Immigration: The Government owes us an explanation

 

 'Come on over. I'll slip an extra sekuwa on the barbie for ya'

I think migrants are awesome. I always go out of my way to make them feel welcome here. I love the variety of cuisine they bring with them. I like the Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I like the... Yeah, nah, I just like the food and the jiu-jitsu to be honest. But that's enough.

At this point the woke will be saying to themselves "yeah sure buddy, here comes the 'I'm not racist but...'".

But, being anti-immigration is not the same thing as being anti-migrant and we need to stop conflating the two - for our sake and for the sake of the migrants already living here who are often the hardest hit by the effects of our government's immigration policies. Of course, the woke will never pass up an opportunity to accuse someone of racism. It's like crack to them. But they're wrong. Rain is good for the garden. A flood isn't. Imagine telling a distraught flood victim: "You just don't like water!".

We've been told for the last 25 years that immigration is good for the economy. So, when exactly do the good times start? After 25 years of mass immigration, we're struggling with a cost of living crisis and record homelessness. Low-paid workers have been priced out of the rental market completely and are having to choose between share-accommodation or a tent.

Immigration is obviously the cause of the housing crisis. If there's not enough housing for all the people, either the number of houses has been decreasing or the number of people has been increasing. I'm pretty sure the number of houses hasn't been decreasing - in fact the opposite is true. So, the housing crisis can only be caused by the increasing population which is due to immigration. Only the stupid, the corrupt and the BCA shills are still denying it. Last year, the Albanese government acknowledged it and pledged to halve immigration at some point in the future, but I'll believe that when I see it. The latest figures for January this year show a record level of immigration for the month. 

The reason house prices spiked during the Covid lockdown when there was no immigration is two-fold. Firstly whilst there was no immigration, we did have around 400,000 ex-pats return to Australia to spend lockdown here. Secondly, the average household size decreased from around 2.7 people per dwelling to around 2.5 as many people wanted to isolate or have more room to work from home. 

The only real solution then is to cut or pause immigration. Blaming the housing crisis on a lack of housing is like blaming the sinking of a boat on 'not bailing fast enough'. Or to put it another way, if your bathtub was overflowing, you wouldn't immediately reach for the mop. You'd first turn off the tap. Our housing industry can't keep up with current targets, so there's no point saying we should just "build more houses".

But the level of debate on immigration in Australia is just puerile. One group of Australians is only interested in name-calling. Another group are too scared of being called a name to say anything. And most of the rest have a vested interest in immigration or housing and just keep changing the subject. Last week's Q&A was on the subject of the housing crisis and NO ONE on the panel spoke about immigration. PK even tried to bring the subject up a couple of times herself, but got no takers. The only mention of the word from the panel during the entire show was when Andrew Bragg said we needed to build more homes to keep up with immigration - not that we needed to cut immigration to a level that we are able to provide housing for. We are going to have to have an adult conversation about immigration at some point. Maybe tell the kids to go into the other room so the adults can talk.

We simply can't build our way out of this mess. Albo's Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) is costing us $10billion and aims to build 30,000 homes over 5 years. That's 6,000 homes per year. Pausing immigration is currently the equivalent of building 240,000 homes per year and is FREE. In fact, it would save us around $40billion per year in infrastructure spend and have a lot of other benefits to boot.

Of course, the proposed solution of bringing in more migrants to build houses for all the migrants coming here is such an incredibly moronic idea, I'm surprised anyone would even dare suggest it and the sheer chutzpah of the Reserve Bank governor's suggestion we should cram more people into each home is just astounding.

The image in this Twitter post was altered for effect, but not the text. 

Many say that property investors have pushed up house prices and that the solution to the housing crisis is to get rid of negative gearing and the CGT discount, but that's not actually true. Properties for sale have what's known in economics as a "substitute good", which is properties for rent. The mistake people make is they only look at the increase in demand for properties for sale, but property investors don't live in those properties or just leave them empty. They let them out as properties for rent. So the increase in demand for houses for sale is offset by the increase in supply of rental properties. Instead of house prices being pushed up, people just leave the houses for sale market and join the houses for rent market. It's a zero sum game. Another way of looking at it is that at the end of the day, there are the same number of properties available for people to live in and the same number of people who need somewhere to live. How people pay for housing - either renting or buying - is immaterial. So, no overall increase in demand. With immigration of course, there's an increase in demand, but no increase in supply, so prices are forced up. Same number of properties, but more people.

There's still a downside to property investments though and that is that more people end up having to rent  instead of buy their own home. This destroys the "great Australian dream" for many people and makes them worse off financially in retirement. Also, from a liberal perspective, it smacks of a feudal system with lords and serfs. Yes, everyone has equal rights to go buy an investment property and rent it out which is consistent with liberalism, but there's a bit more to it. You have to consider everyone's rights.  Liberalism is a philosophy of compromise. When there are conflicting rights, we resort to Utilitarianism - the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Do people have a right to housing? Imagine if Gina Rhinehart went and bought every Taylor Swift ticket and sat through every concert by herself. You could say that it's her right to do so, but how would all the Tay Tay fans feel? I can't imagine any moral or political philosophy that would condone something like that. Even if you decide that it's fine for the rich to buy up housing and rent it out to the less well off, there's no possible justification for incentivising them to. Imagine if Albo said to Gina: "If you buy all the Tay Tay tickets, I'll let you claim them as a tax deduction plus throw in some other sweeteners". 

Calling people who own investment properties "Ma and Pa investors" is just marketing. They are landlords. Why landlords should get special tax breaks is beyond me. There's no reason for the CGT discount and under current tax law you're not even meant to be able to claim a loss for something if there was no intent to make a profit. Obviously, the intent with negatively geared investment properties is to make a loss. What should happen is that the losses are carried over to the following years in case they do for some reason actually make a profit some time in the future. Many countries actually increase tax or stamp duty on second properties as a disincentive.

Immigration is also responsible for stagnating wages as increasing the supply of labour forces the price of labour (ie: wages) down . It beggars belief that the Labor Party (as well as the ACTU who have agreements with big business to increase immigration) have flooded the Australian labour market with masses of cheap overseas labour. That would be like the National Farmers Federation deciding to import masses of cheap overseas farm produce and dump it all on the Australian retail market to the detriment of Aussie farmers.

Immigration also has a major impact on the environment. According to the latest State of the Environment report, population growth has a "Very high impact" on the environment - which is the highest possible rating.

Immigration also leads to overburdened government services, congestion, over-development of our major cities and their suburbs and increased demands on resources such as power and water.

Immigration also costs us around $40billion per year to build additional infrastructure for the growing population. Whilst billionaire property developers are making more billions building homes for migrants, the rest of us are picking up the tab for all the additional road / rail / schools / hospitals / parks etc etc etc. Tens of billions of Aussie taxpayer dollars are being spent on foreigners - many of whom haven't even migrated here yet. This expense has a major impact on the living standards of Aussie taxpayers who have to miss out. A case in point is Sydney's "Warringah Freeway" which doesn't actually go to Warringah. Started in the 1950's it was never completed. Aussies on the Northern Beaches have been waiting (and paying taxes) for decades for a solution to the woeful traffic congestion getting into or out of the NB. The main artery from the city to the NB still has a bridge that has to be raised up to let boats through as the traffic just banks up on either side of the bridge. The Beaches Link tunnel was going to finally provide a solution, however Minns has scrapped the project in favour of more transport infrastructure for the growing population in Western Sydney. And now he wants to build high-rises all up and down the NB which will just make the congestion even worse.

So, what's good about immigration? Why do we do this to ourselves? Growth? Labour shortage? Skills shortage? Something else?

Immigration makes it look like the economy (GDP) is growing but, it's fake growth. Of course GDP will go up if you increase the population. The GDP of Norway (population 5 million) is $579 billion, whereas the GDP of the United States (population 340 milliohm) is $25 trillion. Does that make the US better? Of course not. In fact the opposite is true. The per capita GDP of the US is $75,269, whereas the per capita GDP of Norway is $106,594. In Australia, GDP has been increasing with population growth, but real per capita GDP has been decreasing. In other words, the pie has been getting bigger, but each person’s slice of the pie has been getting smaller. Obviously "growth" isn't desirable if it's making us all worse off, so we can strike that one off the list.

What about the labour shortage? Well, we can quickly strike that one off the list because there's no such thing as a labour shortage. Labour is a resource. Resources are supposed to be limited. If a company can't get enough labour, they're not paying enough. There's no set number of workers needed by corporations. They'll take all the labour they can get if the price is right. When they say "labour shortage" they mean "cheap labour shortage".

Saying we have a labour shortage is the same as saying we have a population shortage. A country can't have the "wrong" population. A country with a population of 27 million can't have 28 million people living in it. No matter how hard you try, you can't increase a country's per capita population above 1.0. If 27 million people isn't enough people for a country, how does New Zealand get by with only 5 million? It has nothing to do with land area. Bangladesh - which is about two thirds the size of Victoria - has a population which is greater than the populations of Australia and Russia combined. 

It's the same with the skills shortage. If we don't have enough people with a particular skill, then we have too many people with other skills and we need to re-allocate some of those people. This actually happens automatically in the labour market. If there's a shortage of a particular skill, that skill becomes more in demand which increases it's price (ie: salary). Others then see how much people with that skill are making and they decide to get trained in that skill too which solves the shortage.

The other thing is that we've had mass immigration for around 25 years now with the population increasing by around 8 million people in that time. If immigration hasn't solved the labour shortage or skills shortage by now, it's not going to.

So, if it's not Growth or a labour shortage or a skills shortage, that just leaves "something else".  

Something they're not telling us.

If they're not telling us, it can't be good for us.

We can speculate that the federal government maintains high levels of immigration because it gives the appearance that the economy is growing and staying out of recession which increases their chances of being re-elected. Or that the increased income taxes help them balance the books whilst the majority of the cost of immigration is borne by the states. Or that they are just doing what our new corporate overlords tell them to do.

We can speculate that big business influences the government with political donations (and other means) to increase immigration as it increases the size of their markets (more customers) and lowers their wages bill, leading to increased profits. It's much easier for corporations to increase their market size with immigration than to compete with each other to try to increase market share. Whilst per capita GDP is decreasing, per corporation GDP is increasing. This growth increases the corporation's share price which keeps shareholders happy and CEOs get to keep their over-paid jobs. We can see with Coles and Woolies that there's no real attempt to compete with each other, but profits keep going up. The Business Council of Australia is the peak lobby group for big business and is continually demanding increased immigration. As does former BCA executive director Andrew Bragg.

We can speculate that state politicians are "influenced" by property developers to lobby the federal government to keep increasing immigration as well as to make more and more land available for developers to build high-rises on. If your state government's solution to the housing crisis is to take over planning from local councils and fill your suburbs with high-rises and they never mention curbing immigration, then you should be asking questions. 

You can speculate that ordinary Australians are getting screwed by the rich and powerful. 

You can speculate that society is self-organising into a new class system.

Whatever the reason(s), the government needs to come clean. People are living in their cars because of this. Our way of life and standard of living is being trashed. The great Australian dream has been dashed for the majority of young Australians.

They owe us an explanation.