By Stephen Saunders:
Regardless of the 2025 election result, Social Engineer Albanese will have “won”. Very likely, a quarter-million will become the floor for net migration.
Remember the 2021 Labor platform? Albanese promised “recovery, rebuilding, renewal” with a “central focus” on creating jobs.
Up front, he advertised two big agendas – The Voice and Net Zero.
He totally concealed the third – Open Borders. It’s his one resounding “success”. Measured net migration for 2022-2024 will be approximately one million.
Six times the long-term average. Hundreds of thousands higher, than the reckless Rudd record. Which had looked unassailable. Silly me.
Government ministers have had to work overtime, spreading absurd lies about immigration and housing. With no trace of irony, now Labor seeks to police disinformation.
These daggy Labor lies have recirculated so often, I can recite them in my sleep.
Migration is not government policy, not a target, catching up for COVID, lower than the Coalition, fixing a “broken” system, being cut by “half”.
Whereas, housing is conveniently a long-term “supply” or “planning” problem, for which we have a housing “accord”, supposedly building 1.2 million homes, and so forth.
Lousy consequences for voters
Treasurer Chalmers is receiving belated fire as the economy “falters”.
Source: Alex Joiner (IFM Investors)
As against the OECD norm of 0.5% annual, he’s hiked our population growth to a staggering 2.5%. Miring the local economy on 1% growth and delivering the worst per capita and household incomes recession of modern times.
Even though he himself sets the immigration and population targets, he wipes his hands of the debacle. It must be the Reserve Bank, the global economic outlook, any old excuse will do.
His complacent Treasury Building narratives are so oft repeated we also know them by heart.
Budget repair, fighting inflation, soft landing, million jobs, record participation, wages growing, cost of living relief, net zero transformation, measuring what matters.
As Gina Rinehart could tell you, most of those “million jobs” have in effect gone to migrants.
Generally, they’re government and services jobs, not in tradeable sectors. Taxpayers themselves are subsidising the jobs, also the cost of living “relief”.
Any honest accounting of consequences for locals would acknowledge the following.
Artificially high energy prices, sharp declines in real wages and real household incomes, all time rental crisis and housing unaffordability, crumbling living standards, and so on.
Wholesale betrayal of voters
As the COVID crisis eased, Morrison then Albanese were frantic to restart immigration.
Voters enjoyed the migration lull. Unlike the sanctimonious governing classes, they didn’t want Big Australia back. The political duopoly made damned sure that’s what they got.
It was predictable, net migration would reboot to 200,000 and higher, as per the duopoly’s “normal” or “average” after 2005. Less predictable was Albanese doubling down.
I repeat, lies are lies. You can’t spike net migration that high by accident or omission. It’s hard work.
Here’s a list of migration “reforms” Albanese authorised. To fight a spurious “visa backlog”, he’s obliterated previous intake records.
Shamefully, this policy extremism and voter pain enjoys near-universal support from the donors and stakeholders who shape Australia’s top-down “democracy”.
Even the bleeding hearts of organised religion and housing “advocacy” in effect they turn their backs on the housing plight.
Apart from Rinehart, the few dissident agents in a nation of 27 million are a handful of entrepreneurs, economists, media, academics, and lobby groups.
Thank goodness for Teals and Greens. Not.
In their fandom for overpopulation, they put other “stakeholders” in the shade. Even Treasury or the Business Council.
Greens housing hypocrite, Max Chandler-Mather, insists that net migration as high as 300,000 is a “race to the bottom”. A “disgusting migrant-bashing race to the bottom”, echoes leader Adam Bandt.
Election 2025 – if Labor/Greens win
Recall the compulsory Voice referendum. Government and stakeholders warned, if it failed, voters must be racists. After it failed, they said it again.
Similarly, Liberal and Labor endure elections.
Instead of enjoying stoushes between themselves, they must pretend to care about the 18 million voters over whom they don’t (yet) have mind control.
The best that can be done is school indoctrination around identity politics and climate emergency. And yeah, let’s get the kids off social media.
With either a majority or minority Labor government, voter welfare will take second place to United Nations policies and priorities.
If Labor wins a majority, they’ll claim mandates for their Open Borders and Net Zero.
Instead of “normal” 60% population replacement, Albanese would maintain 70-80%. Courtesy of his one-sided bilateral agreements, sectarian India would continue to be his preferred global partner for Australian overpopulation.
Chief Social Engineer’s woke population policies represent white guilt, reverse racism. Inevitably too, a war on equality and wages, on educational and housing fairness.
Now imagine a Labor-Greens minority government. There would be even less chance of moderating population growth.
Similar is true of climate policy. The Greens wouldn’t be satisfied with Labor’s “net zero transformation stream” to 2050. Nor its shonky Sector Pathways Review, Net Zero Economy Authority and heavily subsidised Future Made in Australia.
Like the influential UN cadre at ANU, the Greens would prefer higher levels of virtue, lower levels of practicality. As in Net Zero 2035.
Election 2025 – if Coalition wins
Allegedly, Albanese and Chalmers get the message about the cost of living. Yet they are rusted on to the mega migration intakes and energy policy cowardice that drive it.
The educated classes are appalled that this “mature” government could even fall to “divisive” Peter Dutton.
Reading his energy plan, he pins much on nuclear power, which is unlikely to happen.
Nor could his Coalition ever emulate Labor’s bondage to Net Zero. Though they’d probably maintain the formal Paris Agreement. Otherwise, we would face further UN/EU bullying over climate refugees and carbon taxes.
You might think the Coalition would unstitch Labor’s rapacious east-coast gas cartel. More likely, they would duck it as they did over 2013-22.
Directly after the Budget in Reply, Dutton ventured that he would “cut” net migration to 160,000, triggering a false controversy.
But that was before he unveiled his nuclear policy. He has also attracted the Racist Card for his stand on Gazan refugees. This was also before Labor announced their fake “cut” to international student intakes, traumatising universities and the commentariat.
In fact, all six prime ministers since Howard have backed Big (or Huge) Australia. Setting aside the COVID migration freeze, there has been no respite or review.
The Labor lie for 2024-25 is net migration of 260,000. They’ll go much higher, maybe even 400,000.
If Dutton won, he would inherit off-the-scale immigration, close to 1.5 million over three years.
In that context, if he “cut” annual net migration close to a quarter million, the “stakeholders” wouldn’t blink. In the post-truth historical revisions (aka lies) of Abul Rizvi and The Guardian, 235,000 (and not 80,000) is the “long term” average.
Wrap
Dominant “stakeholders” will never accept that the Albanese immigration ambush is any business of voters. Their heartless housing policy “solutions” always detour around it. Suggestions to dial back overpopulation are “nativist” or racist.
Whatever the election result, it looks like we will be stuck with a quarter-million as the basement-floor for net migration.
Outside of some extraordinary development, this unpopular and economy-sapping Aussie exceptionalism will become Albanese’s defining legacy.
We will stay in the overpopulation trap – decaying democracy, widening inequality, low productivity, social friction, crush-loaded cities, and environmental decline.
