Interesting stuff
ScoMo needs slapping for his pro-growth ideology.
No matter who is in power in the coming years they will be pro-growth which will include high immigration it's the only way to recover from the upcoming recession/depression.
sadly I agree with you Indo.
enjoy this little pause while we have it.
I steadfastly disagree.
Recommencement of the Big Australia Ponzi is the worst thing we should do for the economy and the nation.
Have you people been living under a rock ? Are you aware just how bad our economy is now directly because of the decision to pursue the high calorie / low nutrient mass immigration model ?
Indo.....you realise that our current economy is ( was ) an internalised debt- fuelled financial circle jerk which was only possible because we are cutting up the Australian continent and selling it overseas don’t you ?
And I’m not even referring to selling Australia as commodities such as iron ore and coal , I mean literally selling Australia as farms , mines ,ports , houses and land and euphemistically labelling it “ foreign investment “.
It’s not foreign countries investing in Australia, its foreign countries buying Australia.
Mass immigration is not the only way to drive an economy. If you believe that then it’s safe to say you’ve swallowed the whole neoliberal shaft and you’re dislocating your jaw , ready to inhale the nut sack.
I'm getting pretty sick and tired of blowin bagging Australians. Every time a foreigner, or foreign entity, buys or invests in Australia, it's because Australians have either sold them assets or gone into a partnership with them.
Hey blowin, stop portraying Australians as brain dead hicks who are too stupid to do due diligence or a cost / benefit analysis when entering into business deals or selling things to foreigners. It takes two to tango.
You can't stand ANY foreign investment in Australia. You must assume all Australians are too dumb to realise we are getting screwed. (your opinion not mine).
VL you've got the majority of the county with big issues about mass immigration, I'd say the people have done their due diligence but are getting trampled on by the pollies and the vested interests.
It's not about being stupid, it's about getting screwed and not being able to do anything about it, especially when Lib/Lab and the Greens are all singing from the same song sheet.
I think in a roundabout way Blowin is acknowledging that most people know what's going on and the minority that don't are the ones cupping the balls.
Thank you , Andy.
How does the Indo model of foreign investment work? A lot of foreigners invest in their country but there's a lot of restrictions on foreign ownership, is that correct? Eg: you need an Indo business partner to own land ???
I could be wrong but I think that's what I've heard about surf camps...
To grow an economy you need increased demand, that either needs to come from within the country or from outside the country.
If you are a developing country with low wages, you could get an increased demand from outside of the country for goods you produce or grow etc as with low wages you are very competitive, people in developing countries also have much room to increase living standards and consumption for goods and services. (basically want to be like us, eat more meat and have heaps of useless crap) which obviously ceases demand.
When you have a country like Australia increased demand outside of the country is kind of irrelevant for things like manufacturing as our wages are too high and only relevant to things we exports like minerals or meat etc which can and is increasing as we have seen over the last 25 years or so.
Increased demand from within the country without decent population growth is unlikely to be very big because most of us already live at a high standard of living and already consume at a very high rate, so little room for growth.
While obviously the easiest way to increase demand for us is population growth, im not a fan, i hate the side effects of this, but it's just reality.
Foreign investment i guess play's a part but its not what im talking about and i honestly don't understand the complexity's around it.
If you really want to debate immigration, why not look at the available data?
“An overwhelming majority, regardless of postcode, therefore supported relieving population pressures on struggling infrastructure by cutting or pausing immigration“
AndyM, Go back a re-read my comment. Nowhere in it did I mention immigration. It's about business investment. You've shot down an argument about immigration I never made Mr Strawman.
From BB paper:
But despite how well-managed and orderly Australia’s immigration program has been, in recent times increasing signs have emerged of waning public support amid greater debate and controversy over the size the nation’s annual immigration intake.
This is supported by The Lowy Institute’s annual polling, which found an increase of 17 percentage points between 2014 (37%) and 2018 (54%) in the number of people answering that the current rate of immigration is ‘too high.’6
So a majority believe the current rate of immigration is too high.
Why does no major political party reflect that in its policy platforms?
Andy....even the lies , damned lies and inappropriate methodology of those statistics supports the fact that Australians don’t want to continue the mass immigration rort.
If you want the sure-fire ,ironclad , foolproof evidence establishing the truth of whether the electorate supports mass immigration, just ask yourself one question : Why have they shut down and stymied every single attempt to establish the electorate’s opinion ?
Why do the ALP/ LNP need to collude on the subject in secret ? Why don’t they take the issue to the polls ?
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/senate-rejects-hanson-s-push-for-national-vo...
There's an old saying that goes something like, 'Don't ask the question if you don't want to hear the answer.'
"How does the Indo model of foreign investment work? A lot of foreigners invest in their country but there's a lot of restrictions on foreign ownership, is that correct? Eg: you need an Indo business partner to own land ???
I could be wrong but I think that's what I've heard about surf camps..."
Indo has a pretty bad reputation for foreign investment considering how large and resource rich and low wages etc investment is fairly low most companies go elsewhere in SE Asia, lots of restrictions on all kinds of things, i don't understand it all but expat business man are always whinging about it all and a lot of them have also lived and done business elsewhere in SE Asia.
Just look at a company like Firewire in theory they should be based in Indonesia, doing so would also work in their favour marketing wise, but you can bet the only reason they didn't set up in Indo is because the government makes it very hard to set up a company/business and invest there and is expensive to do so.
'So a majority believe the current rate of immigration is too high.'
Couple that with:
"In 2016 nearly half (49%) of all Australians were either born overseas or had at least one parent who was born overseas." https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs
I remember reading elsewhere that a lot of first and second gen Aussies favoured less immigration.
.........
*Edit - couldn't get the abs link to direct to the right page but here is a guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/27/australia-reaches...
I stand corrected VL, they’re two different things.
Ok, thanks ID
“Why does no major political party reflect that in its policy platforms?”
Rhetorical question FR?
My understanding is that The Greens were wedged by One Nation.
When ON declared their support for less immigration The Greens dropped it like the proverbial.
The Greens know it’s a huge environmental and social issue but they can’t touch it anymore.
The reason for Lib/Lab support is obvious.
If you live overseas you're an 'ex-pat'. If someone moves here they're a migrant.
OK....so we’ve established that the majority of Australians want the population growth rate of Australia returned to historic levels. This obviously involves reducing the rate of net immigration and reducing the number of temporary visas.
There is still a myriad of ways in which Australia can create and maintain a strong economy. Particularly now that the majority of the nation’s tax receipts and borrowed funds no longer need to be wasted chasing the tail of infrastructure required to accommodate extreme population growth.
High wages aren’t a particular problem once you reduce the other costs of production as is easily possible with Australia’s abundant natural advantages.
Land costs / rent will become substantially cheaper once demand driven pressures from mass immigration are reduced.
Energy is plentiful in Australia and should be amongst the cheapest in the world if our domestic gas reservation policy was adequately enforced.
Australia’s knowledge and skills should be unsurpassed once our education sector reverts back to its implicit role as nurturing talent and leaves behind its perverse distortion towards profiteering and conduit for immigration.
Our commodities are highest grade and naturally abundant .
There is no reason that Australia couldn’t or shouldn’t be the world leader in top end manufacturing, value adding and secondary enterprise.
Safe , stable , high functioning society begging for leadership to take it to the top of global pecking order instead of the low grade shills , spivs and rentiers profiting by selling our home piecemeal, whilst our country devolves into a vassal state for budding empires.
Australia is an extremely inviting proposition for immigrants. Why destroy our environment and standard of living by pandering to the lowest common denominator of uber drivers and car washers ? Make our immigration program a truly skilled program. We could attract the best and brightest talent in the world with our safe , sunny and healthy country. We should be using migration to our advantage. Much, much less immigration of much , much higher quality people.
Imagine the world beating industries we could’ve created if the neoliberal ideology hadn’t waited until this virus before they’d borrowed $150billion dollars and then wasted it temporarily propping up the housing Ponzi which is going to die anyway .
Imagine if the youth of Australia had a future in which they could visualise themselves prospering and having pathways to success within innovative and rewarding industries they could feel proud to be a part of instead of leaving school with nothing but the dread of wage insecurity and lifetime debt servitude courtesy of the immigration fuelled Ponzi.
Green energy. Artificial Intelligence . Robotics . Medical science and technology. The industries of the future are waiting.
If you’re an Australian living overseas you might like to refer to yourself as an ex-pat but in reality you’re a gweilo, bule or gaijin etc
And filth like Turnbull have the audacity to admit how cowardly they were as leaders.
The fella (I won’t call him a man) could have at least stood by his convictions and gone out with dignity, made a stand against the right-wing, fucking raised some issues.
It’s not like he needed the salary.
"Green energy. Artificial Intelligence . Robotics . Medical science and technology. The industries of the future are waiting."
That's it, all it would take are some "leaders" who aren't corrupt sell-outs and we can move forward.
In other words, we're in for a struggle.
Australia manufacturing and energy prices are among the highest in the world, that is not going to change any time soon, it all comes down to high wages and that is not going to change or decrease, as it is people whinge that our min wages are too low or our wage growth too low.
Things like Green energy. Artificial Intelligence . Robotics . Medical science and technology aren't going to magically keep our economy growing.
Reality is places with bigger populations can do these things just as good or better, for example you could invest heavily in those areas only for another country like say China to invest more and have much more funding and a much larger pool of great minds to dip into.
There is no reason why you cant do those things but they are still high risk areas, because there is no security in them because we dont have any advantage in those areas.
Unlike other areas like the natural resource sector because we have what most countries dont. (maybe green energy is the only area we might have some advantage having much land and wind and sun)
There is also many other industry's that rely on population growth to grow or even just keep afloat like the building industry.
If you ask people the simple question would you rather have lower immigration rates most people including me would say yes.
But if you explained to them what this would mean to the economy 90% of people would say okay, okay maybe not in that case.
Indo.....you realise that the vast majority of Australians are much worse off under this illusion of the booming economy you labour under ?
Casualised workforce , declining wages , more unpaid hours , rampant worker exploitation, highest personal debt levels in the history of mankind , both parents working full time to break even , kids raised in childcare , declining per capita GDP , ruined environment as an externality of our relentlessly expanding urban footprint .....yeah , we are killing it.
And Indo.....it is very possible to have worthwhile manufacturing sector in a high wage environment.
Australia’s manufacturing sector was 25 percent of our economy a couple of decades ago when real wages and wages growth was higher than it is now. The reason manufacturing went offshore was so that the percentage of the profit was greater for the owners of capital at the expense of labour.
The richest countries in the world had high end manufacturing as the backbone of their economies.
You think Sweden and Germany got rich by shipping boatloads of iron ore ?
Sweden has half the population of Australia and makes its own fighter planes.
If you told the average person in the street that if we lower immigration and return to a manufacturing base then the minimum wage might be $4 per hour less but the average house price would be $250K instead of $800K ,.....you reckon they would go for it ?
"If you told the average person in the street that if we lower immigration and return to a manufacturing base then the minimum wage might be $4 per hour less but the average house price would be $250K instead of $800K ,.....you reckon they would go for it ?"
And you got these figures from where exactly blowin? You'll just make up anything to justify your anti-immigrant xenophobic attitude.
I don't agree most people now are much better off than they were 30 years ago or so, better access to education, medical care, longer life expediency, and have larger homes and more crap, too cars etc even overseas holidays etc are more affordable than ever.
But that said it's never been a perfect world never will be, it's always been hard always will be, thats life, i remember my parents both had decent jobs mum a nurse dad had been to Vietnam and came back and worked for state electricity commission, but it still took them a long time to build things up, early days rented a flat then latter bought a very modest house, it was a big deal to get something new like a TV or a car and most familys only had one TV or one Car, the cost of goods in proportion to wages was super high, ive said it so many times now but i remember a BMX i got in the early 80s was $99 brand new from Kmart, next size up standard size was $120, forty years on and if i go to Kmart i can get bikes for same price or even cheaper.
I dont know how places like Germany and Sweden have done things, but their circumstances are much different to ours.
I think countries are like people they have different strengths and weakness so should play to those strengths and weakness, we are natural resources rich, it will always be our strength, just like some persons strength might be working with their hands or brain etc
Geography wise we are really part of Asia where some of the cheapest labor and operating cost are in the world, just because we are english in origin or now multicultural means little.
If i had a company making something and i started in Australia and latter as i grew to compete on the world stage i needed to go offshore , you would be crazy not too, you just could never compete otherwise or you would have to sacrifice on profit or even quality.
It's only niche type markets where you wouldn't go offshore.
The only way i can see manufacturing being viable again on a major scale in Australia is if our dollar severally devalued this would change the whole playing field, ive read countries purposely have done this to gain advantages in manufacturing. (id love to know the implications of this once the price of oil is no longer as big factor as we move away from fossil fuels)
Ironically onshore manufacturing also becomes more viable with larger populations.
You also mention "children in child care, both parents needing to work etc"
These aspects and even property prices have also been influenced from the breakdown of the traditional family unit.
In an ideal world only one parent would work (doesn't need to be female) and the other would stay at home and spend time with family and even grandparents would be more involved in the family and not need to be put in aged care etc.
You still see this in some cultures like even in Indonesia in many areas and it works, how many parents wouldn't like to spend more time with their children.
But these days unless one person has a very good job it's too hard you need both people to work because for houses you are competing in a market where borrowing is generally based on two incomes.
Vic Local......Sydney and Melbourne are probably 80 percent foreign born people.
What percentage of the population needs to be immigrants before people such as yourself consider it ok for others to be able to talk about population growth in an adult manner and without the xenophobia aspersions ?
Your petty name calling might have been appropriate in 1947 , but Australia is amongst the most multicultural places in the world , when do you believe that your call of xenophobia is not relevant ?
And why is it always masked as “ fear of things foreign “ and never just “ happy the way things are “ ? Onus should really be on those who wish to irrevocably alter the nation .
"Vic Local......Sydney and Melbourne are probably 80 percent foreign born people"
Bullshit Blowin.
What..........ever..
Googled it Melbourne 33.8% of people born overseas but that said id except that a big percentage of those would have children that are also of their parents ethnicity, we are definitely a multicultural place.
BTW. its so funny and almost sad when you met children of ethnic parents and they cant speak their native tongue, i had a client from Indonesian parents, and i started speaking bahasa Indonesia with him and he couldn't understand me because he didnt learn Bahasa Indonesia, his Indonesian wife could though so we had a quick chat.
It was a very weird situation i felt proud i could speak Bahasa Indonesia and he couldn't (especially as his wife was quite hot and impressed) but also felt embarrassed for him.
In 2018 the percentage of foreign born Australians was 29%
https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3412.0Main%20Features22017-18
Blowin, you're entitled to have your garbage xenophobic opinions. You're not entitled to make up the facts.
Indo....throw in temporary visa holders and you’re way over 50 percent.
If 1 in every 2 people being born overseas isn’t enough to shut up the clowns who harp on about xenophobia, nothing will.
Sydney is even higher. Sydney is unrecognisable from itself two decades ago....physically, societally, culturally. The level of change is tremendous. It’s well past time that the shouty pro- mass immigration xenophiles were politely told to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.
You’d think that Australians weren’t allowed to have a say in the demographics of their nation . Not even population size.
Wrong.
"throw in temporary visa holders and you’re way over 50 percent."
Bullshit blowin, stop making stuff up.
"You’d think that Australians weren’t allowed to have a say in the demographics of their nation . "
You're having your say and making a massive mess of it. I'm having my say, calling you a bullshit artist, and backing it up with evidence.
Last 24 hours cabin fever and news overload has been creeping in.
Trump's sanity seriously now in question, Americans protesting about reopening the economy with the president's support, Victorian opposition politician calling the state's chief medical officer a bulshit artist and tonight news from the UK where parts of London has 20% homelessness. How did we come to this? Wealthy countries with this sort of human misery.
People vote for it, yes?
And Vic Local, have you checked the first page of this particular thread?
History is such interesting stuff!
This lockdown could have provided a really interesting laboratory for scientists to look at how quickly heavily disturbed habitats are recolonised by animal and plant species, then what occurs once lifted. For instance, the recolonisation of infauna, meiofauna etc. on beaches that experience heavy patronage or mechanical grooming. A suite of ecosystems, terrestrial, marine, freshwater, the lot, could have been studied in such a rare scenario.
It's definitely a worldwide social experiment.
And locally?
"Let's really release the LNP Kraken in times of global economic meltdown, or at the very least a more localised recession.
Let's see what they're really made of. More importantly, let's see what we're really made of.
Let's see what the 'lucky country' is really like when the luck runs bad...and the LNP is in charge." (From 2016)
2016 Census Nearly half of Oz were either born o/s or have one parent born o/s.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/27/australia-reaches...
Add 0.5m migrants + 60,000 Reffos + 2.4 -4m [VISA] slaves > 2016-20
Also 300,000 Aussies left 2016-20 / 0.5m Aussies died >2016-20
By 2020 well over half of Oz were either born o/s or have one parent born o/s.
Pretty sure Blowin is doing twice as good of a job by saying it half properly. (Wot?)
Census 2021 will require the Libs to hire a million [VISA] interpreters.
Plus another million [VISAS] to pedal the NBN so China can't crash into it again.
Like to wish tbb was wrong about all that...Sadly not!
Cheers , TBB.
Point being that people who want Australia to continue the mass immigration Ponzi are defending it out of nothing more than their personal preference. They want an Australia of 80 million people where the environment is irreconcilably destroyed and any semblance of Australian culture is overwhelmed.
That’s fine . They are entitled to their opinion. But when the majority of Australians are opposed to the continuation of this experimental project to flood our country with people, then it’s time it was stopped.
We are a democracy. There has never been a mandate for the Big Australia neoliberal takeover bid and no amount of silly name calling can sustain the lie any longer.
Can’t recall us punters ever being asked if we wanted the mass immigration program started under the Howard and continued by every government since.
Sadly low immigration would mean a semi permanent recession in Australia. Politicians know this and opt for the easy path. Idealist new politicians wanting lower immigration would be given the talk by the economists soon after joining parliament - be careful what you wish for - do you want a major housing price slump and a decimation of the construction industry?. Then the political donations would start to distort their views even more until group think takes over.
The manufacturing industry path to success exists - Germany, Taiwan etc (Germany has 100 years of history and culture behind its success, Taiwan had no other choice). but it is way harder than relying on ever expanding cities and towns to drive the construction industry. Sub divide and build and bring in fresh cash from new migrants is far easier than developing products, making them, innovating, staying ahead of competition, marketing, competing on price, fighting low wage competitors, managing complex supply chains, dealing with predatory pricing. etc.
Years ago an Aussie manufacturer set up to make plastic shopping bags to compete against imports. Import replacement - great idea. They bought second hand equipment from Asia somewhere. After a while they actually started producing and grabbed some market share from patriotic supermarkets.. But then, once all the money had been spent on set up, the overseas competition introduced a major price war. They slashed the price to way below production costs and held it there. Within weeks the customer base for the local supplier had dried up. Then to top it off the machinery all began to fail - it rusted rapidly as though it had been treated with salt or something. Millions were lost. After a while it was business back to normal for the huge overseas suppliers and they put up their prices to where they were. They also maybe added a wash down of salt to the old equipment before shipping to Australia just make sure. The overseas manufacturers were doing business not quite as per the text books.
The story just shows how ruthless business can be.
A more current simple example is face mask manufacturing, China makes them for 2 cents per mask. When the virus hit thousands of micro businesses in China bought little machines and set up to make masks. They paid for their machines in a day. Much has been made of Qld manufacturer setting up to make masks. First production is still a month away I think. Great to see but in the cold light of day will they be able to produce at 2 cents per mask? Will people pay 3 or 5 times as much to buy them? Will the demand peak pass and they gear up for a flooded market?
I can't see manufacturing growing substantially without tariffs to protect local industry - a very controversial approach against decades of economic orthodoxy. Such a path leads to higher costs to consumers. But if the goal of greater self sufficiency sticks after the virus we may have to just accept that. Thankfully, I think the outsource everything to China model has had its peak.
The point is jawboning and wishful thinking at all levels will not turn Australia into a manufacturing nation anymore than it would turn your local ripper into John John. But add 10 kilos of lead to John John boards and it might be more even.
Personally, I don't buy much stuff, so cheap imports are not essential to my life.
Good post Frogg 100% agree
Yeah reasonable frog but what’s to stop Australia investing in and manufacturing high end products based on our competitive advantages - education science CSIRO future minerals demand etc. Heck never going out bid Asia on plastic bags or clothes. Further we also need to foster industry closely aligned to our strategic needs. And fuck sake Australia invest in the people we have to lift productivity which has been falling or stalled for decades. Finally if we are to let foreign workers in do that to support our strategic interests in the pacific and Indonesia.
Let’s get clever about it, good opportunity right now with much of the world and travel locked down for next 1-2-3 years
If you read the economic development strategies of every developed country in the world they all say we will foster "manufacturing high end products based on our competitive advantages". Solar power, electric vehicles are examples of typical opportunities cited except 100 other counties are trying to do exactly the same thing and China is in these markets too. Their strategies are almost photocopies of each other.
We are doing well in some niche markets - but niche = small.
Education seemed hot with tens of thousands of Chinese students coming here to study (or was it largely a thinly disguised path to a visa?). Now that model looks a little sick.
The vast construction industry in Australia dwarfs all these niche manufacturing opportunities. It hangs off population growth. Like it or not, ultimately all the tradies feed off immigration. The alternative manufacturing path to global success is really really hard and high risk.
Increasing the immigration quota is a number punched into a keyboard that takes a Minister 5 seconds and needs not even a vote in parliament. The choice of immigration or some form of organically generated growth is ridiculously imbalanced in terms of effort and result.
Germany's success as a manufacturer was founded over 150 years ago - it is deeply woven into their culture and education system.
I don't like where we are going but have seen enough to know that I can't say "why don't we just do xyz .....". I wish it was not so.
But I agree that this crisis will make many countries rethink and move away from the ridiculous outsource everything models that have made us vulnerable to supply shocks and highlighted the predatory nature of mercantile countries pursuing economic and geopolitical power. However, this won't happen with us just talking and deciding to make a jolly good show of trying to make more stuff or signing new free trade agreements. It will take carefully thought out laws, tariffs and foreign investment criteria.
Amazing how you like Fred Hollows Blowin, considering he was a kiwi who immigrated to Australia. My eye-surgeon immigrated from China. In fact, our hospitals and medical research facilities are filled with immigrants. But hey, you keep banging on about the dangers of immigration if it makes you feel better.
Blowin is on the money. Growth is a big Ponzi scheme and it will fail (the longer we continue down this path the greater the fall will be) as it is not sustainable (wont be long before the Coronials will blame the Millennials in the scores to come for the lack of resources/foods/growth/uncrowded waves blah blah blah,). Australia has growth (in population, which I imagine will turn into economic growth) without immigration (births is recent years have been about double deaths ~150k net positive p.a.) so we are in growth (albeit minor) without migration. Net migration has been around 240k positive p.a. in recent years. Most countries/peoples have been sold on the "growth is good" strategy, which is totally wrong and in fact will turn out to be the opposite, Growth is actually bad, particularly for the environment, and it will be the major contributor to the demise of homo sapiens. I don't know much about economics (obviously) but occupations that rely on growth should be redirected to sustainable type industries, or maybe we currently have too many jobs in growth centered industries, hence a lack of work when growth is small or non existent. Everyone's favourite country China has about 10M nationals leave to live/work in other countries on a permanent basis, and some 1M foreigners enter its border to live/work annually. Birth rates outstrip deaths by about 5M pa. Not sure how they calculate their pop. as they are apparently still increasing numbers, and expected to for another decade or so before their net population begins decreasing. Some interesting perspectives and its great to have such a forum to share ideas and thoughts. Keep up the good work Swellnet.
edit : I am not for or against immigration, I just think growth is not good.
Have it cunts