There is a pressing need for an independent immigration plan
There’s much to be said in favour of immigration yet polling concurrent with the housing crisis shows almost half of all voters say they’re more likely to give the nod to a party committed to reducing it.
Down the decades generations of Ministers for Immigration have struggled to devise immigration plans that are what the country needs while at the same time being politically viable.
But immigration is still being kicked around as a political football by more people than kick a Sherrin.
Which is why pressing need for an immigration plan should be answered by establishment of an independent commission or agency able to develop one that’s free of political interference, functioning similarly to other statutory bodies.
According to a RedBridge poll of Australians’ political attitudes, hostility to immigration has surged 70% this year, surely a spur to PM Anthony Albanese to do something about this that voters perceive as positive, before the next elections.
Indications are that millions of people have gone from feeling that accepting migrants from many countries is a good thing that in many ways it will make the nation stronger, to now believing that migrants are worsening the housing crisis, over-burdening the welfare system, and taking away Australians’ jobs.
Clear warning signs
Warning signs for the government on the issue are clear. Although polling shows 58% of coalition voters say they’re more likely to be influenced to vote in favour of reducing immigration, almost a third of Labor voters say they could also be influenced to do the same.
While 54% of all voters over the age of 65 have told pollsters they’re open to being influenced by immigration policy, it’s significant that 35% of voters in the 18-34 age bracket say unequivocally they’d vote for a party advocating a cut in immigration.
RedBridge director Kosmos Samar says that while in the past people have been generally supportive of immigration, this was falling away quickly because of the government’s failure to suppress inflation.
Obviously, the government faces a dilemma, how to maximise immigration and its economic benefits yet ease shortages of housing and services – and it’s being bombarded by media opinions and advice from a plethora of industry, business and professional organisations on how to do this.
There are those that argue memory of the consequences of failing to maintain immigration at a high level, could haunt policy makers indefinitely. For only such a level, it’s claimed, will end repeated labour shortages in the building and construction sector that delay completions and otherwise undermine government efforts to strengthen the economy.
Analysis from BuildSkills Australia shows the government needs more than 90,000 more workers in the sector if it’s to fulfil its plan to build 1.2m homes in the next five years.
It’s further maintained that any aggressive cutback on the intake of international students would restrict the education industry’s ability to attract talent that could help Australia achieve national economic targets, including lifting lagging productivity.
Craig Carracher, co-founder and chief executive of Scafe, Australia’s largest owner and operator of student accommodation says: “To me, the one thing that drives productivity is education, whether that’s traineeships or university research. Anything that restricts our national agenda on education that’s driven by immigration is bad policy and will come back to haunt us in the future.”
Rationale for a commission
Australia’s population is projected to reach 40. 5m in 2062-63. It’s now about 27.2m.
Rather than leave scientists and other assorted claimed experts to discuss the significance of this in private, surely as a nation we’re capable of having a public discussion about how many people should be living sustainably on our continent.
This will need to be decided relative to such issues as climate change, demographic trends, biodiversity, water usage, food security, energy, infrastructure, geopolitics, and more, and it’s entirely unrealistic to expect to get reliable, unbiased recommendations on any of these things from politicians keen to keep their jobs.
Given Australians’ falling fertility rate it’s probably become more important than ever that decision making on immigration be taken away from politicians and placed in the hands of members of a fully independent commission that’s seen to be fully independent.
Professor David Lindenmayer, an acknowledged world-leading expert in biodiversity says “it’s crazy Australia doesn’t have a population plan.
“For without that we’ re simply going to lurch from one crisis to another – and we’ve already got a healthcare crisis, a lack of housing crisis, a housing price crisis, and a water crisis, all of which are tied to population management problems that can only be solved by a dedicated and truly independent body.”
Some hard questions
To reach its potential, should Australia aim to support a population of 100m, many of whom live in five or six ci ties of 10m or more people?
Or would most Australians prefer to live on a continent of fewer people even though this would mean the nation would thus be falling well short of what it could be as a powerhouse in the Pacific region?
In 2020 the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) found the country was one of the most food secure nations on earth able to export 70% of agricultural production, but how would its food security rate were the population 100m instead of the mere 27.2m it is now?
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that not only do scientists believe answers to such vital questions -- and others related to them -- shouldn’t be left in the hands of people sitting in the revolving chairs of parliaments, any more than in the hands of fellow scientists? They’re convinced members of an independent organisation should have that responsibility – and we at Macks Advisory are disinclined to argue with that.
