In MB’s 2021 Christmas Special Report, we argued that Australia was “sowing the seeds of another ‘lost decade'”, because “Australia appears committed to repeat the same policy mistakes and poor outcomes that were experienced over the 2010s “lost decade” whereby the economy and living standards stagnated in per capita terms”.
We argued that “Australian households are further in debt, less globally competitive, and Australia is a less attractive investment destination – featuring amongst the world’s most expensive land and houses, energy, and internet”.
We also argued that the federal government would once again rely on mass immigration to be the “solitary driver of the Australian economy over the 2020s, which will mean per capita outcomes will once again flounder”.
As we know, the Albanese Government has committed to the largest immigration program in this nation’s history, which has already seen an estimated record 400,000 net overseas migrants land in Australia in 2022.
Alex Joiner – chief economist at IFM Investors – has published the below chart on Twitter showing how Australia’s trend rate of per capita GDP growth slowed significantly after the federal government ramped-up immigration from the mid-2000s:
As shown below, Australia’s net overseas migration jumped from an average of 90,500 between 1991 and 2004 to an average of 219,000 between 2005 and 2019 – representing an annual average increase in immigration of 140%:
Alex Joiner warns that Australia “will recover to an economy similar to that experienced in 2019. One reliant on population growth and bereft of productivity growth and waning investment”.
Part of this productivity decline is due to the fact that Australia’s economy is now 90% service-based, which traditionally experiences sluggish productivity growth.
Much of this is ‘people-servicing’, facilitated by Australia’s mass immigration policy, which funnels migrants into (mostly) Sydney and Melbourne to work in low productivity ‘people servicing’ industries.
In short, the ‘Big Australia’ mass immigration model will achieve exactly the same outcomes as last decade: sluggish productivity and per capita GDP growth, low wage/income growth, and overall falling livability as both housing, infrastructure and the natural environment are crush-loaded.
It is a recipe to enrich those that have already hoarded assets and capital, namely the already entrenched, wealthy and corporate interests such as Big Business, Big Property, and the education-migration lobby.
But it will leave ordinary Aussies worse-off, which is why the overwhelming majority of voters oppose Big Australia.
