The AFR’s political editor Phil Coorey on Friday claimed fringe elements on the left and right of the political spectrum are the ones pushing back against NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s call for a massive increase in Australia’s immigration intake to more than 400,000 people a year:
[NSW] recommended a doubling of the pre-pandemic immigration rate over the next five years. That would amount to about 2 million people nationally over five years…
But old prevailing forces against immigration, which straddle the left-right divide, are still there and in some cases, are even more exercised given Australia’s creaking infrastructure, battered environment and unspeakably cruel house prices.
These population forces include elements in the right who are also implacably opposed to adopting net zero emissions by 2050 and are gearing up to exploit internal Coalition unrest over that negotiation…
Hanson wasted no time this week in conflating the issues. She rushed on to Facebook to complain the same people who wanted to wipe out coal jobs were also planning to flood the country with foreigners.
“Despite state and federal governments saying Australia needs to cut its carbon dioxide emissions – there’s a push to bring in an extra 2 million migrants,” she wrote.
“Opening the floodgates to an extra 2 million migrants will destroy any hope of easing traffic congestion, reducing wait times in our hospitals, making housing more affordable, and so on. Wake up Australia”…
Bolt weighed in on the NSW immigration brief prepared by what he called the “bureaucratic elite”. He forecast congestion problems, house prices going “even higher”, wages being pushed down by cheap labour, the “sheer laziness” of importing workers rather than “training up our own”, not to mention the “cultural impact”.
It’s brutal stuff, much of it overly simplistic and no government is going to allow in 2 million people in five years, but the simple themes resonate.
Of course, the government will have to restore the migration program to fill the yawning skills gaps exacerbated by COVID-19. With the borders reopening, it cannot be avoided…
In the end, a good government’s job is to deliver a policy and sell its virtues.
No Phil Coorey, a good government’s job is to represent the voters that elect it.
Had Phil Coorey bothered to look out of his ivory tower in Canberra, he would have discovered that the overwhelming majority of Australian voters support lower levels of immigration than existed pre-COVID.
Last week’s survey by The Australian Population Research Institute (APRI) revealed that 70% of Australians want lower levels of immigration post-pandemic, of which 48% want “much lower” or zero immigration:
The overwhelming majority (69%) also do not believe that Australia needs more people:
A 2019 Guardian Essential Poll found that 56% of Australians believed that “the levels of immigration into Australia over the past 10 years has been too high”:
A 2018 Guardian Essential Poll showed that Australians believe that “bringing in foreign workers on short-term visas undermines local jobs” (63%); that “our cities can’t cope with further population growth and we should reduce immigration until the infrastructure in in place” (62%); that “immigration should be slowed as it causes too much change to our society” (55%); and that “Australia has a fragile environment that cannot bear further increases in population” (51%).
Moreover, 51% of people disagreed that “Australia has the space and resources to cope with a much larger population”, and 51% of people also disagreed that “without immigration the rate of economic growth will fall, reducing living standards for all of us”:
A Newspoll survey in 2019 revealed that 80% of NSW residents do not believe the state should grow any larger:
A straw poll conducted this weekend by News.com.au found that 80% want much lower levels of immigration than existed pre-pandemic:
A similar straw poll conducted over the weekend by The Kouk on Twitter also found that 71% of people want lower immigration than existed pre-COVID:
The optimal long run level of annual net immigration for Australia’s economy, society, environment & housing market is:
— Stephen Koukoulas (@TheKouk) October 14, 2021
No matter which way you cut it, Australians overwhelmingly do not support a return to mass immigration after the pandemic.
Of course, we can’t expect The AFR to show any objectivity on the immigration issue, since it is the mouthpiece of big business. Its role is to support policies that boost business profits anyway possible. And mass immigration ticks this box by boosting the number of consumers, lowering wage costs, and enriching the wealthy owners of capital.
Sadly, there’s no money in actually representing the wishes of Australian voters.
