Just over a decade ago the then Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, gave a well promoted speech at the Western Sydney University where she said that “I have a plan to … stop foreign workers being put at the front of the queue with Australian workers at the back.”
Back then Labor was responding to legitimate community concern about a surge in visas (under the now defunct 457 visa scheme). The Labor Government strengthened English language tests, skills requirements and minimum wages for visa workers in response.
A decade is a long time in politics. Today’s Labor Government has let the number of people here on visas explode. The latest data shows that there are 2.5 million people here on temporary visas, not including tourists. This surge is not explained by the opening of the borders post-COVID. There are now 500,000 more people here than before COVID.
In effect, Australia has imported a city the size of Canberra in just three years. We have not built the infrastructure of a city the size of Canberra over this time. That has had obvious and observable impacts on housing, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure.
Thousands of Australians protested last week at the “March for Australia” events. They were protesting the decline in Australia’s living standards that has, in part, been due to this uncontrolled and unmanaged migration surge.
Instead of responding to these legitimate concerns, the Australian Labor party has belittled and demonised those who have had the temerity to criticise their own government’s decisions. The Government has sought to desperately distract attention from its population policies by focusing on the few extremists and neo-nazis that hijacked these rallies.
Those extremists should be condemned. But the Government also needs to be held responsible for giving a platform to these extremists by not itself developing a proper population plan and leaving a vacuum for extreme views to spread. It was not until days after the protests that the Government finally released its target for permanent migration this year, which was months overdue.
In that respect, the protests have succeeded in forcing a government asleep at the wheel to act. Notionally, the government’s permanent migration target has been left unchanged at 185,000. The problem is that this target only captures a fraction of the people who move to Australia in any one year.
The more comprehensive measure is Net Overseas Migration, or NOM for short. Over the past few years that figure has averaged almost double what it was before COVID. The largest increase has been in student visas as our universities increasingly become addicted to foreign student revenues.
Ultimately, it does not matter if someone arrives here permanently, for work or to study. All of these people require a home, may need to visit a hospital or use other infrastructure.
There are some who make the absurd claim that migrants do not increase house prices or cause increases in waiting times at hospitals. In making these claims, no one is blaming the migrants themselves. I can completely understand why people want to move to what is a great country. But when there are more people attending a rental inspection, rents will go up. They have gone up by more than 20 per cent in the past few years.
And Julia Gillard is right too. Migrants do not just impact the queues at a property inspection. When more foreign workers arrive, that pushes Australian workers back. The more people that are here, the lower wages will be. Australian real wages have fallen back to levels of a decade ago since our migration rates surged.
Once upon a time, the Labor party stood up for workers and fought against them having to face competition from too many foreigners. It is about time we listen to the reasonable requests of the Australian people and manage our migration settings to help Australians first.
