Treasury’s massive “intergenerational” immigration crushes democracy
By Stephen Saunders
Imagine a calmer and safer post-Bondi Australia. Immigration is low and less divisive. The government need not lie about it all the time or continually attack citizen-voters.
Albanese Labor is never going to be that government. It’s inconceivable, simply not in their elitist and globalist DNA.
Canada and other prosperous nations prove doomsayers are wrong; reversing aggressive mass migration needn’t derail the economy. Albo’s ersatz 2% economic growth is mostly indiscriminate population growth. Canada is topping 3% despite low population growth.
Open-borders Labor hates on Australians
Naturally, our eager Global Citizen and UN Security Council wannabe Albo lied about his open-border intentions before Election 2022.
His incoming Treasurer Chalmers (PhD in Keating from ANU) simply cut-and-pasted Treasurer Frydenberg’s 2021 Intergenerational Report (IGR) template. This was 235,000 annual net migration, already 2-3 times above historical norms.
Now his Treasury has accidentally-on-purpose blown that figure out of the water, for five Budgets in a row. Yet the unprecedented four-year tally of nearly 1.6 million net migration is barely remarked on in media and academia, nor regarded as a betrayal of voters.
His first Budget granted the Home Affairs Minister an extra $42 million to process “visa backlogs”, only for her to turbo-charge the landed temp-visa numbers. She strutted “fixing a broken system” but had her Migration Review ignore the booming immigration intakes. We laughed tearfully at her claim of halving migration, meaning the opposite.
Strident O’Neil had to be replaced by smoother Tony Burke. Who had form, as the nominal Minister (actually, it was Treasury-line) for Julia Gillard’s lame 2011 Population Strategy. Which already was “laissez-faire” about net migration, sound familiar?
Under Gillard at least, Burke had kept it civil: the compulsory multicultural “conversation” with voters. He smirked of population “change” not endless growth.
Coming were surges in Muslim and Indian immigration. These days, it’s no more Mr Nice Guy.
Post COVID and into 2026, voters want much lower migration than Treasury’s 235,000. In retaliation, ministers and media like to pillory them as populist, nativist, racist, un-Australian, nazi dupes, fascist, not who we are, far right, un-cohesive, or misinformed. With no qualms from the contented “stakeholders,” this ugly trend has crystallised on Albo’s watch.
Burke’s fake “crackdown” beats up on voters
Burke delayed his immigration speech by six weeks. Though it wasn’t as if Albo Labor was going to pivot from stakeholders and pay court to voters. That was never on the cards.
As is nowadays the convention, the (weak) immigration measures were leaked to government approved media, for spoon-feeding of voters.
On the very morning of his speech, Burke seemed to sigh, If only we had a central government. He was “very worried” about the three million temporary migrants who’d somehow materialised with that $42m. He had no “immediate fix” though “visa hopping” by international students would have to “be addressed”. By Mr Nobody?
His unusually belligerent speech to the Press Gallery chooks heaped contempt on voters. We don’t have mass migration he lied. But how else could Treasury have sped us to a world-beating 32% overseas-born with 50% “migrant origin”?
No other major economy tops 45% population growth since 2000 whilst still running net migration at 1% of population. The developed-world norm is more like 0.3%.
Migration doesn’t relate to the housing shortage; he lied. So, why even pretend to cut it? Even ABC Pravda sort of admits acute rental pain tracks high net migration. Unconscionably, incoherently, Burke said the pain was our fault, but ever-more migration could fix it:
Locals “decided they wanted fewer people around [them]…but immigration will need to be part of the solution to help provide some space for housing supply to catch up”.
Burke’s leaked material, if not his speech, ran the same old media lie, Treasury 235,000 net-migration is “normal” or “long term” average. By any reasonable measure however, historical normal or average is five figures. Ask AI about it. Ask Treasury’s first IGR of 2002.
Senator Hanson factually responded – Burke’s still the Minister for Mass Migration.
Chalmers “intergenerational” prospectus fillets voters
“Doctor” Chalmers had rushed out a mass-migration Intergenerational Report in 2023, two years ahead of the presumed schedule.
Clubby ANU University House, with former NineFax flack “Professor” Mark Kenny as the fawning moderator, was Jim’s perfect venue to launch his second IGR. The affable alumnus was bowled up soft questions from trusty front-row luminaries. I watched Kenny give him a democracy-sausage mug. Ha-ha, so witty, but it is ordinary voters being mugged.
Think of it. Jim banks on mass-migration and net-zero. Shucks, so do his Treasury and IGR. So does government ANU, home of Migration Hub and Climate Institute (ICEDS). So do government ABC/SBS, and media generally. No wonder they all hate on voters, who don’t think like this.
Like Burke, Chalmers had telegraphed his lines to media. At ANU he praised Peter Costello, who’d invented this neat IGR in 2002, underlining the burden of “ageing population”, enabling Treasury economists to sidestep democracy with mass migration. Keep up, Jim. Ageing nations with low population growth needn’t collapse but can have healthier economic growth.
The day before, partisan Kenny had railed at ON’s populist tsunami and “race to the bottom”. Bloke, ON’s only targeting, 130,000 net migration. That’s respite, but still high in world terms.
Recall, targeted net migration was a tolerable 90,000 in that first IGR. Arbitrarily, Treasury doubled this to 180,000 (as early as 2010), then 235,000 (for 2021 and 2023).
IGR 2002
Clumsily, the 2026 IGR sets a target of 225,000 for the “forward estimates” but 235,000 in the “long run”. Either way, it’s mass-migration forever, with no recourse ever intended for voters.
In that capital-deepening and productivity are allergic to mass low-skilled immigration, Chalmers has simply moved the established productivity goalposts. His posited 1.2% productivity growth is a lie. On current science and knowledge, his IGR predictions of our net-zero industrial transformation, with energy-nirvana for consumers, are highly unreliable.
In forty years, nearly all driven by immigration, Treasury’s targeting an unsustainable 39-40 million population, never you mind about water and energy, or the environment.
IGR 2026
Our top “economic” agency has gone woke – and isn’t budging. If citizens keep holding Australia Marches, they ought to picket Langton Crescent HQ and not just Parliament House.
Politicians and “stakeholders” will keep blaming One Nation
Shortly before Burke-Chalmers dumped on voters again, ABC TV hosted a curated National Forum on immigration to remind us all how “racist” we are. AI could have written the script, though maybe not one amusing variation. Said maligned ON MP Barnaby Joyce, voters should come before economists.
The “educated” shudder was palpable, but Joyce had a point. If Treasury HQ disdains and dismisses voters on absolute basics like immigration and housing, in what limited sense do we have a democracy? Back at ABC Pravda however, that huge 225,000 we never endorsed in the first place is now a “guaranteed target”. Oh goody, lucky us.
Kenny and media generally discount voter welfare to rant at ON. At Independent Australia, an evil ON government would destroy the economy. At The Guardian, “cerebral” Burke ought to “brawl” with ON. (Actually guys, he’s brawling with voters.) There’s no immigration “issue” sniffs the Guardian princess hired by Australia Institute. (It’s just a few nazis, and bad old ON.)
Burke-Chalmers are equally intransigent. Judging by their stone-deaf-not-deft performances, they’re confident Labor can block out ON electorally and flame voters. Amusingly, ON-averse Angus Taylor suddenly promises one of the “biggest” immigration cuts in “history”.
The numbers, I suspect, will remain private Treasury business. 2026-31 will likely bring restless voters, well over a million more migrants net, and extended housing/rental pain.
Gaslighting us about the cost of living and falling living standards, Chalmers and the “stakeholders” are only ever offering regressive government from the Treasury, by the Treasury, for the Treasury. They’ll keep blaming the inevitable economic stagnation on “climate change” and “global headwinds”. And just look over there, at bad old Hanson (or Trump, or Murdoch).
Even if Labor could ever get back to 235,000, that’s still 2.5 times the 1945-2005 average. Their shallow IGR mass-migration net-zero propaganda is drowning voters and democracy.
As the UN and OECD chuckle, Australia is alone among prosperous nations in losing its economic mind for Treasury’s 50-year lab-experiment of endless low-skill mass-migration.