By Stephen Saunders:
An obliging ABC-RMIT Fact Check covers for the extreme mass-migration agenda that Labor concealed from voters in 2022.
The dreaded Senator Hanson, isn’t she awful? Aren’t we patriots, rejoicing in the world’s best multicultural nation, better than that?
Maybe. But there are 227 elected members or senators in the Federal Parliament. Only one has proposed that voters, who mostly want low migration, deserve some kind of immigration plebiscite.
The Senate took her down 54 to two.
Applauding itself, the Senate took her down, 54 to two.
What now has triggered ABC-RMIT surveillance? Hanson’s tweet of January said three things. One, Labor had promised 235,000 in net migration over 2022-23. Two, by January 2023, we were already looking at 300,000. Three, this amounted to a “broken promise”. Late February, she repeated her point, this time referring to an “election promise”.
In this ABC-RMIT Fact Check, Labor’s in the clear and Hanson “doesn’t stack up”.
Now, the Racist Card is one of those perennial porkies used to shut down mass-migration dissent. Maybe you cop two-for-one if you appear to give Hanson the time of day.
But her first tweet looks OK. No reference to skin colour. Labor did target 235,000 in net migration for 2022-23. In October 2022 Budget and January 2023 Population Statement. Just days after the Statement, Treasurer Chalmers owned up, probably we’d crest 300,000.
Late March, Chalmers swerved again. Now he was expecting 350,000, easily a record. As Abul Rizvi and others indicate, the final outcome might even nudge 400,000.
As Rizvi also implies, Chalmers would’ve been aware of the momentous population momentum well before he fessed up. Not lying. Just keeping voters in the dark.
Seizing the second tweet, Fact Check focuses on the pre-election period.
Here, technically, they’re correct. Albanese Labor’s 2021 and 2022 platforms “did not contain a migration target or cap”. Labor’s motherhood promise is quoted:
“The size and composition of Australia’s migration intake will take into account net overseas migration, its effects on employment and training opportunities for Australian residents, demographic trends and other factors, while responding to current and longer-term economic needs.”
This circular statement could cover net migration 2020-21 (minus 85,000), or 2021-22 (plus 171,000), or even 2022-23 (350,000 and more). As intended, it could cover almost anything.
Then Shadow Treasurer Chalmers? He’s in the clear too. He didn’t set a “target” either.
In this Fact Check, he was “up for a sensible conversation about the optimal migration mix”.
Yeah right – rather like Albanese’s mature debate. Once in power, their “sensible” conversation was the Jobs and Skills Summit of last September.
This soviet invited 146 “sensible” stakeholders, including RMIT and other universities. They welcomed an all-time permanent-migration high – 195,000.
Fact remains, when the Coalition fell, the net migration target stood at 180,000 for 2022-23. Rising to 213,000 (2023-24) and 235,000 (2024-25). Labor ignored this. In election platforms, Budget Replies, campaign activities.
Again, not lying. Just not being truthful.
They had no mandate to double the Coalition’s already-large 2022-23 number. To easily yield the highest result since federation. The Treasurer’s flimflam is, he’s compensating for 473,000 migrants purportedly lost over 2019-2026, due to COVID border closure.
Obligingly, Fact Check presents the Treasury migration numbers in approved Treasury doublespeak. As arms’ length “projections” or “forecasts”. Like the weather.
More realistically, the immigration-population numbers squirrelled at the back of Budget Paper No. 3, are deliberate economic-policy targets. They boost raw GDP growth to make Treasury execs look good.
Unusually, Chalmers also set aside a cool $42m. Nominally, to “accelerate visa processing” and reduce the so-called “visa backlog”. But also propelling net migration way past his published 2022-23 target.
As Fact Check notes, net migration had already busted 300,000 in the year to September 2022. No matter, the Treasurer has “acknowledged” the “discrepancy”. Anyway, his immigration “projections” will be updated in May Budget. Targets – not projections.
Again, right up to the 2022 election as the Coalition defended 160,000 in permanent migration, Labor concealed its much bigger immigration intentions.
With Hanson as the ideal straw (wo)man, Fact Check supports this grand evasion. Predictable, but little cheer to the threatened species of truth in democracy.
Fact Check, by the way, operates under the “transparency” of IFCN Fact-Checkers’ Code. Now, RMIT is a “global” university. In terms of overseas campuses and study opportunities, also their large overseas-student cohort in Melbourne.
Likewise, Australia’s post-COVID immigration surge is dominated by overseas students, vital to RMIT strategies and revenues. A disclaimer would be appropriate.
So what, you might say.
Here’s the “so what”. From federation, annual net migration has averaged around 80,000, or somewhat more, in the post-1945 period. Whatever “stakeholders” may say, the 200,000-plus average over 2005-2020 was off the scale. Before 2006-07, Australia never topped 200,000.
It has been a socioeconomic step-change. With only rudimentary consideration of costs re benefits.
What it gave voters was sluggish per capita GDP growth, low wage growth, plus struggling liveability and environment. Nominally, the average (median) Australian remains wealthy in world terms. But much of that is in essential roofs-over-heads.
How to handle the exceptional rental crisis of 2022-23? Perversely, the May Budget will reinforce steep net-migration targets.
For 2023-24 (or 2024-25), I’d be surprised if targets were as “low” as the Coalition’s beefy 213,000 (or 235,000).
Instead of taking deadly COVID seriously, as a 100-year pause-for-environmental-thought, politicians have gleefully exploited it to justify another immigration step-change. Maybe 1.5 million in net migration over the rest of the decade.
Ignoring the demand side of housing, parliament noodles over the Treasurer’s Housing Fund. Calibrated to do very little about unaffordable house and rental prices.
It’s Big Australia on steroids, a gift for intergenerational inequality. The Treasury (and Population) portfolio continues to steamroll Environment (and Climate).
Says Rizvi, net migration will “gradually decline” from a 2022-23 peak. Says fellow-pundit Peter McDonald, we’ll revert to “normal” or pre-pandemic levels. But those levels weren’t normal. The 2017-18 and 2018-19 tallies fell just shy of 240,000.
Here and here, 70% of voters would like net migration somewhat/much lower than this 240,000 level, or as low as zero. Australian and overseas born voters hold broadly similar concerns. In our post-modern “democracy of stakeholders”, both groups can be ignored.
Voter distaste for the Liberals, stakeholder Megalogenis doesn’t mean they endorse Labor’s hyper immigration. Nor is voter dislike of hyper immigration an endorsement of racism.
[Author is on Executive Committee of Sustainable Population Australia, but views expressed are his own]
