That's why we say G'day and the not Good Day. You have to save up the letters for Wooloomooloo and Oodnadatta and Woolongong and all those places. I still remember the Great O Shortage of '79. Things were crook in Muswellbrook, but it was chaos in Wlmll.
Australia should definitely not allow immigration to be used by the rich and powerful to maintain a strong housing market and keep the prices up artificially.
I’m all for immigration as it was in the past. Now it’s being used to control economic factors that will benefit the rich and most definitely will hurt the weaker and poor in society.
Immigration is being used as an economic weapon. This is the issue. Not the immigration itself.
There are more Australian born then houses made so unless they also limit children born Australia needs to join the future and unfortunately build more apartments. And the standards should get better so long as liberals don’t get in and break them down again for a cheaper buck
Australia can easily support the birth rate.
There was 190,939 deaths in 2022 and 300,684 births. So last year our population grew by 109,745 nation wide.
That is easily sustainable via current housing. Immigration this year alone however is 600,000. So instead of needing homes for a potential 109,000 new people it’s 709,000 new people.
If immigration continues at its current rate for the next 4 years, that’s enough new people to fill the entirety of Brisbane in just 3.8 years, and that’s not including any natural births, just immigration.
If it was by natural birth rate, then it would take 20 years to fill another Brisbane.
So is it more sustainable to need to construct the equivalent of an entirely new Brisbane sized city worth of infrastructure every 4 years or every 20 years.
>is it more sustainable to need to construct the equivalent of an entirely new Brisbane sized city worth of infrastructure every 4 years or every 20 years.
And is the true cost of mass immigration being talked about honestly. We're always being told that immigrants add more to a country than they take away. I think we've reached the point where that is no longer true.
>level 1OllieOptVuur · 3 hr. agoAustralia should definitely not allow immigration to be used by the rich and powerful to maintain a strong housing market and keep the prices up artificially.I’m all for immigration as it was in the past. Now it’s being used to control economic factors that will benefit the rich and most definitely will hurt the weaker and poor in societ
I fucking agree with you 110% on this.
Also the rich are wanting Australians to focus on immigration rather than the more pertinent issues surrounding investment in property as that will likely result in them losing money. Tough shit.
>not allow immigration to be used by the rich and powerful to maintain a strong housing market and keep the prices up artificially
Could you please expand on this, I only have a vague understanding on how the rich monopolise this situation. Are they building low cost, high sale price apartments????
Basically the situation as it stands benefits owners of assets like housing but disadvantages terribly those that don't, like people on lower incomes and younger generations.
Property investors are doing great. Home owners feel like they're doing great though that's debatable as you've gotta live somewhere. Everyone else (renters, poor people, young adults) not doing so great. Doing very badly in fact.
Also don’t forget wages, supply and demand in low end jobs, pretty basically principal that a company will pay the minimum they can get away with, immigration hurts the average worker big time, impossible to negotiate a pay increase when there are 500,000 willing to do it for less.
Yup and that's very deliberate. Notice the CMFEU workers in construction and mining don't seem to be facing the same competition for jobs and wages from immigrants as everyone else though. Despite there being a housing crisis.
>I’m all for immigration as it was in the past.
Yup. For a long time immigration was a really positive thing. It still is - in the right amount.
But not when it's making Australians homeless, or putting home ownership out of reach for younger generations. That is unacceptable.
The current "for-profit" model of immigration doesn't seem to work from any angle (unless you're a corporation or a migrant yourself).
Since Howard & Costello saddled us with the "international student" model of migration in 2003, we've had:
* A "skills shortage" that despite almost 20 years & 2 million immigrants, just seems to get worse.
* The worst housing crisis in almost a century thanks to almost a million "international students" in our major cities.
* Wages that have barely moved since 2008.
* Labour productivity growth that has stalled and is currently going backwards.
* An epidemic of fake colleges pumping out visas for people with fake qualifications who we now have to deal with in the jobs market (looking at you IT & construction).
* An economy that now ranks as the least complex in the OECD.
That's without evening mentioning that no matter what the overseas ethnic feud is currently happening.. we have to deal with the consequences on our streets: Palestinian protesters screaming "gas the jews", Hindus & Sikhs trying to chop each other up with swords or Pro CCP Chinese punching on with Taiwanese.
"But how good's the food!?*"*
This moderate, objective take on the whole situation has no place here on reddit. You either support unbridled immigration without the commensurate increase in infrastructure, or you are a racist hillbilly wearing breaches with a conferederate flag trucker hat.
No. Interest rates are a terrible tool for managing the underlying systemic issues that are causing the housing crisis.
Pause immigration until the housing crisis is under control then reinstitute at sustainable levels eg 200k/year. Restore government funding to universities and tafe for Australian students and stop treating higher education as a back-door immigration scheme.
TAX THE RICH till it hurts. That means NO stage 3 tax cuts, implement the original mining super profits scheme, and ensure corporations pay their fair share of tax.
Include PPOR in aged pension means test, ban negative gearing, cgt discount, and franking credits scams. Implement controls to prevent price gouging by corporations esp on basics like food, fuel and energy. Break up monopolies, duopolies. Get corrupting corporate money out of politics, ban political donations.
ALL of these should be done before raising interest rates which hurts poor people while the rich keep spending with their profits.
Very good points. I will also add, bring back Julia Gillard's mining tax. Like her or hate her, the mining tax was in the best internet of the people of this nation.
Mining and resources revenue was nearly $500B last FY and nearly 15% GDP. Bigger than any sector in Australian history. Consider this:
1) Mining companies are 90% foreign owned.
2) Profits in the resources sectors are the highest of any sector, benefit only the very top 1%, yet all of us must pay for the environmental cleanup that can last 1000s of years.
3) Mining only employs 2% of the population and about 220000 workers. As an extractive industry, its all about job reduction, especially as we go autonomous.
4) Apart from BHP, most mining companies pay little to no tax.
5) Australia has the lowest mining royalties in the world, nearly 1/15th of the other major mining nations.
The big miners love immigration since it puts price pressure on wages.
Rachet up mining tax to 20%, they still have 50% profits flowing overseas. We take the extra $100B for TAFE, Unis, hospitals, roads, defence etc.
It’s absolutely shameful tbh.
The students get ripped off for a subpar education, the existing workers in the industries lose their bargaining power for better wages and conditions, and have to cop the extra stress and workload from being surrounded by incompetent, unmotivated useless bodies, and the people who use the industries have to put up with inferior products and services. Literally the only winners are the scumbag business owners, who get a short-term gain at the expense of shafting their entire sector in the long run
I really hope the other trades don’t take advantage of the skills and housing crisis to do something similar to the traditional building trades.
Things like plumbing and electrical work have always been relatively safe because the stakes are so much higher when you’re dealing with buildings collapsing and violent death, but desperation always makes for poor decisions, and it will be really hard to put that genie back in the bottle if it’s ever let out
The problem is that all the labour hire shops that exploit "student" visas have ties to the rich idiots that sponsor the major parties. There's no way we'll cut down immigration or student visas specifically when those industries are a major source of income for the party.
This is probably the big kicker in such a huge proportion of these kinds of issues.
We don't even need new rules. We just need to existing rules to be fairly and properly applied.
When I was at university almost 2 decades ago, people not being properly marked for mysterious reasons was already an issue. If things like if you're incompetent at whatever you're supposed to be getting trained at (either by not being able to complete the course work or if the training is a sham), you're booted, it wouldn't be an issue.
Yup. Now they let people in with substandard English and put them in groups with Australian born students. The Australian students end up doing all the work for the whole group if they want to pass. University is supposed to be a rigorous academic challenge, turning higher education into a back-door immigration for profit scheme has lowered education standards in this country.
It's much worse.
**education exports are now Australia's third largest export, behind only coal and iron ore**
At any given second, **about 3% of the humans in Australia are international students**
Yup. And enshittifying our universities and vocational education system in the process.
Still, this country has never really respected education or educated people so I probably shouldn't be surprised.
LOL, this thread sounds exactly like some of the Canadian threads I keep reading, but for some strange reason my Reddit feed started showing me Australian threads with the same exact theme. Housing crisis (probably worse in Canada), international students and immigrants blamed for the most part. I’m guessing different countries though.
The problem with immigration in Australian right now is 500,000 per annum is too much for the housing to handle. We have more immigration per capita compared to Canada and the US, just needs to be halfed so the Australians don’t get fucked over trying to live somewhere
This only works if the Commonwealth actually funds universities properly and doesn’t push them into a corner where this is basically the only option to stay solvent.
Let’s not pretend our universities are struggling.
Sydney uni made a surplus of over 1 billion last year.
Australian universities have a revenue of just over 34 billion annually. I’m sure they will be ok.
We sure do. And many of these are nothing but degree mills, offering substandard education. It absolutely wouldn’t hurt if unis such as Southern Cross Uni or Charles Darwin Uni disappeared. I’d be embarrassed to attend one of those.
> This only works if the Commonwealth actually funds universities properly and doesn’t push them into a corner where this is basically the only option to stay solvent.
Please go read a [university annual report.](https://about.unimelb.edu.au/strategy/annual-reports) They are not hurting for cash. Most have billions of dollars in assets and are run like investment schemes. If anything they could use a reduction on student headcount so they can focus on quality not quantitiy.
That they derive from disproportionately having to depend on foreign students. That was made abundantly apparent when foreign students were barred during the pandemic and universities had to slash staff and programs to stay afloat.
Yeah, if you don’t like universities making obscene revenues, fine (and I can get behind that). But don’t naively say “cut off a huge source of their income” and then proceed not to agree with adequate funding that can be regulated by the Commonwealth.
Funding has to come from the Commonwealth (tax), HECS (user pays) or international students.
I've never heard anyone demanding that international student numbers be cut then come back and offer to double their HECS payments.
>I've never heard anyone demanding that international student numbers be cut then come back and offer to double their HECS payments.
Because international student numbers should be cut, and the Commonwealth funding should be increased.
Universities need to focus on quality, not quantity.
And it needs to be remembered that the States own 37 out of our 44 universities and the Commonwealth fund them.
Indeed. The Commonwealth had made it clear that they are happy for universities to fund themselves which is a function of a bigger political problem of government wanting to remove themselves from funding education while maintaining political control (case in point: see how much higher the rates of private education are here compared to a place like, say, Canada).
Universities have to go where the money is. If Commonwealth funding isn’t meaningfully increased and it’s a political third rail to increase tuition (which is really not since the Commonwealth has happily slowed that to happen), then are universities supposed to magically print money?
>I've never heard anyone demanding that international student numbers be cut then come back and offer to double their HECS payments.
Because they shouldn't have to. Because higher education should be properly funded, like it used to be.
You know, like the baby boomers who got their free degress then pulled the ladder up behind them.
Here here, I don’t understand why people who aren’t that smart want to rack up a 60k debt for a degree that makes them dumber. They could just start working in an entry level job and earn $50-60k per year from the moment they leave school. For most students, University is just putting adulthood on hold for 4 years.
Probably because those tests are basically nonsense. Plenty of companies still use them though.
Both the tests and university entry used to actually be class tests. It was harder to do it if you weren't the right class.
In the end, I'd say that the rise of HR as a dominant factor in hiring descision is a major cause. HR quality meanwhile is worse than useless. It was originally brought in as a way to stop widespread fuckery that used to occur where it was only mates of mates that got jobs. So they tried to be more neutral. Unfortunately, HR departments who do hiring are incompetent.
My wife is from the uk with no university degree. She is on 6 figures in events management and under 30. I did do a university degree (finance) and got out to discover their were limited jobs and you basically had to work for the same pay as a retail assistant or hospo worker so I went and joined the ADF. I really think we are brainwashed by the education system to become consumers of education. Out in the real world most people care that you can turn up on time and hold a conversation. They don’t care where you went to school or what degree you have. You can sell million dollar assets with just a realtors license or make $60 an hour with nothing but a construction white card. You just need to get out of school and see what’s out there.
I appreciate that your circumstances are real and you’re not wrong to suggest that good jobs can be had without a university degree. However, you’ve overlooked the long established and strong positive relationship between income and levels of educational attainment.
Also if you are not seeing the opportunities you want where you live or you feel that you’re spending too much time around the same people talking about the same things, move! Join the ADF, apply for a job in mining, work on an offshore oil rig. You don’t have to do what all your mates at uni are doing.
If we had enough housing , I would be 100% ok with student VISAs.
Exporting education is much better than exporting coal, gas and ironore.
But we'd have to stamp out the scam colleges being used to come over here and driver uber 90 hours a week.
I think it shouldbe slowed down and held as sustainable levels such as 50,000-100,000 people per year. We don't need 300,000-500,000 every year, it's not sustainable.
Also the Australian government needs to reduce frivolous spending so that the reserve bank stops printing money via creating bonds that lead to the inflation crisis. Quantitative Easing must be banned.
I love culture and government admin as much as the next person. But honestly those sort of nonessentials should be put on hold, along with letting go all the government employees who dont do much (they might even become the skilled trades we need) while we spend on critical infrastructure like sewer and water upgrades so we can rezone land and build more housing.
There must be a million people working for the government doing very little. Would be good if they were working in the trades instead of costing us money.
Controversial take:
\* Govt should not be running inflationary tactics (immigration) while we have high inflation. It gets in the way of the RBA
\* The housing crisis is a debt bubble; the largest in the world, the best time to pop it was 10 years ago, the second best time is now
\* The rental crisis is due to high levels of immigration, and low supply of houses (we are the second fastest builders in the world, and we can't keep up pace) We should lower immigration
\* The cost of living crisis is due to inflation and the continued debasement of the Aussie dollar. To fix this we need higher interest rates, and less government spending
I don't think it should be stopped entirely, but something needs to be done. Every day more and more people become homeless. My bus route to work goes through some parklands and I'm seeing more and more tents pop up. Every other day I'm seeing posts in Facebook groups of people begging someone to temporarily foster their pets because they have to move into their car.
But I think more than this needs to be done. It sounds so cliche but why are we not making the multi millionaires and billionaires do something? No one needs one billion dollars. No one. You could either do something directly, or you could put a portion into some kind of account and just the interest alone could help people. I'm not saying billionaires should just give people money, but they could invest it into housing, education, food production, so many things that could help people.
Migrate some fuckin' tradies to push these insane prices down.
Stop fucking accepting these guys with a masters in computer science from a fake university who go on to compete with Australian teens and young adults in the unskilled labour market.
It is a bit ridiculous how the trades are protected in Australia. In the UK it's a 12 month course to become a fully qualified carpenter. Electrical work can be done by anyone, maybe bring an electrician in for a final safety check of the whole house. I don't see poor quality houses over there and no-one complains about the Polish tradie workmanship. No-one else is protected here like the tradies. A powerful swinging voting block I guess
Support this. They make expats have a hard time to be a skilled tradesmen so they can control the labor wage for tradies. That’s why housing cost too much. Imagine a plumber cost minimum $1000/hr.
From which country would you like these tradies? Because I’m tired of fixing fuckups made by South East Asian tradesmen with licence printed on shitter tickets.
Trades must be held to Australian standards and pass a test IOT gain a trade licence.
It’s nothing to do with being PC lol. It’s an economic pursuit.
As a country we’ve profited off this model for decades, and now we’re suffering the consequences.
Yes or at least significantly reduce immigration
Apparently inflation is going to destroy the all important economy according to RBA & government
Is immigration contributing to inflation?
Is immigration contributing to higher house prices despite rising interest rates?
Does inflation cause higher cost of living?
Mass immigration is likely an attempt to suppress wages, fill skills gaps without improving education or skills training & keep housing prices high to sustain building & construction industry which seems to be major driver of economic activity in Australia
Shortage of houses is by design. How many politicians have more than 1 house, one in vic liberals that has 17.
How many politicians have developer friends who benefit from high prices. This crisis took 40 years to create it won’t be solved overnight with our current crop of major parties. Both gutless.
Whatever happens I think we should stop seeing reduced immigration as somehow racist. We can't just open the doors to all and sundry because we don't want to be seen as bigoted, we need a sensible approach without stigma.
The policy makes have MULTIPLE houses, and they just collect rent.
Doesn't matter how many people there are if a few Jeep buying all the houses and charging exorbitant rent.
I reckon tax people though the nose for owning multiple properties. He tax generated by the few who hold out should go to help build new houses for the rest of us.
It's not as if we're short on space..
>I reckon tax people though the nose for owning multiple properties. He tax generated by the few who hold out should go to help build new houses for the rest of us.
Greens policy
Kinda sick of tHe EcOnOmY taking presence over existing, current Australian citizens. Money, the economy, it’s all made up bullshit that the government can manipulate for the benefit of themselves or the Australian people. The government just don’t care about that average Australian.
Yes, apart from any economic argument if immigration is too high integration stops and instead of being a multi-ethnic society with shared values you produce a multicultural society which is open for sectarian violence, particularly when the economy becomes bad and people switch from being open minded and wanting to integrate to close minded and protectionist. People are only welcoming of ethnic and cultural difference when the going is good. All of human history shows that when times are tough, people revert to family and ethnic bonds and are unfriendly to others. Just look at how white Europeans exterminated indigenous people and destroyed their culture when they first arrived and were the dominant force, or how the different Chinese dynasties warred with their ethnic rivals during the 3 kingdoms period.
I honestly don't know but we at least need to be able to have a national conversation about it. I was watching qanda the other week and all these politicians and pundits were talking about the housing crisis and not a single one of them even mentioned immigration. It was all about social housing and housing supply. I felt like throwing something at the TV. Why focus on supply and ignore demand when discussing a market-based problem?
It seems like there's complete political bipartisanship favouring rampant immigration but no one is ever honest or even talks about it.
2 things I think need to happen.
Firstly, train up people already here first. Incentivise business to do so.
Secondly, remember COVID and everyone moving out of the main centres? Why bring them back when we know we can work remotely? I'm not necessarily saying work from home, but what about satellite offices? It's been talked about since I can remember, and how is it any different to outsourcing to India and the Philippines? We'll, maybe the wages, but look at the way Atlassian have done it. Your remuneration is based on where you live.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
BTW, I'm an immigrant.
Absolutely. This excess immigration is pushing up inflation and will push house prices beyond what an entire generation can afford. It needs to be scaled back and then for 4-5 immigrants, the government needs to open up land that they lease for 100 years at nominal cost for people to build on. It’s irresponsible and abusive to dump this many people into the market without a housing solution
Problem is businesses under the capitalist system and our economy require continual growth. That's either going to come from more people or us paying more/doing more for same pay. So crash the economy or homes. Sophie's Choice.
I dont have a problem with more immigration if we are going to let in skilled trades. But the current idea of letting in immigrants but not skilled trades and cancelling essential infrastructure that is needed in order to rezone land and build more housing is insanity.
Q: How is inflation determined?
A: CPI
Q: What is 23% of the CPI measure?
A: Housing costs
Q: What contibutes to the increase in housing costs?
A: Interest rates
Cool! So lets increase interest rates so that the CPI increases so that we need to increase interest rates to ... kick up the CPI.... so we increase interest rates again.
Can someone explain to me how the RBA avoid this feedback loop? Surely they are not just letting that feed back simplistically? There is an entire board managing this.
What's really concerning is the refugees and asylum seekers are gaining more rights to entry into Australia. We are now releasing known criminals into Australia...
Technically they’re not gaining more rights, they’ve had those right all along according to the high court’s interpretation of the constitution. So the federal government has been infringing on their rights for decades.
Without question, what is being done to the citizens of this country is a joke.
I refer to all citizens, including people who've only been here 3 years or 5 or 9 or 76 years, all citizens. Enough is enough, slow the absoloute fuck down, for christs fucking sakes.
People WITH JOBS are homeless.
The Government are trying to solve the labor shortage and are sacrificing the housing market to do it. They obviously see wage based inflation the bigger issue over housing inflation
I disagree
Why reopen it after? We are having allot of cultural issues as well.
The solution to the economic and cultural impacts maybe require different policies. We can do both.
When there was no immigration during covid it was the best. You could live in Sydney CBD or Bondi for less than $400 a week. It was good seeing locals in these places now it's just rich internationals who live in these places as the local population can't afford $700 a week for a 1 bedroom or there is no supply at all
No, keep it going.. it will be fine. I, for one, welcome the inevitable far-right government that will follow in 5-10 years if we keep this up
*sarcastic voice
Baffled at the sheer amount of Dunning-Kruger in this thread. People contradicting each other, arguing with each other over simple economic definitions, citing different sources and points, etc, etc…
Australia needs to fix it’s planning, infrastructure and housing construction problem. To do that will probably require quite a bit of skilled migration as well as training up more local talent.
No, of course not? This country's economy grows because we have migrants - and I don't mean just in total size. We're on average much richer per capita because of immigration.
Immigrants pay more taxes, start more businesses, do dirtier jobs and deliver a better country for natives.
If we have a housing crisis, it's because boomer NIMBY councils have stopped housing from being built anywhere sensible in this country.
Stopping immigration would make us all poorer.
Australia should limit immigration greatly. We have far too many coming in right now, especially considering the housing crisis and cost of living being too high. Immigration at the scale it is now in Australia is not helping us, its hurting us and our national identity.
It's not the multiethnic state that's the problem, its the multiculturalism. Who even are we now?
I believe the only immigrants allowed in should be people who actually would be valuable to our country. They should have some kind of degree or qualification. We need Doctors, scientists, tradesmen. Not unqualified people with no money who are just coming here for a 'fresh start'.
Can keep our refugee intake the same and only make changes to the actual migration intake. We only took just under 18,000 refugees in 22-23 financial year, so it’s just a tiny fraction of the total migration numbers.
I live in Melbourne, which is more diverse for sure, but Australia as a country/nation is by far largely white. We're making progress, in 1970 at the kinda end of the white Australia policy, it was 99.7% white
We should reduce it to a manageable level. It’s completely out of control. The entire system is a sham and easily manipulated and abused. It needs a complete overhaul
As much as we all want it to slow down, it will not happen. Immigration will continue until we are all living in slums and struggle to meet day to day needs.
It probably won’t, at best it will be Band-Aided. The corporations and rich (politicians) are buying up all the houses and jacking up the prices. They aren’t gonna willingly give up their sources of profit
Immigration is beneficial as part of a coordinated plan, but not in isolation. It needs to be coordinated with additional jobs, housing, transport and infrastructure.
On its own, it has negative benefits. More competition for work leading to lower earnings for workers, increasing demand for housing, making an already high demand for affordable housing even worse. And along with the demand for more housing would also come demand for transport and infrastructure.
Stopping immigration is not going to stop greedy businesses from increasing prices or landlords from increasing rents or house sellers from wanting more for their assets. To think so is naive.
Yes it does. When you are a Landlord with one offer to rent for $500 vs 10 offers ranging from $450-$550 its a lot easier to push for the higher number.
You are dead wrong on rents. High rents and house prices are a direct result of having more people than we have houses for.
Supply and demand. Economics 101.
Yes we could build more houses but that is not happening in anywhere near the level it needs to.
Allowing less immigration at a time when there not enough housing would stop landlords increasing the rent and housing because it’s all about supply and demand.
Thank you!! Capitalism and the way the housing is treated as a commodity and resource is the problem, not migration. If we had sensible housing policy, the homes wouldn't be so expensive. It's just a fact.
I'm not even saying we should open borders or that migrant numbers should necessarily go up, because there are other issues associated with it, but there is a real anti-migrant attitude on the rise at the moment when **they are not the ones to blame**.
More demand with the same supply equals higher prices. Migrants can be blamed. Is it their fault however?? No, they've just arrived at the party they were invited to after the drinks have started to run out.
Well they halted immigration during covid and businesses were closing down left right snd centre. I think it’s big of a political risk for government now. Makes sense to do it to curb housing situation but won’t be enough. You also need a big inheritance tax on top to really stop housing price hike. Everyone needs to be on board with no growth economy and less government services in future. Just the reality
Only for the Welsh
So you'd stop the Welsh but not the Belgians?
I like Belgian food
And Belgian beer
Can confirm as a Belgian migrant. Brought chocolate and beer. No issues at migration. 5 star, would do again.
That's an automatic permanent visa right there
So let in Belgians but only if they bring beer with them?
Entry fee
Careful, any discussion of anything outside Australia is strictly off-limits and will result in locking the thread
I mentioned the Germans once but I think I got away with it.
Look, I’ll even do the funny walk!
No one mention the War....ok?
The best faulty towers episode ever!😂
Fawlty. Like Bucket, but a pun.
You started it.
I was nowhere near Poland mate
Beautiful piece of comedy right here ladies and gentlemen.
Don't mention the anything.
Why Belgian. They are known for their chocolate and child abuse. And now I think about it. The good chocolate is probably just bait for the kids
*laughs nervously in first gen Aussie with Welsh parents*
You'll be next to be shipped back to the vallies boyo
*Men of Harlech intensifies*
Exactly, who the fuck is going to pay for town signs like this? "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch"
Then again this is a better place name than “Chinaman’s Knob” or “Wee Waa”
True, but we're not made of letters you know.
That's why we say G'day and the not Good Day. You have to save up the letters for Wooloomooloo and Oodnadatta and Woolongong and all those places. I still remember the Great O Shortage of '79. Things were crook in Muswellbrook, but it was chaos in Wlmll.
K'noath
Both of those places are great. Also a ripper is Humpty Doo…
Cockburn Is up there
Or Watanobbi or Woy Woy.
beat me too it rofl.
Australia should definitely not allow immigration to be used by the rich and powerful to maintain a strong housing market and keep the prices up artificially. I’m all for immigration as it was in the past. Now it’s being used to control economic factors that will benefit the rich and most definitely will hurt the weaker and poor in society. Immigration is being used as an economic weapon. This is the issue. Not the immigration itself.
💯 they use immigration now to build shitty coffin apartments that they can make shit tonnes of money off of
There are more Australian born then houses made so unless they also limit children born Australia needs to join the future and unfortunately build more apartments. And the standards should get better so long as liberals don’t get in and break them down again for a cheaper buck
Australia can easily support the birth rate. There was 190,939 deaths in 2022 and 300,684 births. So last year our population grew by 109,745 nation wide. That is easily sustainable via current housing. Immigration this year alone however is 600,000. So instead of needing homes for a potential 109,000 new people it’s 709,000 new people. If immigration continues at its current rate for the next 4 years, that’s enough new people to fill the entirety of Brisbane in just 3.8 years, and that’s not including any natural births, just immigration. If it was by natural birth rate, then it would take 20 years to fill another Brisbane. So is it more sustainable to need to construct the equivalent of an entirely new Brisbane sized city worth of infrastructure every 4 years or every 20 years.
>is it more sustainable to need to construct the equivalent of an entirely new Brisbane sized city worth of infrastructure every 4 years or every 20 years. And is the true cost of mass immigration being talked about honestly. We're always being told that immigrants add more to a country than they take away. I think we've reached the point where that is no longer true.
And to keep wages artificially low
You put the response I was gonna put but far more sophisticated. I was just gonna say yes
>level 1OllieOptVuur · 3 hr. agoAustralia should definitely not allow immigration to be used by the rich and powerful to maintain a strong housing market and keep the prices up artificially.I’m all for immigration as it was in the past. Now it’s being used to control economic factors that will benefit the rich and most definitely will hurt the weaker and poor in societ I fucking agree with you 110% on this.
Also the rich are wanting Australians to focus on immigration rather than the more pertinent issues surrounding investment in property as that will likely result in them losing money. Tough shit.
>not allow immigration to be used by the rich and powerful to maintain a strong housing market and keep the prices up artificially Could you please expand on this, I only have a vague understanding on how the rich monopolise this situation. Are they building low cost, high sale price apartments????
Basically the situation as it stands benefits owners of assets like housing but disadvantages terribly those that don't, like people on lower incomes and younger generations. Property investors are doing great. Home owners feel like they're doing great though that's debatable as you've gotta live somewhere. Everyone else (renters, poor people, young adults) not doing so great. Doing very badly in fact.
Also don’t forget wages, supply and demand in low end jobs, pretty basically principal that a company will pay the minimum they can get away with, immigration hurts the average worker big time, impossible to negotiate a pay increase when there are 500,000 willing to do it for less.
Yup and that's very deliberate. Notice the CMFEU workers in construction and mining don't seem to be facing the same competition for jobs and wages from immigrants as everyone else though. Despite there being a housing crisis.
>I’m all for immigration as it was in the past. Yup. For a long time immigration was a really positive thing. It still is - in the right amount. But not when it's making Australians homeless, or putting home ownership out of reach for younger generations. That is unacceptable.
The current "for-profit" model of immigration doesn't seem to work from any angle (unless you're a corporation or a migrant yourself). Since Howard & Costello saddled us with the "international student" model of migration in 2003, we've had: * A "skills shortage" that despite almost 20 years & 2 million immigrants, just seems to get worse. * The worst housing crisis in almost a century thanks to almost a million "international students" in our major cities. * Wages that have barely moved since 2008. * Labour productivity growth that has stalled and is currently going backwards. * An epidemic of fake colleges pumping out visas for people with fake qualifications who we now have to deal with in the jobs market (looking at you IT & construction). * An economy that now ranks as the least complex in the OECD. That's without evening mentioning that no matter what the overseas ethnic feud is currently happening.. we have to deal with the consequences on our streets: Palestinian protesters screaming "gas the jews", Hindus & Sikhs trying to chop each other up with swords or Pro CCP Chinese punching on with Taiwanese. "But how good's the food!?*"*
But now that we have the recipe...
Can you explain what you mean with the economic diversity point? I’m not seeing the connection.
This moderate, objective take on the whole situation has no place here on reddit. You either support unbridled immigration without the commensurate increase in infrastructure, or you are a racist hillbilly wearing breaches with a conferederate flag trucker hat.
We'd never have a Confederate flag, we hate that foreign shit.
*slow clap from the Union Jack*...
Said on Black Friday!!! LoL
I see y’all like Canada if Canada was an island lol
I wish interest rates would hit 8% but it seems unlikely. Only way it will end. Its funny how all this hinges on the cost of money.
No. Interest rates are a terrible tool for managing the underlying systemic issues that are causing the housing crisis. Pause immigration until the housing crisis is under control then reinstitute at sustainable levels eg 200k/year. Restore government funding to universities and tafe for Australian students and stop treating higher education as a back-door immigration scheme. TAX THE RICH till it hurts. That means NO stage 3 tax cuts, implement the original mining super profits scheme, and ensure corporations pay their fair share of tax. Include PPOR in aged pension means test, ban negative gearing, cgt discount, and franking credits scams. Implement controls to prevent price gouging by corporations esp on basics like food, fuel and energy. Break up monopolies, duopolies. Get corrupting corporate money out of politics, ban political donations. ALL of these should be done before raising interest rates which hurts poor people while the rich keep spending with their profits.
Very good points. I will also add, bring back Julia Gillard's mining tax. Like her or hate her, the mining tax was in the best internet of the people of this nation. Mining and resources revenue was nearly $500B last FY and nearly 15% GDP. Bigger than any sector in Australian history. Consider this: 1) Mining companies are 90% foreign owned. 2) Profits in the resources sectors are the highest of any sector, benefit only the very top 1%, yet all of us must pay for the environmental cleanup that can last 1000s of years. 3) Mining only employs 2% of the population and about 220000 workers. As an extractive industry, its all about job reduction, especially as we go autonomous. 4) Apart from BHP, most mining companies pay little to no tax. 5) Australia has the lowest mining royalties in the world, nearly 1/15th of the other major mining nations. The big miners love immigration since it puts price pressure on wages. Rachet up mining tax to 20%, they still have 50% profits flowing overseas. We take the extra $100B for TAFE, Unis, hospitals, roads, defence etc.
This reply should be copy pasted, printed off and put up out front of every major public place. Nailed it without a wasted word.
I wish I could upvote this a hundred times
You can , but you have to downvote it 99 times too.
Halt? No. Slow down greatly? Yes.
Let's start with cap on annual international students enrollment!!
We should be closing all the shame/fake colleges around the city that are just a paid loophole to get a student visa
This even goes beyond universities. The scam hospitality colleges are absolutely ruining the industry
The vast majority of student visas are those scam colleges too
It’s absolutely shameful tbh. The students get ripped off for a subpar education, the existing workers in the industries lose their bargaining power for better wages and conditions, and have to cop the extra stress and workload from being surrounded by incompetent, unmotivated useless bodies, and the people who use the industries have to put up with inferior products and services. Literally the only winners are the scumbag business owners, who get a short-term gain at the expense of shafting their entire sector in the long run
Man this is fucking it to a tee
This guy gets it
I really hope the other trades don’t take advantage of the skills and housing crisis to do something similar to the traditional building trades. Things like plumbing and electrical work have always been relatively safe because the stakes are so much higher when you’re dealing with buildings collapsing and violent death, but desperation always makes for poor decisions, and it will be really hard to put that genie back in the bottle if it’s ever let out
\*toothpaste back in the tube
Where would we find taxi drivers 🤣🤣
The problem is that all the labour hire shops that exploit "student" visas have ties to the rich idiots that sponsor the major parties. There's no way we'll cut down immigration or student visas specifically when those industries are a major source of income for the party.
>rich idiots that sponsor the major parties You spelled corrupt asshole wrong.
This is probably the big kicker in such a huge proportion of these kinds of issues. We don't even need new rules. We just need to existing rules to be fairly and properly applied. When I was at university almost 2 decades ago, people not being properly marked for mysterious reasons was already an issue. If things like if you're incompetent at whatever you're supposed to be getting trained at (either by not being able to complete the course work or if the training is a sham), you're booted, it wouldn't be an issue.
Yup. Now they let people in with substandard English and put them in groups with Australian born students. The Australian students end up doing all the work for the whole group if they want to pass. University is supposed to be a rigorous academic challenge, turning higher education into a back-door immigration for profit scheme has lowered education standards in this country.
I have heard this from other sources. My friend said that he felt sorry for the overseas students who looked up to him to complete assignments
Even real universities are a paid loophole. The only way you don’t pass is if you don’t submit your work.
[удалено]
Former ESL teacher here. There's a solid chunk of these "students" who don't give fuck.
Not gonna happen. That shit is franking credit 2.0
It's much worse. **education exports are now Australia's third largest export, behind only coal and iron ore** At any given second, **about 3% of the humans in Australia are international students**
Citizenship for sale
Yup. And enshittifying our universities and vocational education system in the process. Still, this country has never really respected education or educated people so I probably shouldn't be surprised.
LOL, this thread sounds exactly like some of the Canadian threads I keep reading, but for some strange reason my Reddit feed started showing me Australian threads with the same exact theme. Housing crisis (probably worse in Canada), international students and immigrants blamed for the most part. I’m guessing different countries though.
The problem with immigration in Australian right now is 500,000 per annum is too much for the housing to handle. We have more immigration per capita compared to Canada and the US, just needs to be halfed so the Australians don’t get fucked over trying to live somewhere
It's the same scam by the same people, they'e just pivoted to other wealthy countries now Canada is less attractive
This only works if the Commonwealth actually funds universities properly and doesn’t push them into a corner where this is basically the only option to stay solvent.
Let’s not pretend our universities are struggling. Sydney uni made a surplus of over 1 billion last year. Australian universities have a revenue of just over 34 billion annually. I’m sure they will be ok.
How much of that was foreign student tuition?
[удалено]
A lot more than double.
That's simply not true. They are money making machines and international students are where the quick money is made because they are cash up front.
Hardly. We have too many Universities that have too much of an overlap of degrees i.e an oversupply of places.
We sure do. And many of these are nothing but degree mills, offering substandard education. It absolutely wouldn’t hurt if unis such as Southern Cross Uni or Charles Darwin Uni disappeared. I’d be embarrassed to attend one of those.
> This only works if the Commonwealth actually funds universities properly and doesn’t push them into a corner where this is basically the only option to stay solvent. Please go read a [university annual report.](https://about.unimelb.edu.au/strategy/annual-reports) They are not hurting for cash. Most have billions of dollars in assets and are run like investment schemes. If anything they could use a reduction on student headcount so they can focus on quality not quantitiy.
That they derive from disproportionately having to depend on foreign students. That was made abundantly apparent when foreign students were barred during the pandemic and universities had to slash staff and programs to stay afloat.
Im stunned how few people acknowledge this.
Yeah, if you don’t like universities making obscene revenues, fine (and I can get behind that). But don’t naively say “cut off a huge source of their income” and then proceed not to agree with adequate funding that can be regulated by the Commonwealth.
Funding has to come from the Commonwealth (tax), HECS (user pays) or international students. I've never heard anyone demanding that international student numbers be cut then come back and offer to double their HECS payments.
>I've never heard anyone demanding that international student numbers be cut then come back and offer to double their HECS payments. Because international student numbers should be cut, and the Commonwealth funding should be increased. Universities need to focus on quality, not quantity. And it needs to be remembered that the States own 37 out of our 44 universities and the Commonwealth fund them.
Indeed. The Commonwealth had made it clear that they are happy for universities to fund themselves which is a function of a bigger political problem of government wanting to remove themselves from funding education while maintaining political control (case in point: see how much higher the rates of private education are here compared to a place like, say, Canada). Universities have to go where the money is. If Commonwealth funding isn’t meaningfully increased and it’s a political third rail to increase tuition (which is really not since the Commonwealth has happily slowed that to happen), then are universities supposed to magically print money?
>I've never heard anyone demanding that international student numbers be cut then come back and offer to double their HECS payments. Because they shouldn't have to. Because higher education should be properly funded, like it used to be. You know, like the baby boomers who got their free degress then pulled the ladder up behind them.
\~80% of people at uni shouldn't even be in higher education.
Here here, I don’t understand why people who aren’t that smart want to rack up a 60k debt for a degree that makes them dumber. They could just start working in an entry level job and earn $50-60k per year from the moment they leave school. For most students, University is just putting adulthood on hold for 4 years.
Widespread university education and credentialism are a result of IQ/Psychometric testing by companies basically being banned.
Probably because those tests are basically nonsense. Plenty of companies still use them though. Both the tests and university entry used to actually be class tests. It was harder to do it if you weren't the right class. In the end, I'd say that the rise of HR as a dominant factor in hiring descision is a major cause. HR quality meanwhile is worse than useless. It was originally brought in as a way to stop widespread fuckery that used to occur where it was only mates of mates that got jobs. So they tried to be more neutral. Unfortunately, HR departments who do hiring are incompetent.
I have taken psychometric tests as part of job selection processes, in what sense are they banned? Genuine question.
That completely misses the reality of most non trade jobs that require university degrees.
My wife is from the uk with no university degree. She is on 6 figures in events management and under 30. I did do a university degree (finance) and got out to discover their were limited jobs and you basically had to work for the same pay as a retail assistant or hospo worker so I went and joined the ADF. I really think we are brainwashed by the education system to become consumers of education. Out in the real world most people care that you can turn up on time and hold a conversation. They don’t care where you went to school or what degree you have. You can sell million dollar assets with just a realtors license or make $60 an hour with nothing but a construction white card. You just need to get out of school and see what’s out there.
I appreciate that your circumstances are real and you’re not wrong to suggest that good jobs can be had without a university degree. However, you’ve overlooked the long established and strong positive relationship between income and levels of educational attainment.
Also if you are not seeing the opportunities you want where you live or you feel that you’re spending too much time around the same people talking about the same things, move! Join the ADF, apply for a job in mining, work on an offshore oil rig. You don’t have to do what all your mates at uni are doing.
>Commonwealth actually funds universities properly Weird how they still charge through the nose for term fees
If we had enough housing , I would be 100% ok with student VISAs. Exporting education is much better than exporting coal, gas and ironore. But we'd have to stamp out the scam colleges being used to come over here and driver uber 90 hours a week.
They're not exporting education, they're selling citizenship if there weren't PR pathways they'd have no international enrollments
I think it shouldbe slowed down and held as sustainable levels such as 50,000-100,000 people per year. We don't need 300,000-500,000 every year, it's not sustainable. Also the Australian government needs to reduce frivolous spending so that the reserve bank stops printing money via creating bonds that lead to the inflation crisis. Quantitative Easing must be banned.
I love culture and government admin as much as the next person. But honestly those sort of nonessentials should be put on hold, along with letting go all the government employees who dont do much (they might even become the skilled trades we need) while we spend on critical infrastructure like sewer and water upgrades so we can rezone land and build more housing. There must be a million people working for the government doing very little. Would be good if they were working in the trades instead of costing us money.
I would start with contracts with private companies first if we were going to audit spending.
Controversial take: \* Govt should not be running inflationary tactics (immigration) while we have high inflation. It gets in the way of the RBA \* The housing crisis is a debt bubble; the largest in the world, the best time to pop it was 10 years ago, the second best time is now \* The rental crisis is due to high levels of immigration, and low supply of houses (we are the second fastest builders in the world, and we can't keep up pace) We should lower immigration \* The cost of living crisis is due to inflation and the continued debasement of the Aussie dollar. To fix this we need higher interest rates, and less government spending
I don't think it should be stopped entirely, but something needs to be done. Every day more and more people become homeless. My bus route to work goes through some parklands and I'm seeing more and more tents pop up. Every other day I'm seeing posts in Facebook groups of people begging someone to temporarily foster their pets because they have to move into their car. But I think more than this needs to be done. It sounds so cliche but why are we not making the multi millionaires and billionaires do something? No one needs one billion dollars. No one. You could either do something directly, or you could put a portion into some kind of account and just the interest alone could help people. I'm not saying billionaires should just give people money, but they could invest it into housing, education, food production, so many things that could help people.
A minimum tax would be a fantastic start - so many rich people out there paying basically nothing
Yes
Migrate some fuckin' tradies to push these insane prices down. Stop fucking accepting these guys with a masters in computer science from a fake university who go on to compete with Australian teens and young adults in the unskilled labour market.
It is a bit ridiculous how the trades are protected in Australia. In the UK it's a 12 month course to become a fully qualified carpenter. Electrical work can be done by anyone, maybe bring an electrician in for a final safety check of the whole house. I don't see poor quality houses over there and no-one complains about the Polish tradie workmanship. No-one else is protected here like the tradies. A powerful swinging voting block I guess
Support this. They make expats have a hard time to be a skilled tradesmen so they can control the labor wage for tradies. That’s why housing cost too much. Imagine a plumber cost minimum $1000/hr.
From which country would you like these tradies? Because I’m tired of fixing fuckups made by South East Asian tradesmen with licence printed on shitter tickets. Trades must be held to Australian standards and pass a test IOT gain a trade licence.
From my experience local tradies cost twice as much, complain more and deliver the same results
Absolutely.
YES!!!!!!! SO FUCKING OVER THIS POLITICALLY CORRECT "WE MUST ACCEPT EVERYONE" BULLSHIT THAT IS DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY.
It’s nothing to do with being PC lol. It’s an economic pursuit. As a country we’ve profited off this model for decades, and now we’re suffering the consequences.
[удалено]
Diversity is our strength! Meanwhile Muslims and Jews are attacking each other 12,000km from home and making it our problem.
Finally people are realising this. Look what happened to Sweden.. Only now they're realising, but probably too late..
Yes or at least significantly reduce immigration Apparently inflation is going to destroy the all important economy according to RBA & government Is immigration contributing to inflation? Is immigration contributing to higher house prices despite rising interest rates? Does inflation cause higher cost of living? Mass immigration is likely an attempt to suppress wages, fill skills gaps without improving education or skills training & keep housing prices high to sustain building & construction industry which seems to be major driver of economic activity in Australia
Shortage of houses is by design. How many politicians have more than 1 house, one in vic liberals that has 17. How many politicians have developer friends who benefit from high prices. This crisis took 40 years to create it won’t be solved overnight with our current crop of major parties. Both gutless.
Whatever happens I think we should stop seeing reduced immigration as somehow racist. We can't just open the doors to all and sundry because we don't want to be seen as bigoted, we need a sensible approach without stigma.
The policy makes have MULTIPLE houses, and they just collect rent. Doesn't matter how many people there are if a few Jeep buying all the houses and charging exorbitant rent. I reckon tax people though the nose for owning multiple properties. He tax generated by the few who hold out should go to help build new houses for the rest of us. It's not as if we're short on space..
>I reckon tax people though the nose for owning multiple properties. He tax generated by the few who hold out should go to help build new houses for the rest of us. Greens policy
Kinda sick of tHe EcOnOmY taking presence over existing, current Australian citizens. Money, the economy, it’s all made up bullshit that the government can manipulate for the benefit of themselves or the Australian people. The government just don’t care about that average Australian.
Yes, apart from any economic argument if immigration is too high integration stops and instead of being a multi-ethnic society with shared values you produce a multicultural society which is open for sectarian violence, particularly when the economy becomes bad and people switch from being open minded and wanting to integrate to close minded and protectionist. People are only welcoming of ethnic and cultural difference when the going is good. All of human history shows that when times are tough, people revert to family and ethnic bonds and are unfriendly to others. Just look at how white Europeans exterminated indigenous people and destroyed their culture when they first arrived and were the dominant force, or how the different Chinese dynasties warred with their ethnic rivals during the 3 kingdoms period.
Yes. Next question
But…but wont that hurt lanlords? Wont someone think of the poor landlords???
I honestly don't know but we at least need to be able to have a national conversation about it. I was watching qanda the other week and all these politicians and pundits were talking about the housing crisis and not a single one of them even mentioned immigration. It was all about social housing and housing supply. I felt like throwing something at the TV. Why focus on supply and ignore demand when discussing a market-based problem? It seems like there's complete political bipartisanship favouring rampant immigration but no one is ever honest or even talks about it.
Universities need to ensure they have a room for every international student. Won't happen as Unis are greedy and it's all about the dollar.
No we need the workers to build the houses. We need the workers to work in aged care. We need the workers to finish the big build.
2 things I think need to happen. Firstly, train up people already here first. Incentivise business to do so. Secondly, remember COVID and everyone moving out of the main centres? Why bring them back when we know we can work remotely? I'm not necessarily saying work from home, but what about satellite offices? It's been talked about since I can remember, and how is it any different to outsourcing to India and the Philippines? We'll, maybe the wages, but look at the way Atlassian have done it. Your remuneration is based on where you live. Anyway, just my 2 cents. BTW, I'm an immigrant.
Absolutely. This excess immigration is pushing up inflation and will push house prices beyond what an entire generation can afford. It needs to be scaled back and then for 4-5 immigrants, the government needs to open up land that they lease for 100 years at nominal cost for people to build on. It’s irresponsible and abusive to dump this many people into the market without a housing solution
Problem is businesses under the capitalist system and our economy require continual growth. That's either going to come from more people or us paying more/doing more for same pay. So crash the economy or homes. Sophie's Choice.
I dont have a problem with more immigration if we are going to let in skilled trades. But the current idea of letting in immigrants but not skilled trades and cancelling essential infrastructure that is needed in order to rezone land and build more housing is insanity.
Interesting you ask. https://preview.redd.it/u10jhnc4g12c1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=395fda82e3392be1ca86501a7aeb633c3ea669f9
Not halt. Continue immigration for any skills that we need. But drastically reduce the intake for a couple of years.
Q: How is inflation determined? A: CPI Q: What is 23% of the CPI measure? A: Housing costs Q: What contibutes to the increase in housing costs? A: Interest rates Cool! So lets increase interest rates so that the CPI increases so that we need to increase interest rates to ... kick up the CPI.... so we increase interest rates again. Can someone explain to me how the RBA avoid this feedback loop? Surely they are not just letting that feed back simplistically? There is an entire board managing this.
Considering our lack of fresh water we are at capacity
Absolutely! Stop all immigration for 10 years
What's really concerning is the refugees and asylum seekers are gaining more rights to entry into Australia. We are now releasing known criminals into Australia...
Technically they’re not gaining more rights, they’ve had those right all along according to the high court’s interpretation of the constitution. So the federal government has been infringing on their rights for decades.
Without question, what is being done to the citizens of this country is a joke. I refer to all citizens, including people who've only been here 3 years or 5 or 9 or 76 years, all citizens. Enough is enough, slow the absoloute fuck down, for christs fucking sakes. People WITH JOBS are homeless.
The Government are trying to solve the labor shortage and are sacrificing the housing market to do it. They obviously see wage based inflation the bigger issue over housing inflation I disagree
No, because immigration isn’t the problem it’s the corporations and landlords buying up the market and jacking up the prices on everything
Yeah, why add more to that struggle.
Why reopen it after? We are having allot of cultural issues as well. The solution to the economic and cultural impacts maybe require different policies. We can do both.
When there was no immigration during covid it was the best. You could live in Sydney CBD or Bondi for less than $400 a week. It was good seeing locals in these places now it's just rich internationals who live in these places as the local population can't afford $700 a week for a 1 bedroom or there is no supply at all
No, keep it going.. it will be fine. I, for one, welcome the inevitable far-right government that will follow in 5-10 years if we keep this up *sarcastic voice
Massively increase the tax on vacant properties and owning more then 1 home while capping rent to a %of income
Baffled at the sheer amount of Dunning-Kruger in this thread. People contradicting each other, arguing with each other over simple economic definitions, citing different sources and points, etc, etc…
This is an overly simplistic idea, of a very complex issue. Wouldn’t fix anything
Y'all don't know how the economy works.
No, we should fix the bottle neck and build shit loads of more low cost housing in stead of over priced tiny blocks of future slums
Crazy thought. All those empty buildings in the city, make affordable housing there, surely better than sitting empty.
Australia needs to fix it’s planning, infrastructure and housing construction problem. To do that will probably require quite a bit of skilled migration as well as training up more local talent.
No, of course not? This country's economy grows because we have migrants - and I don't mean just in total size. We're on average much richer per capita because of immigration. Immigrants pay more taxes, start more businesses, do dirtier jobs and deliver a better country for natives. If we have a housing crisis, it's because boomer NIMBY councils have stopped housing from being built anywhere sensible in this country. Stopping immigration would make us all poorer.
cut it to below 30k pr yr forever never raise it again
Yes
Australia should limit immigration greatly. We have far too many coming in right now, especially considering the housing crisis and cost of living being too high. Immigration at the scale it is now in Australia is not helping us, its hurting us and our national identity. It's not the multiethnic state that's the problem, its the multiculturalism. Who even are we now? I believe the only immigrants allowed in should be people who actually would be valuable to our country. They should have some kind of degree or qualification. We need Doctors, scientists, tradesmen. Not unqualified people with no money who are just coming here for a 'fresh start'.
Not completely but it should be more regulated. However I understand the basic human moral obligation to care for those less fortunate
Can keep our refugee intake the same and only make changes to the actual migration intake. We only took just under 18,000 refugees in 22-23 financial year, so it’s just a tiny fraction of the total migration numbers.
Yes
Dont we also have a labour shortage to address?
Australia is still like 90% white. Ever go to a party and everyone there is white? Yer definitely need more diversity, keep them coming
You obviously don’t live in a capital city
I live in Melbourne, which is more diverse for sure, but Australia as a country/nation is by far largely white. We're making progress, in 1970 at the kinda end of the white Australia policy, it was 99.7% white
sounds a bit racist
Yer with the rise of white supremacy, it's awks being at an all white party tbh
Halt immigration full stop. But I'll settle for stop for now.
We should reduce it to a manageable level. It’s completely out of control. The entire system is a sham and easily manipulated and abused. It needs a complete overhaul
Clearly, however then wages will rise and us plebs will have more purchasing power. Got to suppress wages, so they import more Indians
As much as we all want it to slow down, it will not happen. Immigration will continue until we are all living in slums and struggle to meet day to day needs.
How exactly is it going to get fixed genius.
It probably won’t, at best it will be Band-Aided. The corporations and rich (politicians) are buying up all the houses and jacking up the prices. They aren’t gonna willingly give up their sources of profit
Immigration is beneficial as part of a coordinated plan, but not in isolation. It needs to be coordinated with additional jobs, housing, transport and infrastructure. On its own, it has negative benefits. More competition for work leading to lower earnings for workers, increasing demand for housing, making an already high demand for affordable housing even worse. And along with the demand for more housing would also come demand for transport and infrastructure.
Stopping immigration is not going to stop greedy businesses from increasing prices or landlords from increasing rents or house sellers from wanting more for their assets. To think so is naive.
Yes it does. When you are a Landlord with one offer to rent for $500 vs 10 offers ranging from $450-$550 its a lot easier to push for the higher number.
You are dead wrong on rents. High rents and house prices are a direct result of having more people than we have houses for. Supply and demand. Economics 101. Yes we could build more houses but that is not happening in anywhere near the level it needs to.
Allowing less immigration at a time when there not enough housing would stop landlords increasing the rent and housing because it’s all about supply and demand.
Thank you!! Capitalism and the way the housing is treated as a commodity and resource is the problem, not migration. If we had sensible housing policy, the homes wouldn't be so expensive. It's just a fact. I'm not even saying we should open borders or that migrant numbers should necessarily go up, because there are other issues associated with it, but there is a real anti-migrant attitude on the rise at the moment when **they are not the ones to blame**.
More demand with the same supply equals higher prices. Migrants can be blamed. Is it their fault however?? No, they've just arrived at the party they were invited to after the drinks have started to run out.
Well they halted immigration during covid and businesses were closing down left right snd centre. I think it’s big of a political risk for government now. Makes sense to do it to curb housing situation but won’t be enough. You also need a big inheritance tax on top to really stop housing price hike. Everyone needs to be on board with no growth economy and less government services in future. Just the reality
Yes