Peter Hartcher has a great idea.
…a group of independent MPs is proposing a new way. One of the teals elected last year, Allegra Spender, wants to break the impasse by holding a citizens’ assembly.
“This is actually an opportunity to strengthen our democracy,” says Spender, the member for Sydney’s eastern suburbs seat of Wentworth. “The political parties are playing games at the expense of the community’s lives.
“I trust that the Australian people can come together, listen to each other, and come up with solutions that balance the different interests – mortgage holders, renters, homeowners. My challenge to the prime minister is that he talked about doing politics differently, and this is a way to do politics differently.”
Why will there never be a housing “citizen’s assembly” and why will not matter if there is a privately funded version?
Because it will expose the mass immigration conspiracy.
For as long as anybody can remember, the majority of Australians have objected to mass immigration.
As far back as the Hawke Government, the PM confessed that nobody in Canberra would ever mention it because they knew this to be true.
The reasons have probably changed over the years.
Back in the day, it was probably more of a values-based objection. I don’t say racist because it was not so. Though, undoubtedly, there were tinges of it.
Modern Australian objections to mass immigration have centered on monocultural comfort, like most nations, rather than race-based suspicion of the other.
In the last few decades as multiculturalism took root, that has passed. Today, objections to mass immigration are largely economic and lifestyle related owing to the:
- permanent housing crisis;
- crush loaded public services;
- endlessly low wages growth, and
- rent-seeking corruption.
These are the four reasons why Canberra never discusses mass immigration, will refuse to participate in any “citizen’s assembly”, and will ignore any outcomes of such.
Anybody that thinks there is any other reason – such as Canberra being more virtuous, less racist, more worldly, less xenophobic, better educated, less bigoted – is smoking crack. Parliament is an assembly of the 151 most toxic people in the country.
Canberra loves mass immigration purely out of poisonous self-interest. It allows politicians to court vested interests rather than do the harder and smarter work of productivity-enhancing reforms.
