Simon Kuestenmacher, dubbed the “Stats Guy”, is a well-known immigration shill. For years, he has spread propaganda to support Big Australia.
Last year, Kuestenmacher claimed that Australia’s skills shortages will worsen unless net overseas migration remains at an historically high level.
Last month, Kuestenmacher claimed that “Australia is running out of workers and increasingly faces an almost universal skills shortage”.
Kuestenmacher also argued that the easiest way out of skills shortages is to simply import the necessary workers.
“Just over 32% of all workers in Australia were born overseas”.
Kuestenmacher has returned with another alarmist article on “the consequences of Australia running out of workers”.
“Aren’t we importing workers left, right, and centre?”, Kuestenmacher claims.
“Turns out, even a high migration regime won’t add sufficient workers. Half of migrants are international students who do not add to the workforce at scale”.
“Our skilled migration intake is surprisingly small (as discussed in a previous column) and not targeted enough to really fill the skills gap”.
Kuestenmacher then goes on to explain how Australia faces labour shortages across many areas, including construction, health, and education.
“If labour shortages in construction persist, Australia’s lofty housing supply goal of an additional 1.2 million homes will not be reached, and the housing affordability crisis continues to haunt the nation”, Kuestenmacher.
“Even with government incentives to boost supply, without enough skilled tradies, engineers, and planners projects will face delays and cost blowouts”.
“While solving the housing affordability crisis needs major policy reform on all fronts, getting enough workers into the construction industry remains a major priority”, Kuestenmacher.
Has it ever occurred to Kuestenmacher that Australia wouldn’t need so many construction workers, teachers, health workers, etc., if the government ran a significantly smaller immigration policy?
Kuestenmacher repeatedly claims that a strong immigration program is essential to alleviate skills shortages, conveniently ignoring the fact that migrants add to demand for housing, infrastructure, and services.
There has also been a sharp increase in the number of applicants per job vacancy.
Australia’s population has increased by 8.5 million (44%) this century as a result of a massive increase in net overseas migration.
Around 4.2 million migrants have been added through the permanent migration program alone (including the humanitarian intake), which included 2.6 million via the skilled stream.
How is mass immigration supposed to solve skill shortages when it has previously failed miserably and skills shortages are becoming worse than ever?
Doesn’t this prove that importing people to remedy shortages is ineffective and may have exacerbated the situation?
Independent economist Tarric Brooker posed a similar question on Twitter (X) last year:
How come the United States, with a tenth of Australia’s immigration rate, never experiences the same level of skills shortages?
How come the United States can train its own workers for jobs while Australia must always import them?
Kuestenmacher’s comments about skills shortages and immigration reflect Ponzi economics.
For example, if Australia imports thousands of workers in health and aged care, they will require housing. This will exacerbate the housing shortage. Then if we import thousands of construction workers who require healthcare, we will need more health professionals. Rinse, repeat.
Meanwhile, because population growth has outpaced business, infrastructure, and housing investment, Australia’s productivity growth has plummeted due to “capital shallowing”:
Source: Gerard Minack
Congestion costs have also increased as infrastructure has been overcrowded, further reducing productivity and output.
For a resource-rich country like Australia, there is no worse growth strategy for productivity and living standards than a strong immigration program.
Because the inherent advantage that Australia possesses due to its mineral wealth is shared among a larger number of people, diluting wealth per capita.
Kuestenmacher previously claimed that Sydney and Melbourne have grown beyond their optimal size, degrading living conditions.
“For decades, we ran a migration nation without linking our national housing and migration policies. A rather ridiculous oversight if you ask me”…
“Melbourne and Sydney both stopped functioning seamlessly in their current set-up (one main CBD, low population density, huge urban sprawl) at around 4 million residents”.
How will living standards in both cities improve when they balloon in size beyond 8 million (Sydney) and 9 million (Melbourne) mid-century via endless mass immigration?
Despite the clear failure of the ‘Big Australia’ growth paradigm, Kuestenmacher continues to advocate for it.
Repeating a failed mass immigration policy and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.
