Freelancer CEO, Matt Barrie, gave a fantastic keynote address on Monday at The SMH Sydney 2050 Summit, entitled “The Great Australian Scream”.
The 7400 word address covers a lot of issues. But the one that stood out most to me was Barrie’s disdain of the ‘Big Australia’ mass immigration policy.
Below are key extracts pertaining to immigration. But do yourself a favour and read the entire address. MB is cited throughout.
The US uses quantitative easing to drive ‘easy, relentless’ growth. – Australia uses quantitative peopling.
In the year to March, Australia grew by a record of 523,000, following which Albanese added 500 staff and $42m to clear a 600,000 visa backlog.
This is not about ‘growth’ but inflating demand for housing. It’s not about the ‘economy’ but inflating GDP. But population growth does not increase GDP per capita.
Minister O’Neil said ‘Our country faces genuine and significant challenges providing safe affordable housing for Australians. These problems are not caused by migrants’. I guess she thinks the Canberra-sized armada each year are all nicely in tents in someone’s backyard.
So high is immigration that Migration Agent is listed on the Skilled Occupation List and Brickworks, the largest brick manufacturer in Australia, is demanding that we bring in more migrants as bricklayers.. to build houses for migrants…
To solve this, the Federal Government announced a grand plan to build one million homes by 2029. At the same time it took in 400,000 people net. At this pace by 2029, we’ll be building 1 million homes for 3 million new immigrants, a million of which will come to Sydney…
We could build more homes, but we have the fourth highest construction rate in the OECD…
Source: OECD Affordable Housing Database
NSW will spend $116 billion on infrastructure to accommodate these new people. Given Premier Minns campaigned on a platform of ending privatisation, one might wonder how we’re going to pay for this if it’ll stay on the books.
Well the answer is debt, and NSW will be in it deep, $187 billion deep by 2026. Naturally, the government says surprise, the interest rate is higher than expected at 5.2% and climbing, costing taxpayers $6.8 billion a year by 2026, more than was collected from land tax, pokies, casinos, health insurance and parking levies combined last year.
As they say in public policy, the dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed.
With mass immigration driving out of control inflation, property costs, infrastructure demands, construction collapses, business insolvencies, debt and the greatest erosion of Australian living standards on record, one would think that something might break.
You might also be thinking, who exactly do these politicians think they are working for? Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Which people, exactly?…
Albanese must have recently been to a strip club, because he’s gone berko on immigration: increasing permanent migration to 195,000, abolishing the skills list, guaranteeing 2.1m temporary migrants a path to citizenship, halving withholding tax on foreigner developers, mulling rent caps, and allowing New Zealanders citizenship. What’s next, Tasmanians?…
What’s crazy about the ponzi is 69% of immigrants are in rental stress, with outgoings greater than income, the second worst group after the elderly. That’s why they say migrants are net contributors to the economy, because they’re drawing down their savings to live.
The $53,900 skilled migrant threshold results in $863 per week after tax, barely enough to eat and rent a tent. Raising it to $70k might allow an upgrade to a shed. We’re at that point in the ponzi where we’re potentially importing future welfare recipients to keep the game going…
But the bulk of immigration is not for that or entrepreneurs that create jobs rather than take jobs. It’s designed for serving us coffees and to keep the bubble alive…
Our fifth biggest export is “educational related travel services”, or a visa factory at our local university, vocational, “business” or English college. The educational quality at the latter is worse than you’d get binge watching cat videos on Tiktok.
There are 620,000 “students” in Australia, equivalent to the populations of Canberra, Darwin and Alice Springs. 45% are studying higher education, 25% vocations and 17% English. Almost 40% are in NSW. By 2025 there’ll be 940,000 and Sydney will host a Canberra.
If that also sounds weird, in 2022, 573,000 student visas were issued by Australia. The United States issued 414,000…
Australia recently signed up to the Mechanism for Mutual Recognition of Qualifications as part of the Indian Free Trade Agreement. This agreement requires Australia to recognise all official Indian educational qualifications…
A Bloomberg article Worthless Degrees Are Creating an Unemployable Generation in India quoted a former secretary for school education, that of the “16,000 colleges handing out bachelor’s qualifications for teachers, a large number existed only in name”.
“Calling such so-called degrees as being worthless would be by far an understatement,” said a former Dean at Delhi University…
According to the Home Affairs Minister, we created ‘an underclass of low-paid and exploited workers, leaving international students in limbo and failing to meet the current and future economic challenges faced by the nation’. In the same breath, O’Neil announced all these workers can be permanent residents, a statement that does not logically follow.
This is the big, uncomfortable secret about Australia’s ‘easy, relentless’ growth.
The ‘easy, relentless growth’ politicians have chosen to take is to blow a property bubble on a scale like no other, one that has driven Australian houses up 8,570% (86x!) over 61 years…
With the highest inflation in decades, sharply declining real wage growth, the worst rental crisis on record, overloaded infrastructure, construction blowouts, bureaucracy, mass insolvencies, extreme cost of living and the largest destruction in purchasing power in 50 years- the solution is, as always, more people, despite this being the root cause.
It’s sending the Australian middle and working classes into poverty. It is politically untenable.
Also frankly, I think, morally wrong and a national disgrace…
Skilled migration programs can be very beneficial, but they are supposed to strike a balance between meeting labour market needs and ensuring the well-being of both local and immigrant populations. We have a skills shortage in some areas because we neglected skilling up our own citizens, overhauling education and let a brain drain persist for decades.
Australia used to have an economy that made things, but has instead turned into a ponzi dependent on mass migration in order to buy houses, consume things and make us coffee.
The ponzi is in its late and final stage and like all ponzis, unsustainable. The only question is the collateral damage. Many coming here will find that they can’t afford to live, many in search of jobs that we never needed or may no longer exist…
House prices and the cost of living needs to be urgently addressed, which means immigration needs to slow down. The targeting and quality of such needs substantial improvement. The education, skills, and training of our existing population needs to be lifted, particularly in manufacturing, health, technology and the trades, and to prepare for AI.