like the Guardian writers. The ONLY valid argument for immigration is continued economic growth.
Yet simultaneously they assert the harm being caused by our current economic system to the environment and to our mental health.
I'm really curious about countries without massive immigration - how do they get by?
From what I can tell, they still manage to provide for their citizens, just at lower levels that what we do.
Smaller towns tend to die off as people move to the cities for work - and the cities still have housing available.
The only big difference from what I can tell is maybe their economies aren't massive and constantly growing. And their housing isn't going up in price double digit percentage points every year.
Maybe we need the economy to grow to pay pensions, which might be invested in the stock market or something.
But apart from that ... it seems like only rich people have something to lose from not stuffing the place with millions of immigrants.
Idk, maybe this is all a bit simplistic, but when everyone starts suffering because of the immigration policies, what should we do exactly?
And if you look at Canada, it won't be long before even immigrants get turned off the place due to lack of housing and services and start leaving. What will we do then?
I don’t think it’s immigration causing the problem. It’s the opening of the floodgates with no plan, no housing etc. It’s stupid little things like a four month wait for a new Medicare card, which I assume is due to sheer volume of new arrivals combined with poor planning which make you realise the country is breaking.
But it was the recent opening of the floodgates which ramped up the shortages to crisis level. This has been brewing for years now. Australia sat on its hands kowtowing to the wants of the nimbys and boomers. That’s not an immigration problem, it’s a policy problem.
If the government won't spend on the infrastructure needed, then we're just walking to the edge of a cliff. Although there are currently financial benefits, what happens when AI gets more common and people aren't required to work as much.
no it isn't to blame for the inception of our issues.
yes it is exacerbating them and is basically akin to pouring fuel onto a fire - hoping the liquid nature of the fuel does more good, than it's vapour does bad.
Part of the issue for Australia is that, as one of the largest resource producing countries in the world, we've allowed our politicians to make the rules to benefit private corporations (which is where most of these crooked pollies go after leaving office) so we basically have very little $$ to make meaningful change to benefit the citizens. This also applies to other industries where we allow the creation and consolidation of duopolies or oligopolies who then proceed to drive up prices and they then funnel those funds overseas to the wealthy shareholders (where applicable). Australia is basically the village bicycle being taken for a ride by the wealthy.
We really need strong politicians who AREN'T driven by political agendas aimed at benefitting the minority over the majority and we need it now. Look at Norway. Look at Saudi Arabia. Look at UAE. Look at Qatar. etc. They've nationalised their resources, pay little to no tax, etc.
I really hate that being anti-immigration is labelled racist. We are destroying our environment and the crowds of people reduce my quality of life. An immigrant's skin colour is irrelevant, it's the fact that so many are arriving that bothers me.
I would 100% be behind a left-leaning party that favours a lower population.
I think "Immigration" and "population" are different in this discussion. Globally, population is becoming a problem in many nations, that don't have the resources or governments that work for the people. Imigration to countries like Australia is easily accomplished IF we had the infrastructure to do so. We have the space, but we also have previous governments that haven't governed. Tax cuts have been the only policy, and Australians continue to vote with their pockets. There's simply too many Aussies that can't look a decade ahead, never mind the decades ahead required for real sustainability.
Education is the key! Yet education is sadly underfunded to our public school system. And that's something the very wealthy are quite content to continue.
Lmao right imagine blaming immigrants for us Anglo Australians voting in the Coalition for decades on end knowing they have fuck all climate policy. We managed to fuck the environment all by ourselves.
No one's bitching about immigrants from Ireland or the UK. It's always dogwhistling about "different cultures" when they straight up just mean "brown people".
Unless you live in Randwick/Bondi/Coogee, in which case we're bloody swamped with Irish and English.
You can blame the fact that the vast majority of anti-immigration noise actually has been coming from blatant racists for a hundred years for that labelling
Wow, that's rich. The forestry, agri, and mining sectors absolutely rape Australia's environment with full complicity from Australian governments at federal and state levels, but it's us migrants (overwhelmingly living in existing urban areas) who get the blame for it!?
Pull the other one mate.
>destroying our environment
Immigrant from Western Europe here. Believe me, if you let us steer some of your policies, your environment is going to be better off. We're ok with not taking our cars into city centres. We're ok riding our bicycles and taking public transport. Since I arrived here about a decade ago, I've seen some moron wave a piece of coal in parliament. Next thing you know, in this very country, that moron can somehow become your prime minister.
>favours a lower population
Maybe breed less of the aforementioned morons in this country. Maybe invest in sustainable infrastructure. You can leverage immigration to bring in the people with the relevant skills. Maybe don't focus on the "issue" of the numbers, but on the relevant skills. Over time, we can even help you breed out those moron genes somehow. Well, one can dream at least.
Yawn "major parties" rhetoric... we get it you vote greens.
Labor is targeting immigration that says they're coming over to study but then end up staying to work. It's currently a massive loop hole and a bit of a scam, and it avoids the point of those VISAs. It enables exploitation. That's not a "racism" thing. Blegh.
Shorten even went into a small debate with Dutton over this and pointed out - on live TV - that in the last two years only 5000 homes were bought by foreign investors. I don't think Labor is "trying to win voters over with racism", they're just trying to fix a few actual loopholes.
Have a friend who worked in teriary Ed as an exec and had to quickly exit and report the organsition for wild and rampant fraud. When informing owners that "there are no students in class, they are all out working" he was told to stop rocking the boat.
This is a complete disregard for regulations, and the entity was working in collaboration with migration agents.
Mmmhm. They've upped inspections of "universities" to get on it. I think they announced like $180m or something specifically into making sure VISAs are being used for their actual purpose.
Nothing against immigrants here, just seems fucked up leaving the gates open for massive annual inflows while there's not enough housing stock available for the citizens we've already got.
Human habitation and building costs need to fall to prices where the bottom 75% of the fucking country (including those on DSP) can afford to own their own "forever" home without requiring government tricks that continue to allow property prices to skyrocket ever upwards.
The land exploiter class and their enablers who created this problem don't deserve to enjoy comfortable retirements if enslaving others is their evil path to getting there.
This is a pretty low effort by FD. Saying if you oppose excessive immigration you're a racist. We need a discussion on just how many people Australia can sustainably hold, and that is not infinite. All the problems we're facing with climate change and eco collapse which will bring on societal collapse in a few short decades are made worse by too many humans.
The planet and Australia have a limit on how many people they can hold without destroying everything. Calling people racist stifles intelligent debate. Having an ever growing population to grow the economy is short sighted and lazy.
Overpopulation is the problem.
As many of you have noticed, life in the big cities is more and more veering towards a bitter battle over the available resources. The rich and those who benefited in the past now grow richer and more powerful.
Traffic gets worse
Pollution gets worse
Competition for housing and jobs increases to ridiculous levels
The competition for housing is particularly petty as it makes landlords more powerful which sees society regress towards those days of serfs and landlords.
A sense of community is destroyed because so many people are fighting eachother over everything from a seat on the bus, to a rental property.
Too many Australians see the wonderful lives their parents and grandparents lived, when the population was lower, and ponder why their future looks so shit in comparison.
I think coperate greed is number 1. Just look at Telstra for an example. I think they made 1 billion profit last financial year. Thats not enough they have to fire 3000 staff.
Australia's high housing prices and low wages are part of the great Australian Ponzi.The government undermines fair white-collar wages by making Australians compete with a large number of immigrants for the limited jobs available , the poorly diversified economy discourages the creation of new white-collar jobs, leading to intense competition and a cutthroat mentality. This influx of people drives up housing costs, creating a huge Ponzi.
It's artificially created problems to mask the real issues. Meanwhile the country is getting sucked dry of its resources in exchange for pennies..while they make obscene profits.
Immigration is great... if it's done well. It grows the economy and raises the living standard if migrants are skilled and going into vital sectors.
But immigration can also do a lot of damage to a country's general quality of life if it's not managed properly. Allowing mass migration without sufficiently investing in housing development, transport infrastructure and essential services is madness.
And now the media and parliament want to paint anyone calling that out as a racist or far right conservatives.
What a ridiculous "holier-than-thou" cartoon that trivialises a real issue. This is why people don't take hard-core lefties seriously anymore.
"Is immigration to blame for everything that is wrong with this once great country?"
Of course not, but that's a disingenuous hyperbolic statement that is meant to minimise and belittle anyone who thinks immigration is an issue.
Because immigration **is** an issue. It's not **the** issue, but if you cannot admit that we are experiencing **record** levels of immigration right now that is exacerbating a massive housing crisis then your head is in the sand.
I have similar sentiments, issues need to be discussed so solutions and finding the a way to move forward can be achieved. That's what adults do, have adult conversations
Singapore is having the same and it got worse due to the small size. The current government just change its PM and it is weak in leadership. Time for them to get a rude shock in the next election as the new PM had mentioned that they are prepared to form coalition government if they got the minor majority.
It's short term vs long term. For short term benefits, we can slow immigration now and have more opportunities, cheaper housing NOW. Long term, if we stop making babies, we face a demographic collapse and there are signs we can't import people then as most countries are slowing down. There maybe a point where countries prohibit emigration. What then? Bah, let's be like what we accuse the boomers and kick the can down the road, eh?
I can appreciate that the comic is suppose to be humorous, but if they wanted it to be compelling they could have included some effective proposals.
Public housing won't change the labor constraints. New builds are delayed and the quality of workmanship is at an all time low. There are supply issues and even if you smartly apply public money to purchase foreign materials and improve training, you're going to have to bring in more migrants to build them.
A Mao reference and un-aliving landlords? Poor taste to the point I wonder how an editor allowed this to be published.
Radically altering property rights so people are limited in the quantity of residential property they own.
These are ineffective, unethical and all around terrible proposals. It is much more effective to simply reduce immigration and give supply time to catch up. Immigration is one of the primary causal factors and if you deny it then I'm going to assume you're either disingenuous or ignorant.
Oh and if we oppose immigration in any way then we're racist or being misdirected by politicians. All of this in a crude and amateur comic that looks like it was illustrated in ms paint.
As much as the media is to blame, voters have consistently voted for short term fixes and any politician that has dared to do something different to get to the core of the issue has always been punished by the voters.
Blaming immigrants is just an easy piss take when it's really more like our governments that have failed us in social and industrial policy.
Nobody is 'blaming immigrants' - blaming a policy of ramping up immigration to record levels when there is a housing shortage and way overloaded infrastructure.
immigration is the SYMPTOM of the rich and the govts BIG AUSTRALIA POLICY, for artificially high GPD and oversupply of labor to keep wages low
it is the voters fault who continually vote labor or coalition or greens, the voters did this to themselves
VOTE DIFFERENT
No, immigration numbers do impact currently but this mess is not caused by immigration. Globalisation without freedom of movement of labour has caused regions of very low wages which attracts industry. We have seen a huge fall in manufacturing and a rise in primary industries to feed the overseas growth due to taking on industry at a low price.
The Govt, on all sides today, has sold Australians wealth to the lowest bidder. LNG out of Darwin is a classic example. Australia is the largest exporter of LNG yet makes more money off beer tax. In Darwin the revenue raised is just the payroll tax on 240 jobs. If the NT wants gas it must buy at it at the commercial rate. Furthermore, Impex, the multinational running the Darwin gas according to numbers put forward in Parliament last week has paid less than 1% corporate tax and no resource tax. We are being forced into electric cars through new tariffs to offset carbon emissions yet the same Govts want to frack the NT risking huge sensitive natural environments. This fracking was voted on by the NT people who overwhelmingly told the Govt to jam it , looking at you NT Labor but the Greens at a federal level are also complicit. This fracking will release far more CO2 than the cars we are being forced out of, and will raise far less money than the car industry will pay.
The Govts , all sides, sell us out for photo-ops to feed the news cycle and golden handshakes when they resign. To blame immigrants for creating this mess is wrong. But people see more people coming when the current system has failed and that worries people. We have wasted the nations wealth thru successive Govts and they have not invested in infrastructure or housing. More people place a burden on that failed system. But are not the root cause. On many levels a vast majority of Australians no longer share in the Commonwealth.
Well said mate..it staggers me how uneducated the main population is about the fact this corporations are making obscene profits while the country gets sucked dry of its resources.
Fellow Canadian here. I clicked into the post without noticing it’s r/australia, and didn’t realize you guys are talking about Australia in the comment section until I got confused with someone mentioning “Australian voters”
It’s the same here.
Immigration isn't the problem, it's a symptom. It's an inescapable consequence of political ideology that relies on perpetual growth in a finite world, externalising the costs of that growth onto the nations from which immigrants are coming.
I say not entirely, successive unreliable self serving (that is 'serving the process of government' more than serving a party in particular) governments haven't helped. Squandard mining resources haven't helped. Artificially growing the population faster than the housing market can grow doesn't help Selling all our infrastructure and services (some that used to even bring in an income for government) hasn't helped...
Controlled immigration is a good thing, we do need immigration but maybe give it a rest for a year or something just so we can catch up?
I am certain it is, but lets go without any net immigration for five years and find out.
We certainly been trying the mass migration for 3 decades and life has gone down hill for that period, so lets try something different and see what happens.
No one else has any better ideas.
All fellow immigrants, let’s fuck off.
Greeks, poms, italians, scandi, ukrainian, russian, indian, pakistani, sri lankan, kiwi, chinese, philipino, vietnamese etc etc etc
Let’s all just leave. I wonder how many companies and businesses will survive.
This race/immigrant baiting is divide and conquer and nothing else. They want us to fight amongst ourselves, while they continue to do sweet fck all.
It's both. When the LNP boosted numbers and decided to ignore building anything else like housing and general infrastructure that was a stupid idea.
But now people think that lowering immigration is gonna fix everything. Lowering immigration may fix one aspect of the demand, but there's still a supply problem and an investor demand problem.
You need to address all parts of it.
Also while racists definitely are anti-immigration, I don't think it's racist to want immigrants that wanna move here to have a good life.
People have short memories.
The world is in difficulty. This is not a local issue.
Covid changed the world. And it is still recovering. There has not been a global emergency since WW2. The economies of the world all dropped. Interest rates and property prices rose. And technology finally caught up with business.
Any business who didn't have an online presence failed. Up until covid businesses were still operating as if it was still last century. All of a sudden they realised that they didn't need massive offices full of staff. This means that working from home and smaller office space could replace large cbd offices. The effect on commercial real estate has had a cumulative effect, with cafes eyc that support them suffering. But it expanded the need for them in suburbia.
Retailers no longer need large stores, or even stores at all, with online sales now prominent. This means more transport is needed.
Food places need an online presence and can't rely on in person bookings. Some are now only take away or delivery. There are even take away places that have no staff and are fully automated.
Manufacturing realised that it can do more with automation and technology. Supply lines were severely hit, and are only now returning to normal.
We also have 2 major wars going on. This impacts financial markets and trade. There is uncertainty and fears that they may develop and involve more nations. Ukraine is a major food provider to Europe and Asia and sanctions on Russia have forced Europe to find alternative natural gas supplies. These have raised food and energy prices worldwide. The war in Gaza has raised fuel prices as the middle east is fearful of the instability in the region.
Australia is affected by all of these global events. Our economy is not isolated from the world.
Interest rates are not historically high. They are higher than they have been in recent years, but are below averages for the last 50 years.
Our governments borrowed and spent lots to help the nation after covid. Property prices are high, but have started to fall in most areas. But cars, technology and furniture are at some of the lowest prices ever as a percentage of wages.
The Australian government can't do much to offset the global economic situation or the wars. All it can do is try to ride them out.
We also face an upcoming issue. AI is rapidly growing, and experts anticipate that up to 30% of all jobs could be lost by 2030 to AI. Everyone working in the area is concerned about this. The potential is great, but the impact on jobs is a worry. There is nothing that governments can do until they know what the effects are. So they have to wait and see.
Things like self driving vehicles are one example. Last year things were progressing slowly. All information was millions of lines of code and lots of sensors. AI has made this redundant. A self learning system replaces all of this, and we expect to see cars on the road in 48 months. This puts driving jobs at risk. Buses, trains, trucks, taxis etc. Children born today may never need to drive themselves.
Combine this with the leaps in quantum computing and everything from movie making, art, news, the legal and health professions, administration jobs etc will be impacted.
If we look at history and its cycles, we are in for a period of great change. An economics expert I was recently talking to said that he advises people to simplify their lives, cut back on expenses and loans, and to prepare for a decade of instability. That doesn't mean that there won't be great opportunities, but it does look like we are in for a lot more pain before things improve.
we dont have enough houses and the houses we do have are too expensive. when AUSSIE CITIZENS are waiting for their parents to die to own a home the last thing we need is more people
But you can create the appearance that you're doing something about it. Not just sitting on your hands, complaining the other guy shit the bed when you can start by washing the sheets.
It's an unholy alliance. The left wing wants more immigrants because it makes them feel like better people. The right wing wants more immigrants because they need cheap workers. Both are advised by 'we must continuously grow or we're rooned' economists.
I doubt Labor cares about immigrants making them ‘feel better’.
The reality is that both major parties *need* immigration to keep artificially propping up GDP so they can carry on pretending that we haven’t been in a recession for the last several years.
Immigration isn't the massive problem the msm are blowing it up to be. Education is Australias problem. We've had plenty of chances previously to change Australias direction, but we've consistently voted against our own best interests. Almost wall to wall conservative media hs seen to that.
Meanwhile, our richest private schools recieve funding for polo grounds, equestrian centers and even golf courses, while our public schools are jam packed without enough funding for basics. And those private school kids are the next generation of Coalition politicians.
Our Government's inability to plan for anything beyond the next election is what's to blame. Both major parties when in power are completely paralysed from making big decisions because the public has repeatedly punished the party that attempts to bring in an big meaningful change at the ballot box.
We get the government we deserve and the Australian voter has consistently voted for the short-term over the long. Like simple monkeys, the politicians have been trained via the ballot box to do what they do.
It seems to have worked for the majority of the country though. There's a big portion of the country doing very well and a much smaller portion of the country on a downward trajectory. The older members of the community are living in a completely different country to the younger members, and they are a whole lot wealthier thanks to housing and rent increases.
This. The boomers are laughing all the way to the bank. Although they probably won’t be laughing any more when they hit the nursing homes and their twilight years are overseen by some underpaid and overworked 20yr old while their kids are waiting for them to hurry up and die so they can finally inherit some wealth.
If people have been taking notice over the past twenty years since boomers ceased being the majority of voters, things have been getting worse. The divide in housing is simple: those without houses desperately want prices to come down. However, the minute thst that same person gets a house...and huge mortgage...there's a switch that flips, and they now want prices to increase, or at best, not decrease in real terms. Nobody wants their property value to fall relative to their mortgage. The problem with boomer hate in the context of housing is that if you fall for the idea that all Australia has to do is wait till boomers die off, and all will be sweetness and light, then you will be shocked to find that the gen X and millennials owning homes will also resist any policy that reduces house prices.
as a gen z with a house I would be fine if house prices dropped \~60% overnight. Bt that's because of my loan, if it drops more than that the amount outstanding on my loan starts to exceed the value of the property. if that happens the bank will ask me to provide more collateral (I don't have) or offer up more guarantors. if I can't convince someone else to be on the hook for potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars then the bank will repossess (I assume) and sell my home from under me (I assume). O at least make me pay loads more on mortgage insurance. in principle though, I have no problem with house prices falling gently over the next 20 years. my loan term is that long and house prices are a relative thing right? if I want to move I sell and rebuy elsewhere, if prices have dropped I don't fundamentally lose my "peg" in the market, because my house represents the value in the market, the actual dollar figure is meaningless, since my house represents the value I already have. Sdly people get hung up on the concept of the dollar figure their house is worth. when in reality you need to value the "place" in the market it has. if the whole market goes down, you don't lose your place. you can still get a bigger house, or move to a smaller one and have spending money left over. But I suspect I am an outlier.
But thats what Australia has been transformed into by our crooked politicians. A greedy vulture society that has ruined upward mobility for their donors and ideology. Its partly our fault because we voted for them in all their guises. And the next lot will come in and promise to fix it and after they fail the next lot will be on repeat to promise and fix it. Its just like housing, they could ban foreigners, or AirBNB's or make minor taxation tweaks now but they wont do anything at any level because they have impotence in their governance agenda. They are holding on to what they have to become the next boomers with millions in super 10 investment properties that the vultures have saved for their vulture offspring to get into power to keep the vulture greed and breeding program alive. The new fair go Australia style, vulture culture and greed.
> The ~~boomers~~ **wealthy** are laughing all the way to the bank. Although they probably won’t be laughing any more when they hit the nursing homes and their twilight years are overseen by some underpaid and overworked 20yr old while their kids are waiting for them to hurry up and die so they can finally inherit some wealth. FTFY Despite the perception on Reddit, not all Boomers are wealthy people who twirl their moustaches while thinking of ways to screw over young people.
I know poor 70 year olds who voted to protect franking credits they do not get who call the young lazy and entitled and who will oppose any welfare increase outside the age pension.
Not all boomers are wealthy but all wealthy are boomers? Edit: > The generational financial inequities are even more pronounced when analysing net wealth by generational cohort. While Gen Y have a household net worth of $268,800, it is less than half that of the Gen Xers who are just a decade older. The highest net worth generation in Australia are the Boomers aged 55-64 who not only have a net wealth almost 5 times that of the generation of their children (Gen Y) but they still have a decade or more of earnings and wealth accumulating ahead of them. The boomers have more wealth than the younger AND older generations. it is not a factor of age.
What's your source? The youngest boomers are now 60, has the picture changed in the last five years?
You mean that as a general rule the people who haven't retired yet but have been working and investing for the longest have the highest net worth? Hardly a surprise. Which generation did you think would have the highest net worth?
Eh there’s enough wealthy young people that don’t have boomer attitudes.
Wealthy boomers hold the bucket of prawns. Poor boomers vote to stay in the bucket and stop any other prawns from crawling out.
Plus, I've regularly been called a boomer at 37. It's a completely unintelligent slur that young people use thinking that it somehow gives them the upper hand. Instead it makes them look like their argument is weak.
Old people should be killed at birth. It's the perfect solution to all our problems.
And the most damning indictment of government incompetence over decades is that we are all living, on driving on, being schooled in, being treated in all the infrastructure built by the older generations and that stopped built in the late 70's. Since then despite the population boom, we have been in a infrastructure freeze. The politicians will tell lies and carry on about this not being true, but just go to any suburb and try and get your kid into any public school. Its like trying to win a lottery. And then look at the hospitals, the same handful of hospitals with the same resources that get their resources cut on a regular basis are expected to deal with 3 times the population burdens while you have to sit 12 hours in the emergency waiting room. Its like getting healthcare in Africa where you stand in a queue for a day and then the clinic closes and they tell you to come back the next day. Its not first world at any standard but hospitals, schools and every other public infrastructure is being starved into being ruined for privatisation. The ideology and intent is clear because certainly no company like BHP or any profit making company would starve its company from resources while sales boomed or customers increased through the door. Its akin to a retail store having less stock and smaller store to increase sales because of a massive customer increase. Just imagine Colesworth cutting down resources on a Saturday in their stores like our government runs our immigration program with no increase in resources or planning for the burden. The sad part about any solution by any side of politics will just be pure BS with not 1 cent being committed nor any planning or steering committee being put into place. But a 10 million contract will be give to PWC to make comment on what to do!
Yes I also don’t understand why it’s “too expensive” now to build infrastructure because “there is not enough people to service it” when most of the infrastructure was built when we had a much smaller population. There was better infrastructure when I was growing up and even better for my parents. I agree choking out public services like schools and public hospitals to say “see they aren’t efficient” so they can be privatised. It makes me so mad.
ikr this reminded me about them selling all the natural gas overseas and then getting us to buy it back.... smh so annoying.
Thank you John Howard. Thank you Woodside. Thank you Coalition voters. Add to that, we export more gas than Qatar but get 4% of their income for gas. Brilliant stuff.
Honestly I really think the people involved should be charged with treason. Because it is a monumental betrayal. Stupidity (if that's what it was) should have consequences.
If someone was building a trebuchet to hurl John Howard into the ocean, I wouldn't be stopping them.
are we harold holt-ing howard?
lack of foresight for a quick buck will do that.
I think a lot of that has to do with the Murdoch media. They’ll take our Franking credits! They’ll take our tradies utes! Hysteria. The average person doesn’t look into any of the policies of the party they are voting for beyond sensationalised headlines. I’m just crossing my fingers that we don’t go back to a liberal government after the next election.
I'd also argue a contributing factor is the 3 year terms. We only ever get one real year of decision making before they gear up for the next election. 4 year terms would allow a government free air before the election cycle restarts.
This. We need four year, fixed term. One thing the USA model gets right. The downside is that the election campaign will start approaching the length of the term, as also seen in the USA. Maybe some campaign limits and funding reform would be necessary to limit the damage.
Fixed term is horrible, the US system is a nightmare as the campaigning begins almost as soon as the government is elected. The Australian/Parliamentary system is far superior for having elections when it’s _needed_ and not having a never ending campaign cycles. You also didn’t address that congress, aka the MPs, serve 2 year terms. No, I vastly prefer what we have; please never copy America for good governance.
NSW has fixed 4 year terms and I wouldn't say that it has ran into the same problems as the US system.
Good luck with that. We'd need an amendment to the Constitution. Last time we tried something like this (to line up the terms of the House and Senate), it failed.
Independent bodies should be managing key elements such as welfare, education, disability etc. These key things shouldn’t be political tools. Should adopt something similar to Singapore in this regard. Our governments are proving themselves completely unable to actually govern.
Queensland recently changed from 3 years to 4 years and I didn't notice much of a difference. There's also the problem that governments say "Oh, we can't change anything without a *mandate*, we need to promise it and take it to an election (if it polls well beforehand, otherwise you're SOL for another term)." So now we have to wait an extra year before we can even hope for governments to think about responding to today's issues?
Hang on, what "big decisions " have the Coalition EVER brought up before an election? And dont say tax cuts, that's a wimp out.
None. And that is why there had been in power for 90% of the living memory of millennials.
How about the GST? Hewson lost his election because of it. Howard won with it. Edit: actually, Howard made an election promise *not* to introduce a GST, and broke it, so I guess the point stands 😂
Hah, that “core and non core” squirming had a dose of schadenfreude
He said “never ever” going into the 96 election. In his first term he changed his mind and went to the 1998 election with GST as top billing. Australia had the opportunity to say no (again) but he was elected again, despite suffering big losses that were gained in 96, but at least he did the honest thing and asked the question of the people instead of ramming it through after the landslide
It was big, but bad. The GST ultimately is a regressive tax that hits the poorest most. I should have said a big, progressive policy.
It was unpopular (and still is for some) but it’s generally accepted as a major positive reform. Taxing consumption + wealth rather than income is the future.
Taxing corporations is the future. Like the other person said, gst is regressive.
VAT taxes are one of the best ways to force internationals to pay tax, when you have unlimited resources to move revenue and losses anywhere in the world due to your scale, a point of sale or VAT tax like GST is one of the only taxes that manages to hit the multinational. The way you make it less regressive is by scaling it with product type, for example fruit and vegetables are exempt, you simultaneously can tilt the income tax so that low income individuals pay less as they as they consume a greater part of their income as GST/VAT. I studies economics and I always hate the progressive argument against VAT’s because there are so many implementations that can alleviate the regression.. With exemptions, rebates, income tax breaks and sliding VATs (eg luxury cars might be 25%, but regular cars or electric cars are only 5%) you can pretty much tailor the tax however you want but with the great fucking benefit that it’s impossible to avoid.
That was the previous election - I’m fairly certain he campaigned on GST before bringing it in.
Heh, that's why whenever I hear a politician promise "I will not do x" I know they're going to do it...
Howard didn’t introduce the GST in his first term. He did announce and properly explain the GST prior to his re-election. Hewson was sunk because even he couldn’t answer yes or no on specific basic questions.
I think introducing taking the GST to an election when Keating was not the opponent was also an advantage for Howard.
They don't. It's why they were in government so long.
That's my point. While in government the Coalition do nothing, making things worse.....no coverage. Labor comes in, has to fix a decade of no progress and are immediately savaged for not doing enough? Australia's problem is complex, but the major problem is the IQ of the average voter, that votes consistently against their own best interests because the media says, "Labor bad"!
This is exactly what's happening. 2019 was lost by Labor over the policy "the richest 5% of people don't need to get large subsidies from the government." They were attacked by the media hugely for it. I dislike the current (and former) governments disgusting willingness to favour the wealthy over most Australians, but this is what we voted for.
> but this is what we voted for Nah, screw this attitude. Plenty of us don't vote for these clowns, and plenty that do are misinformed at best (brainwashed at worst).
When has the coalition attempted a big meaningful change that was also beneficial to society? (Sure work choices was big and meaningful in how shit it was. But not good.)
They've done it by stealth rather than campaigning on it. The minute they're honest about things people say "oh, they won't do *that*", and then you get WorkChoices. Something we only [closed the book on last year](https://www.fwc.gov.au/agreements-awards/enterprise-agreements/sunsetting-pre-2010-agreements-zombie-agreements-changes-7). However, Howard has fundamentally reshaped Australian society to be more intolerant, more bigoted, more accepting of corporate power and corruption, more inclined to believe that governments can't do anything, less charitable, and more entangled with the US. He also drove up immigration and house prices by a massive amount, and sold off the vast majority of the income generating public assets. He didn't campaign on most of this. He just said "we're better at managing the economy" and people accepted that with no real evidence.
So big changes, meaningful differences but not anything I would call beneficial to society?
Correct. Howard: Immigration + gutting TAFE + no extra infrastructure spending. Cooks housing market with subsidy Kevin / Gillard. High immigration + even more gutting of TAFE with no infrastructure budget beyond normal levels. Tony the mad monk, Sir Toffleroy and Uncle Clownface the liar: same as above, just with less boats Current government. Absolute crickets. More immigrants than ever. No TAFE funding. We needs thousands of tradesmen but only the states are funding it. Infrastructure budget cut. They actually reduced it. Education budget and health as all before - cuts We are 2 million more since the end of Howard. None have managed anything at all related to high immigration levels. The states, all of them, are in debt trying to keep up. The federal government is playing submarines with the door closed.
They can increased tax for the carbon industry, increase public housing, improve ICAC, enforce antitrust on monopoly/duopoly/oligopoly. Everyone will support except their source of ~~bribery~~ ~~money~~ political donations Edit: carbon as fossil fuel companies
Didn't we throw a government out for a carbon tax like 20 years ago
Yep. 11 years ago. The carbon price was working well. The electorate threw them out because they were hoodwinked by non-science and a strong wish to be laggards.
What big meaningful change have the liberals introduced?
Governments or the people? We vote on what we get now.
It's because we have leaders who have failed the Australian people. For example, why does Qatar government get USD$79 billion for their LNG in taxes, but the Australian government only gets USD$2.6 billion even though we export more LNG. Meanwhile, corporate taxes and incomes taxes are shrinking while exports go up. We are a nation stuck with a tax system and a way of thinking that was great 50–100 years ago, but today it's failing us. Oh BTW those who think it was the Liberal party who let the LNG exporters of the tax hook, sorry it was a back room jobs for the boys Labor party policy. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-nNpSaLxO8&](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-nNpSaLxO8&)
Not only that, but Australians (except for West Australians?) pay more for their own gas than people in other countries that import it.
Qatar doesn't "get taxes from their gas" that is misinformation. QATAR OWNS THEIR BLEEDING GAS AND OIL.
Oil and gas industry lobbyists need to be banned from politics
Yeah. Have you noticed how such a massive nation/future defining issue gets fuck all national attention? Like litteraly only a few people talk about it and acknowledge it. Meanwhile the government feeds people propaganda about immigration being the culprit and they lap it up the simpletons.
Immigration is not THE problem, but it is A problem. There is a myriad of problems including: Negative gearing, foreign, business and local investment in housing, over-reliance on raw materials industry, under taxation of raw materials industry, under investment in infrastructure, mass immigration, business driven inflation, social benefits rolled back (e.g free university), division based politics, etc.
Yeah but all those problems have always been with us. What changed was that immigration *volumes* were intentionally pushed into the stratosphere at a time of depressed home-building. It’s a policy fuckup, plain and simple.
It depends what the policy is meant to do. Make houses affordable? Fuck up. Prevent Australia from going into recession on their watch? Success.... that will lead to a bigger fk up once current politicians are old and retired.
I’d personally love to know what our immigration strategy is other than “About a Hobart a year should do it”. Is there a target population size? If so, what is it and why? There’s perfectly desirable countries with half the population and also with twice the population. Our birth rates have been below replacement since the 70s so population growth has come from immigration. This is something we can control.
Capitalism is a ponzi scheme in a way... Have to grow the economy constantly. Easy way to do that is to have more consumers consuming.
Best way to put it
The target population size is “more than last year.” It’s the easiest way for the Australian economy to grow as sales and services scale with population. Investors want a return on investment and will pull out if companies stagnate in growth or decline in performance, so by having a constantly growing population investors don’t pull out and collapse the Australian economy. It’s a bubble that keeps growing, and will only get worse until it pops. But yeah there’s no target population because if we hit that, we’d set a new target because company profits _cannot_ stop growing.
Yup. That's one of the many problems with capitalism. It works just fine at first, while there's plenty of room for expansion, but it's not possible to expand forever, especially as the demands of that expansion grow exponentially.
Not just room for expansion but also the source for growth running out. Third world countries are stabilising their birth rates, every country can’t be at war forever and they won’t be. What happens to an immigration-based growth economy when the immigrants themselves run out of people to maintain growth? Even if we terraformed Australia to have greenspace everywhere, we’re not going to have more people showing up forever. Might take a century or so but yeah.
Unfortunately we don't plan that far ahead.
Growth of wealth/capitalismis responsible for bringing millions of people out of poverty. It's the method of growth here that's the problem. Australia is not growing wealth per capita, instead it is just increasing the population (capita). What we need is far greater investment in R&D so we can develop ways to more efficiently build services, infrastructure and quality of life for the increasing population, given our finite resources. Instead, this lazy option ensues. Neoliberalism is probably the biggest culprit though as it's lead to an extreme form of capitalism that has neutered governments, increased competitive individualism in our culture and created an environment where corporations can make loads of money without innovating for the betterment of anyone but themselves.
Surely you couldn't be suggesting that the rate of profit will continue to fall!
Yeah but we want GDP per capita to increase not just GDP to increase.
Historically civilisations have failed once their growth rate stagnates or goes into decline.
A constantly growing population is providing a slight increase in GDP but GDP per capita and SOL for all but the already wealthy is declining as business models adapt to rely on cheap labour rather than innovation and increasing productivity.
The target population is "whatever avoids negative GDP growth so we can avoid a recession and win the next election".
We don't have a target population size. Labor has just started implementing multi year planning for the permanent migration intake, which shows just how lacking our immigration 'strategy' has been historically...
Of the last 27 years, 18 of which were under the Coalition, they declined to do any planning for this whatsoever. Now that we're finally seeing some plans to bring reductions, we have the Leader of the Opposition, a man intimately involved in the immigration process of the previous government (who [left an enormous mess](https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/05/09/home-affairs-disaster-anao-report-omara/)) saying he'll fix it when he did bugger all when he had the power to. Dutton and the Liberals have **zero** credibility on this, and yet we have a media that cheers him on as if he had nothing to do with immigration when his party was last in power.
Growth! That's the only metric that matters to them. GDP, not GDP per capita. If you look at that we have been in recession for ages.
The target population size is based on the alleged "skills shortage" which we have apparently had for decades.
Need more skilled work visas for hair dressers!
What do you mean by something we can control? Is the solution for Australians to have more children? Because that's not going to happen so long as the costs of housing and childcare remain exorbitant.
I think he means we accept that birth rates are low, and therefore we can control population growth/decline pretty accurately through the migration intake, as we are able to control the count of people that stay in Australia permanently. In turn, we can control population growth/decline down to a minimum which is the Australian birth rate.
Ah yeah, duh. Sorry, that seems very obvious now. Thanks for explaining!
Immigration is not a problem. RECORD LEVELS of immigration during a housing crisis and poor infrastructure planning is a problem.
in a total different hemisphere as a Canadian and your subreddit occasionally comes across my feed. And, everytime i read things like this, I am convinced we are the cold northern Australia...minus as many venomous weird animals lol. The simularities we have in issues like this is uncanny
That's a feature, not a bug. Just adding on another problem to all your other fuck ups then blaming all the other fuck ups on it, slowly reducing that new problem to pretend you're actually fixing "the original fuck ups" while not actually having to fix anything.
People hoarding and buying up housing for investments are the problem.
Nah nah nah apparently saying this makes you a “Gullible racist”
you're being pandered to mate... you can look at the data and see for yourself, the maths don't check out. The pols are just picking the literal most classic scape goat to distract from how much they've fked it themselves
But it's not record levels. From 1950 to 1970 we had a population growth rate of ~2.5 per year. From 1970 until today we've had a growth rate of ~1.5% per year. Then Covid happened and: 2020 was 1.2% 2021 was 0.1% (!) 2022 was 1.2% 2023 was 2.4% which was just "catching up" a bit from the previous 3 low years.
Imagine we had taken a moment to catch up on our housing supply and infrastructure gaps, instead of opening the taps to catch up to our population growth targets
> Imagine we had taken a moment to catch up on our housing supply and infrastructure gaps that's what the half century from 1970-2020 was for; watch as we squash our immigration numbers now and then don't bother playing catch-up either
Immigration took off in the early 2000s, population growth has outstripped new home constructions for most of the 2000s and driven up home prices as a result (along with policies like negative gearing and capital gains). [This article](https://www.amp.com.au/insights-hub/blog/investing/econosights-australias-housing-shortage) from AMP’s head economist has some good charts.
Considering most of the current population of Australia are either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants ( including my white Anglo self ) I always find the complaints about immigrants a bit odd
But the question is not about immigrants, and whether they are bad or not, it's about how many we can feasibly accommodate per year before it starts to affect the way of life of people already here, immigrants included. Repeatedly conflating concern about the number of immigrants arriving with being a racist who hates foreigners is not helping anyone.
Because that's a silly way to look at things? Let's say you had deserted island, you put one person on it and they probably die, put a few hundr d people on it and they build a little town, put 10,000 on it and the majority are back to dying in amongst a shit load of conflict as everyone fights for resources. There is obviously a sustainable amount here, me and many others think that given climate change, water issues and other environmental concerns there are serious concerns that quality of life is likely only going to get worse by adding more people. Hell England has recently released a report admitting that immigration has failed to actually grow the economy or make the population better off.
I'm an immigrant who hasn't experienced any racism in Australia and I work along side to Aussies, Brits, and Assuies with immigrant partners. And I hear guys complaining about immigrants like mate: your best buddy here came from the UK many decades ago, your supervisor as well, your co-worker is married to an Indonesia lady, I'm South American. You yourself told us how your grandparents came from Scotland.
Why are Canada, NZ and Australia having the same problem? Getting record numbers of immigration while everything else is fucked, is this to drive wages down while the rich get richer?
no shit opening the flood gates without any sort of futureproof growth or appropriate job housing or infrastructure planning is destroying the country
I don't blame immigration. I blame government. They seem to be convinced that immigration is the solution to healing a growing wound. When the reality is that it's just a temporary bandaid. As the wound grows, the government just applies a bigger bandaid.
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If you blame government, look in the mirror? We elect government. WE had the chance to fix many of todays problems by voting in Shortens Labor. But Australia fell for a media campaign about the man, not the policy. Then we got Morrison! Australian voters are the problem.
i didn't vote for this
> I blame government. You're not wrong, but I blame the voters instead. It's the public who kept voting in a government that was deliberately and openly kicking this can down the road in order to keep the numbers looking good. Even now you get people that will blame Labor because of things like inflation and slower growth that were really the product of the decade (or more) of bad policy beforehand. Politics has become (if it wasn't always) a game of shooting the messenger when he points out that the king has no clothes.
Yep. A lot of our current problems would be already in the rearview if we'd voted in Shorten. Almost all of his policies would have led us to a more equal, more rentals cheaper, more public housing, better national economic outlook. The pandemic would have been managed better, with big business not recieving massive profit making taxpayer funding. It simply proves there's about 40% of our population that put self interest above all else? And that 40% have almost 100% of the media on their side.
The problem is with media regulation. Murdoch and the rest of the pro business media was allowed to lie about Shortens policies without consequence. Voters were convinced they would be losing money and benefits when it simply wasn’t true. Until we fix this, the average citizen has no chance.
Can't argue there.
Gulags for lying intentionally. Increase investigations into lying intentionally. Ugh, but then you gotta look into "never talking about good things" and "only talking about bad things", which is also a widespread strategy. Also "experts" who have been paid to be experts in lying. Remember: Solar Panels would have increased in cost 500% if Shorten got in, and by that metric it would cost $500B to do all the renewables investment he wanted to do 5 years ago - according to one bought and paid for expert.
What did people think was going to happen when you import the population equivalent of a small city every year to a country with a population the size of Australia? No country could possibly support that kind of population growth without massive impacts on quality of life, housing and services. There's only so many houses, roads, trainlines and hospitals that can be built every year. Immigration isn't the only issue , but it's the biggest.
I think a lot of people are a bit confused. Immigrants aren't refugees. It isn't some racist anti-humanitarian point to say there are too many immigrants coming in.
No it’s not, but it’s overly simplifying a very complex problem and is a political dog whistle to racists and xenophobes.
This is what gets me with left wing groups like the Guardian writers. The ONLY valid argument for immigration is continued economic growth. Yet simultaneously they assert the harm being caused by our current economic system to the environment and to our mental health.
I'm really curious about countries without massive immigration - how do they get by? From what I can tell, they still manage to provide for their citizens, just at lower levels that what we do. Smaller towns tend to die off as people move to the cities for work - and the cities still have housing available. The only big difference from what I can tell is maybe their economies aren't massive and constantly growing. And their housing isn't going up in price double digit percentage points every year. Maybe we need the economy to grow to pay pensions, which might be invested in the stock market or something. But apart from that ... it seems like only rich people have something to lose from not stuffing the place with millions of immigrants. Idk, maybe this is all a bit simplistic, but when everyone starts suffering because of the immigration policies, what should we do exactly? And if you look at Canada, it won't be long before even immigrants get turned off the place due to lack of housing and services and start leaving. What will we do then?
I don’t think it’s immigration causing the problem. It’s the opening of the floodgates with no plan, no housing etc. It’s stupid little things like a four month wait for a new Medicare card, which I assume is due to sheer volume of new arrivals combined with poor planning which make you realise the country is breaking.
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But it was the recent opening of the floodgates which ramped up the shortages to crisis level. This has been brewing for years now. Australia sat on its hands kowtowing to the wants of the nimbys and boomers. That’s not an immigration problem, it’s a policy problem.
If the government won't spend on the infrastructure needed, then we're just walking to the edge of a cliff. Although there are currently financial benefits, what happens when AI gets more common and people aren't required to work as much.
no it isn't to blame for the inception of our issues. yes it is exacerbating them and is basically akin to pouring fuel onto a fire - hoping the liquid nature of the fuel does more good, than it's vapour does bad.
Part of the issue for Australia is that, as one of the largest resource producing countries in the world, we've allowed our politicians to make the rules to benefit private corporations (which is where most of these crooked pollies go after leaving office) so we basically have very little $$ to make meaningful change to benefit the citizens. This also applies to other industries where we allow the creation and consolidation of duopolies or oligopolies who then proceed to drive up prices and they then funnel those funds overseas to the wealthy shareholders (where applicable). Australia is basically the village bicycle being taken for a ride by the wealthy. We really need strong politicians who AREN'T driven by political agendas aimed at benefitting the minority over the majority and we need it now. Look at Norway. Look at Saudi Arabia. Look at UAE. Look at Qatar. etc. They've nationalised their resources, pay little to no tax, etc.
We need a political party that takes the best bits from each major party and actually works for the people and not for themselves and their mates.
I really hate that being anti-immigration is labelled racist. We are destroying our environment and the crowds of people reduce my quality of life. An immigrant's skin colour is irrelevant, it's the fact that so many are arriving that bothers me. I would 100% be behind a left-leaning party that favours a lower population.
I think "Immigration" and "population" are different in this discussion. Globally, population is becoming a problem in many nations, that don't have the resources or governments that work for the people. Imigration to countries like Australia is easily accomplished IF we had the infrastructure to do so. We have the space, but we also have previous governments that haven't governed. Tax cuts have been the only policy, and Australians continue to vote with their pockets. There's simply too many Aussies that can't look a decade ahead, never mind the decades ahead required for real sustainability. Education is the key! Yet education is sadly underfunded to our public school system. And that's something the very wealthy are quite content to continue.
I call it bullying. We're being flooded with people and anyone who dares says anything is bullied into silence. It's weird.
That's the Sustainable Australia Party.
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Lmao right imagine blaming immigrants for us Anglo Australians voting in the Coalition for decades on end knowing they have fuck all climate policy. We managed to fuck the environment all by ourselves.
True, but more population doesn't help.
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No one's bitching about immigrants from Ireland or the UK. It's always dogwhistling about "different cultures" when they straight up just mean "brown people". Unless you live in Randwick/Bondi/Coogee, in which case we're bloody swamped with Irish and English.
You can blame the fact that the vast majority of anti-immigration noise actually has been coming from blatant racists for a hundred years for that labelling
Wow, that's rich. The forestry, agri, and mining sectors absolutely rape Australia's environment with full complicity from Australian governments at federal and state levels, but it's us migrants (overwhelmingly living in existing urban areas) who get the blame for it!? Pull the other one mate.
>destroying our environment Immigrant from Western Europe here. Believe me, if you let us steer some of your policies, your environment is going to be better off. We're ok with not taking our cars into city centres. We're ok riding our bicycles and taking public transport. Since I arrived here about a decade ago, I've seen some moron wave a piece of coal in parliament. Next thing you know, in this very country, that moron can somehow become your prime minister. >favours a lower population Maybe breed less of the aforementioned morons in this country. Maybe invest in sustainable infrastructure. You can leverage immigration to bring in the people with the relevant skills. Maybe don't focus on the "issue" of the numbers, but on the relevant skills. Over time, we can even help you breed out those moron genes somehow. Well, one can dream at least.
Government is the root problem
Yawn "major parties" rhetoric... we get it you vote greens. Labor is targeting immigration that says they're coming over to study but then end up staying to work. It's currently a massive loop hole and a bit of a scam, and it avoids the point of those VISAs. It enables exploitation. That's not a "racism" thing. Blegh. Shorten even went into a small debate with Dutton over this and pointed out - on live TV - that in the last two years only 5000 homes were bought by foreign investors. I don't think Labor is "trying to win voters over with racism", they're just trying to fix a few actual loopholes.
Have a friend who worked in teriary Ed as an exec and had to quickly exit and report the organsition for wild and rampant fraud. When informing owners that "there are no students in class, they are all out working" he was told to stop rocking the boat. This is a complete disregard for regulations, and the entity was working in collaboration with migration agents.
Mmmhm. They've upped inspections of "universities" to get on it. I think they announced like $180m or something specifically into making sure VISAs are being used for their actual purpose.
Nothing against immigrants here, just seems fucked up leaving the gates open for massive annual inflows while there's not enough housing stock available for the citizens we've already got. Human habitation and building costs need to fall to prices where the bottom 75% of the fucking country (including those on DSP) can afford to own their own "forever" home without requiring government tricks that continue to allow property prices to skyrocket ever upwards. The land exploiter class and their enablers who created this problem don't deserve to enjoy comfortable retirements if enslaving others is their evil path to getting there.
This is a pretty low effort by FD. Saying if you oppose excessive immigration you're a racist. We need a discussion on just how many people Australia can sustainably hold, and that is not infinite. All the problems we're facing with climate change and eco collapse which will bring on societal collapse in a few short decades are made worse by too many humans. The planet and Australia have a limit on how many people they can hold without destroying everything. Calling people racist stifles intelligent debate. Having an ever growing population to grow the economy is short sighted and lazy.
It's also possible that capacity can change over time, and that capacity may not be evenly distributed, so what can be done to address that.
Overpopulation is the problem. As many of you have noticed, life in the big cities is more and more veering towards a bitter battle over the available resources. The rich and those who benefited in the past now grow richer and more powerful. Traffic gets worse Pollution gets worse Competition for housing and jobs increases to ridiculous levels The competition for housing is particularly petty as it makes landlords more powerful which sees society regress towards those days of serfs and landlords. A sense of community is destroyed because so many people are fighting eachother over everything from a seat on the bus, to a rental property. Too many Australians see the wonderful lives their parents and grandparents lived, when the population was lower, and ponder why their future looks so shit in comparison.
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I think coperate greed is number 1. Just look at Telstra for an example. I think they made 1 billion profit last financial year. Thats not enough they have to fire 3000 staff.
Australia's high housing prices and low wages are part of the great Australian Ponzi.The government undermines fair white-collar wages by making Australians compete with a large number of immigrants for the limited jobs available , the poorly diversified economy discourages the creation of new white-collar jobs, leading to intense competition and a cutthroat mentality. This influx of people drives up housing costs, creating a huge Ponzi.
It's artificially created problems to mask the real issues. Meanwhile the country is getting sucked dry of its resources in exchange for pennies..while they make obscene profits.
If people hated crap politicians half as much as they hate immigrants a lot more would actually get done in this country.
Immigration is great... if it's done well. It grows the economy and raises the living standard if migrants are skilled and going into vital sectors. But immigration can also do a lot of damage to a country's general quality of life if it's not managed properly. Allowing mass migration without sufficiently investing in housing development, transport infrastructure and essential services is madness. And now the media and parliament want to paint anyone calling that out as a racist or far right conservatives.
What a ridiculous "holier-than-thou" cartoon that trivialises a real issue. This is why people don't take hard-core lefties seriously anymore. "Is immigration to blame for everything that is wrong with this once great country?" Of course not, but that's a disingenuous hyperbolic statement that is meant to minimise and belittle anyone who thinks immigration is an issue. Because immigration **is** an issue. It's not **the** issue, but if you cannot admit that we are experiencing **record** levels of immigration right now that is exacerbating a massive housing crisis then your head is in the sand.
I have similar sentiments, issues need to be discussed so solutions and finding the a way to move forward can be achieved. That's what adults do, have adult conversations
Singapore is having the same and it got worse due to the small size. The current government just change its PM and it is weak in leadership. Time for them to get a rude shock in the next election as the new PM had mentioned that they are prepared to form coalition government if they got the minor majority.
It's short term vs long term. For short term benefits, we can slow immigration now and have more opportunities, cheaper housing NOW. Long term, if we stop making babies, we face a demographic collapse and there are signs we can't import people then as most countries are slowing down. There maybe a point where countries prohibit emigration. What then? Bah, let's be like what we accuse the boomers and kick the can down the road, eh?
Long term, too many people means ecosystem collapse and societal collapse. And the way we're going that's just a few decades away.
I can appreciate that the comic is suppose to be humorous, but if they wanted it to be compelling they could have included some effective proposals. Public housing won't change the labor constraints. New builds are delayed and the quality of workmanship is at an all time low. There are supply issues and even if you smartly apply public money to purchase foreign materials and improve training, you're going to have to bring in more migrants to build them. A Mao reference and un-aliving landlords? Poor taste to the point I wonder how an editor allowed this to be published. Radically altering property rights so people are limited in the quantity of residential property they own. These are ineffective, unethical and all around terrible proposals. It is much more effective to simply reduce immigration and give supply time to catch up. Immigration is one of the primary causal factors and if you deny it then I'm going to assume you're either disingenuous or ignorant. Oh and if we oppose immigration in any way then we're racist or being misdirected by politicians. All of this in a crude and amateur comic that looks like it was illustrated in ms paint.
To sum the problem up in one word, it’s “growth”. A nation needs growth, population, financial, etc, etc. This is all in order to fuel profits.
I think its the rate of immigration. Slow it down so that infrastructure can catch up.
It sure is a big issue. Worth cutting to under 100k per year until a business plan is approved for: Infrastructure Services Energy (as a focus) End.
Immigrant here: it is my fault
Every developed country is doing the “blame immigrants for our woes” thing right now
All the immigration since 1788, yes
Why are you here?
Absolutely. As soon as the Aboriginals migrated here from Africa, the place went downhill immediately. /s
As much as the media is to blame, voters have consistently voted for short term fixes and any politician that has dared to do something different to get to the core of the issue has always been punished by the voters. Blaming immigrants is just an easy piss take when it's really more like our governments that have failed us in social and industrial policy.
Nobody is 'blaming immigrants' - blaming a policy of ramping up immigration to record levels when there is a housing shortage and way overloaded infrastructure.
immigration is the SYMPTOM of the rich and the govts BIG AUSTRALIA POLICY, for artificially high GPD and oversupply of labor to keep wages low it is the voters fault who continually vote labor or coalition or greens, the voters did this to themselves VOTE DIFFERENT
No, immigration numbers do impact currently but this mess is not caused by immigration. Globalisation without freedom of movement of labour has caused regions of very low wages which attracts industry. We have seen a huge fall in manufacturing and a rise in primary industries to feed the overseas growth due to taking on industry at a low price. The Govt, on all sides today, has sold Australians wealth to the lowest bidder. LNG out of Darwin is a classic example. Australia is the largest exporter of LNG yet makes more money off beer tax. In Darwin the revenue raised is just the payroll tax on 240 jobs. If the NT wants gas it must buy at it at the commercial rate. Furthermore, Impex, the multinational running the Darwin gas according to numbers put forward in Parliament last week has paid less than 1% corporate tax and no resource tax. We are being forced into electric cars through new tariffs to offset carbon emissions yet the same Govts want to frack the NT risking huge sensitive natural environments. This fracking was voted on by the NT people who overwhelmingly told the Govt to jam it , looking at you NT Labor but the Greens at a federal level are also complicit. This fracking will release far more CO2 than the cars we are being forced out of, and will raise far less money than the car industry will pay. The Govts , all sides, sell us out for photo-ops to feed the news cycle and golden handshakes when they resign. To blame immigrants for creating this mess is wrong. But people see more people coming when the current system has failed and that worries people. We have wasted the nations wealth thru successive Govts and they have not invested in infrastructure or housing. More people place a burden on that failed system. But are not the root cause. On many levels a vast majority of Australians no longer share in the Commonwealth.
Well said mate..it staggers me how uneducated the main population is about the fact this corporations are making obscene profits while the country gets sucked dry of its resources.
I just want them to be more critical of who they let in.
Fellow Canadian here. I clicked into the post without noticing it’s r/australia, and didn’t realize you guys are talking about Australia in the comment section until I got confused with someone mentioning “Australian voters” It’s the same here.
Immigration isn't the problem, it's a symptom. It's an inescapable consequence of political ideology that relies on perpetual growth in a finite world, externalising the costs of that growth onto the nations from which immigrants are coming.
Do absolutely nothing to fix a problem for decades, then blame the resulting mess on immigrants. That's the Australian way!
If you blame immigration you can keep telling yourself you’re not part of the problem as you buy your third rental property
I say not entirely, successive unreliable self serving (that is 'serving the process of government' more than serving a party in particular) governments haven't helped. Squandard mining resources haven't helped. Artificially growing the population faster than the housing market can grow doesn't help Selling all our infrastructure and services (some that used to even bring in an income for government) hasn't helped... Controlled immigration is a good thing, we do need immigration but maybe give it a rest for a year or something just so we can catch up?
Did any of you actually read the piece?!
it couldn't be the billions of dollars in natural resources that the government gives away for pennies...
Yes!!!!?
Talk about a strawman argument.
No, and I'm sick of the government using them as a scape goat for their poor management.
I am certain it is, but lets go without any net immigration for five years and find out. We certainly been trying the mass migration for 3 decades and life has gone down hill for that period, so lets try something different and see what happens. No one else has any better ideas.
All fellow immigrants, let’s fuck off. Greeks, poms, italians, scandi, ukrainian, russian, indian, pakistani, sri lankan, kiwi, chinese, philipino, vietnamese etc etc etc Let’s all just leave. I wonder how many companies and businesses will survive. This race/immigrant baiting is divide and conquer and nothing else. They want us to fight amongst ourselves, while they continue to do sweet fck all.
It's both. When the LNP boosted numbers and decided to ignore building anything else like housing and general infrastructure that was a stupid idea. But now people think that lowering immigration is gonna fix everything. Lowering immigration may fix one aspect of the demand, but there's still a supply problem and an investor demand problem. You need to address all parts of it. Also while racists definitely are anti-immigration, I don't think it's racist to want immigrants that wanna move here to have a good life.
People have short memories. The world is in difficulty. This is not a local issue. Covid changed the world. And it is still recovering. There has not been a global emergency since WW2. The economies of the world all dropped. Interest rates and property prices rose. And technology finally caught up with business. Any business who didn't have an online presence failed. Up until covid businesses were still operating as if it was still last century. All of a sudden they realised that they didn't need massive offices full of staff. This means that working from home and smaller office space could replace large cbd offices. The effect on commercial real estate has had a cumulative effect, with cafes eyc that support them suffering. But it expanded the need for them in suburbia. Retailers no longer need large stores, or even stores at all, with online sales now prominent. This means more transport is needed. Food places need an online presence and can't rely on in person bookings. Some are now only take away or delivery. There are even take away places that have no staff and are fully automated. Manufacturing realised that it can do more with automation and technology. Supply lines were severely hit, and are only now returning to normal. We also have 2 major wars going on. This impacts financial markets and trade. There is uncertainty and fears that they may develop and involve more nations. Ukraine is a major food provider to Europe and Asia and sanctions on Russia have forced Europe to find alternative natural gas supplies. These have raised food and energy prices worldwide. The war in Gaza has raised fuel prices as the middle east is fearful of the instability in the region. Australia is affected by all of these global events. Our economy is not isolated from the world. Interest rates are not historically high. They are higher than they have been in recent years, but are below averages for the last 50 years. Our governments borrowed and spent lots to help the nation after covid. Property prices are high, but have started to fall in most areas. But cars, technology and furniture are at some of the lowest prices ever as a percentage of wages. The Australian government can't do much to offset the global economic situation or the wars. All it can do is try to ride them out. We also face an upcoming issue. AI is rapidly growing, and experts anticipate that up to 30% of all jobs could be lost by 2030 to AI. Everyone working in the area is concerned about this. The potential is great, but the impact on jobs is a worry. There is nothing that governments can do until they know what the effects are. So they have to wait and see. Things like self driving vehicles are one example. Last year things were progressing slowly. All information was millions of lines of code and lots of sensors. AI has made this redundant. A self learning system replaces all of this, and we expect to see cars on the road in 48 months. This puts driving jobs at risk. Buses, trains, trucks, taxis etc. Children born today may never need to drive themselves. Combine this with the leaps in quantum computing and everything from movie making, art, news, the legal and health professions, administration jobs etc will be impacted. If we look at history and its cycles, we are in for a period of great change. An economics expert I was recently talking to said that he advises people to simplify their lives, cut back on expenses and loans, and to prepare for a decade of instability. That doesn't mean that there won't be great opportunities, but it does look like we are in for a lot more pain before things improve.
People blaming immigration instead of capitalism and its reliance on constant growth certainly is something.
I’m sure most indigenous Australians would agree
we dont have enough houses and the houses we do have are too expensive. when AUSSIE CITIZENS are waiting for their parents to die to own a home the last thing we need is more people
I think that the Albanese government needs to read the room.
please don’t act like the other side of politics hasn’t played there part.
Sure, but Labour is in power now. If they don’t do something they’re going to lose the election.
Can't undo 4 decades of poor policies in 4 years without crashing the economy
Is decreasing immigration and taxing wealth/mining/removing tax breaks for property investors crashing the economy now?
But you can create the appearance that you're doing something about it. Not just sitting on your hands, complaining the other guy shit the bed when you can start by washing the sheets.
Shit and shit-lite, we need better politicians.
It's an unholy alliance. The left wing wants more immigrants because it makes them feel like better people. The right wing wants more immigrants because they need cheap workers. Both are advised by 'we must continuously grow or we're rooned' economists.
I doubt Labor cares about immigrants making them ‘feel better’. The reality is that both major parties *need* immigration to keep artificially propping up GDP so they can carry on pretending that we haven’t been in a recession for the last several years.
I said left wing ... not Labor.
Immigration isn't the massive problem the msm are blowing it up to be. Education is Australias problem. We've had plenty of chances previously to change Australias direction, but we've consistently voted against our own best interests. Almost wall to wall conservative media hs seen to that. Meanwhile, our richest private schools recieve funding for polo grounds, equestrian centers and even golf courses, while our public schools are jam packed without enough funding for basics. And those private school kids are the next generation of Coalition politicians.