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Yes Gerard, we should keep immigration levels high
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The last time I found myself in agreement with Gerard Henderson two weeks running, Paul Keating was Prime Minister and you could only read newspapers in physical form. But following last week’s tilt at our economic Eeyore Steve Keen, he has wisely today called for the maintenance of high levels of immigration until economic data shows a need for a reduction. He also suggested that the Federal Opposition avoid exploiting the issue. Henderson is obviously right that continued high levels of immigration will buoy demand, particularly for housing, through any downturn, softening its impact. There are longer term reasons for sustaining a strong immigration intake as well. While we’re all focussed on the looming slowdown/recession/depression (take your pick depending on your temperament and the latest stockmarket movements), the world’s economic trajectory of recent years will resume at some point, even if not quite as quickly as in recent years. China and India will continue their rapid growth. Australia’s role as a major energy and minerals exporter will continue along with it. Only, by then, our workforce will have aged even more. Our need for skilled and semi-skilled labour will be even greater. Barring an unemployment crisis of Keensian proportions, we’ll be back up against the limits of our workforce capacity before we know it, feeding into inflation again. A worldwide recession is the ideal time to try to lure the world’s best skilled workers here – the engineers, the doctors, the scientists, the academics and teachers — who will add significantly to the country’s productive capacity. Any slowdown should be used to address the structural problems that will re-emerge in the economy once growth takes off again. It won’t just be the Pauline Hansons and green fundamentalists who will object. Trade unions, which already object to 457 visas, will complain about the impact of high immigration while unemployment is going up. And as Henderson notes, the Opposition is already calling for cuts. Sharman Stone succeeded the retiring Chris Ellison and immediately picked up his theme that the Government had thrown open Australia to hordes of boat people by amending its detention policy. Then she called for a 25% cut in immigration, much to the chagrin of business groups. So much for serving the Coalition’s business constituency. One of the reasons the Howard Government was — contrary to perceptions — a high immigration government was that the ALP never played politics with the issue, however much its union allies succumbed to the temptation. The Coalition should show the same responsibility. |
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18 Comments
Yes Merri - I quite agree, and perhaps we should also add education to the intergenerational list of ‘once a right - now denied’, as the young pay for their education and fight over limited places at university. My father came to Australia in 1976 as a teacher, and I thought it strange even then that Australia was short of teachers. Apparently we are still short of teachers 30 years later! (and short of doctors now too)
Could we try investing in young australians - no matter what their socio-economic background? could we stop leaving our children out, allow them to study what they want to, and give them a start here so they don’t need to go looking overseas for opportunities?
This country needs to come to terms with its low self esteem.
The growth-without-limit merchants just don’t get it, do they? At a population growth of just 1% p.a. Australia will have almost 170 million people in another 200 years and Sydney over 30 million. Our current growth rate is 1.6% which would give us over 500 and 100 million respectively. At real economic growth of just 2% we would be consuming, in 200 years time, over 50 times our current consumption of resources.
When shall we learn that infinite growth cannot happen in a finite world? What is the process by which we shall come to plan a realistic future for Australia and for the human race?
Tom McLoughlin writes: “What a racket high immigration is…”
Tom, it’s obvious that immigration benefits the country:
1. Immigrants bring skills into the country, so we don’t have to bother training the natives.
2. Immigrants make the economy more competitive, i.e. they undercut the locals on wages.
3. Immigration keep the property market bouyant, i.e.makes property speculators rich. Too bad that locals get priced out of the market.
3. Immigrants are more flexible. That is, they’re less encumbered with family and community ties which are clearly economically inefficient and should be discouraged. In fact, there is no such thing as community and so it doesn’t matter if a Sydney company employs someone from Newcastle or New Delhi, the workers are all equivalent economic units.
4. Immigrants allow specialisation, i.e. rich people get loads of cheap labour to wait their tables, look after their kids, care for their eldery parnets, and do all the other little jobs that they are too important to do.
5. Immigration benefits the owners of capital (no further explanation necessary).
6. They do jobs Australians don’t want to do, i.e. they’ll work for the low rates that Australians won’t (see point 2).
7. Did I mention the property market?
Anyway, I think I’ve now conclusively demonstrated the benefits of immigration. Any change for a job with the media or in politics?
Short-sighted and environmentally and socially irresponsible. This country is mostly desert, and lack of infrastructure investment since the ascendance of neoliberal ideology means that our cities already cannot cope.
We should reduce immigration to the bare minimum - refugees and families of people already here.
Only an economic fundamentalist could disagree…
PS: Since when is it a crime to be a Green fundamentalist?
Aging population is eventually occur everywhere, even in the developing world, its already started in China as a result of the one child policy. So absorbing the growth in other countires populations is only really a medium term solution.
Personally I think high immigration is a good thing its just a shame that our state and federal governments have so shamefully neglected in infrastructure, which is making Australia a less “liveable” country for current and potential residents. Definitely we need to invest in education to improve the outcomes for people here, all of our skills shortages are in the maths related professions, we really need to ensure that our young can numerate. My husband (who happens to be Chinese) is continually shocked by the inability of australians to perform a simple calculation, such as working out correct change!
This is one of many reasons why Australia will always need a high level of migration.
Bernard: When oh when will Australia be able to produce its own brain power? The pattern of Australia since the first gold find in NSW, by Edward Hammond Hargraves. Yeah born in England. Has been to flog off our mineral wealth, disregarding the future necessity of having to use it ourselves and to import goods and people from overseas: disregarding the necessity of producing them ourselves. What a mixture. Tawdry goods from Asia; brain power from wherever it can be found. Without a thought for the future. When the world is standing room only, and we are limited to a one or two child family what’s left of Oz will love the huge immigration of the 20th-21st century.
I don’t know which is worse, conning untold thousands of immigrants to the mythical ‘sun-burnt country’, and it will be a myth. Or not producing our own intelligent humans. Brain power seldom comes from brain power. the pattern tends to repeat itself only the third or fourth generation.
Perhaps you would like to come and live in the state of Victoria? Half of it has been flattened by wall-to- wall
concrete and MacMansions. This is a lovely look into the future. Come to our outer suburbs to see where once fertile land could be found. There isn’t a tree left standing. No birds fly. All is barren. This is progress. You may think. Come and live here. You will love it!
Victor Charles Herbert: Sorry, Kevin Charles Herbert: Well, your name does ring a bell somewhere in my virus -infected head. But I don’t think it was to do with the above blog by Bernard Keane. If I can remember correctly, I accused you of sounding patronizing while making an assumption about someone else being patronizing. I think you said something to the effect “We scribes like to…………”.I’ve forgotten the words, but I found it to be a pompous statement; in the light of you not having an instantly recognizable name. But yes, I probably did pick you up on it and I make no apologies. Did I question you about being a photographer? I don’t think so. Because I have no visual evidence to support one view or another. However, I did have visual evidence of your pomposity. Right in font of me. So my opinion still stands.
In the political side of things Henderson makes a valid point that is usually overlooked in political discourse, namely that there isn’t much in regard to immigration in party differentiation. Despite that the great swings in Australian migration intakes (into and then away from White Australia for instance) carried on regardless of changes in government, and were more or less bipartisan (bar 1987); and despite the theatrics regarding asylum seekers, the Howard government immigration stream didn’t deviate from the path set on by Fraser-Hawke-Keating, somehow it gets seen as a Liberal-Labor issue.
And then Henderson implicates Michael Duffy as part of the bias of the ABC. Dude.
Don’t be shy Bernard. You and Gerry are also in ‘fulsome’ agreement with Harry Triguboff and Frank Lowy, both extreme capitalists who barrack for 100M plus population. These guys know nature like the moon knows oxygen. They understand ecological sustainability the way the Sahara does rainforest. Australia is already putative food supply to another 20-40M people offshore if memory serves.
You and Andrew Bartlett … never had to grovel for shelter in Sydney obviously. What a racket high immigration is, keeping the poor systemically hungry and desperate for work and shelter while overpaid executives climb on their back. Not only is the house full ecologically speaking but the world is way too full also. Not to mention badly distributed resources. Say yes to refugees, but not the economic racketeers.
And the best way to reduce population ethically - is export educators to improve life opportunities to avoid the dictatorship over women forced to bear large families. Andwhat about the ethics of cherry picking all that “skilled labour” from needy places. Is there no shame?
Gerard Henderson promotes high immigration because he is a corporate cheerleader for groups such as Westfield and Boral. Andrew Bartlett promotes high immigration because he is a diversity zealot who dreams of a multicultural utopia full of coloured people. Neither of them care about what’s in the best interests of the majority of Australians.
What’s your motivation Bernard Keane?
There are few serious economists today who argue that immigration helps the economy in any significant way. Studies have been pointing out for years that immigration has little positive impact on the economic wellbeing of the receiving country’s native-born population. In fact, most studies have shown that immigration’s only significant impact is to reduce the wages of native-born workers.
There are also other costs. Immigration doesn’t just lower the host population’s wages but it also drives up the cost of housing. Australia’s housing affordability crisis can be largely attributed to a decade of sustained high levels of immigration. Large-scale immigration also places huge strain on public infrastructure and services. These are costs that all Australians are forced to bear. And that’s saying nothing about the social, cultural and environment problems caused by immigration.
But Keane evidently doesn’t believe these costs warrant any consideration. The only thing that matters to him is keeping property speculators happy.
Good article Bernard, although if there is a significant economic slowdown, there will be a significant drop in our overall migration intake in any case. Although when this happens, I doubt our major export industries such as education or tourism will be suggesting this is an economic plus for the country. If we “reduce immigration to the bare minimum” as SM suggests, our economy really would collapse.
Housing is overvalued because of the myriad of market distorting grants, concessions and exemptions which have encouraged speculation. Unless we have somehow lost the capacity to build houses, then it is silly to blame migrants for overvalued house prices or rents. Housing construction generates economic activity (although it would be better if extra government spending went into increasing public housing stock, not grants that just drive up the price of existing homes), but the potential economic and social benefits of migration go far beyond that.
Daffy, having high migration and investing more in skills and training are not mutually exclusive. We can and should do both. The reason we will continue to have shortages despite increased training and skilling opportunities is because the size of our overall labour force relative to total population is shrinking. You can’t argue there are shortages here whilst also suggesting people are forced to “look overseas for opportunities”. Australians benefits from gaining experience overseas, just as people from overseas benefit from gaining experience here - and we benefit economically and socially.
The notion that Australia’s environment can’t cope with any more people is a big call, especially when we currently have one of the most profligate and wasteful lifestyles anywhere on the globe. We all share the same planet, and it stretches credibility to suggest we should put up the ‘house full’ sign when you compare us with so many other countries in our region.
Kevin Charles Herbert: Now I’ve got it. You are criticizing a whole new comment. Namely Bernard’s article. Well I may be sick, but I haven’t the foggiest idea what you are on about. Now I come to really think about you. I have a feeling our paths have crossed before. If I can remember correctly, you were v vocal about the joys of ‘World Youth Day’ Some sort of Jamboree held by the Catholic Church wasn’t it?
Anyhow, I have no intention of rejecting anything I said. As for your other assertions. I honestly don’t know what you are rabbiting on about. Or about whom you rabbit.
As one of those who has been regularly told he will never afford a house, I am actually not at all worried this will be true. The supply and demand crowd seem to forget that it only works within an overall budget. If banks won’t lend and interest rates are high (just wait for that inflation) then this constrains peoples housing budgets pretty effectively. If the price of a house is higher than people can afford then it just wont sell-and I don’t give the older generation of Australian’s much chance being able to maintain a cartel to support prices when there is a lot of stock sitting around unsold.
What actually does bother me is that the government will bankrupt itself and therefore impoverish all Australians dependent on its investment attempting to prevent the inevitable decline of the housing bubble. Bailouts, stimulus packages etc - its all basicly good money after bad and there are other things Australians need to be able to afford other than housing. Education, medical care, nursing homes would all be good. Once the government also squanders its funds on buying a house the unforgivable waste of the funds which came into this country in a once-in-a-generation boom will be complete.
I’m not sure if I’m a ‘green fundamentalist’ - I guess that such name-calling is meant to denigrate those who disagree with you and John Howard was a master at it. I am also pretty sure that whatever Gerard Henderson supports must be wrong. According to some analysts we are already beyond the carrying capacity of the land in Australia. Adding more people might have some short term benefits but is insanity in the longer term.
Andrew Bartlett, we have lost the capacity to build houses. Excess state and local government restrictions and taxes have strangled development of new suburbs.
If anything Australia’s demographic problem is based on high housing costs. It now takes a family to have dual incomes to maintain a mortgage, which is the biggest outgoing cost of any household.
The solutions to Australia’s problems is not more immigration, it is less government!
Isn’t it amazing how open-borders enthusiasts like Andrew Bartlett can make utterly absurd and moronic statements like “our economy would collapse without immigration” and actually get away with it?
Economic indicators show our economy is slowing even with record numbers of immigrants flooding into Australia. So there goes that silly idea.
Moreover, a closer examination of the much-vaunted economic benefits of immigration show all that these benefits amounted to in 2007-08 was a $536M increase in gross national product in a $670 billion economy — an increase of 0.08 percent. And when balanced against the substantial costs of immigration, such as downward pressure on wages, higher housing costs, a bigger current account deficit, and increased infrastructure costs, this “benefit” quickly vanishes.
But don’t let reality get in the way of Bartlett’s immigration enthusiasm. Without the largest per capita immigration intake in the world, the former federal senator informs us, Australia’s economy would quite obviously collapse overnight. Of course, by the same logic, low-immigration countries like Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, South Korea and Japan should all be impoverished basket cases.
Andrew’s concern for our export industries is touching but misguided. As it stands, Australia relies heavily on non-renewable mineral and agricultural resources for its export income. The only reason Australia has been able to maintain a First World standard of living with an export profile of a Third World country is because of its relatively small population. The problem with immigration-fuelled population growth is that a larger population means more domestic consumption of our resources, leaving Australia with less to export. It also means a larger stream of imports, resulting in a larger trade deficit for Australia. A bigger trade deficit equals more foreign debt. Care to explain how that benefits the Australian economy, Andrew?
Venise: your stream of consciousness rave is muddy & full of factual eddys. It’s like witnessing a sodium pentothol induced rave, of the type seen on that excellent B&W spy series Callan in the ‘70’s. (Great series, eh what).
Do you ever support your various assertions with any facts ?
I’m not much of a photographer, either.