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.
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?
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.