If someone fills the room with eight feet of water, then lowers it by one foot… you’re still going to drown.
That’s the most apt metaphor I can think of to describe the Albanese government’s ‘immigration crackdown’. Labor are well aware that immigration is the single most white-hot issue for Australian voters. But they also know that without the solid support of tribal ethnic voting blocs, they’re toast. So, they’ve announced a ‘Clayton’s’ immigration crackdown, hoping enough people will be bamboozled by it.
But even a ‘reduced’ immigration level of over 200,000 per year is still record-high: nearly double what it was at the turn of the millennium. Higher even than the post-war migration rush. This is the uniparty pissing on our legs while they tell us it’s raining.
Angus Taylor has warned housing shortages will continue for another seven years even if the Albanese government stops overshooting net overseas migration targets, after Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke stalled Labor plans to strengthen immigration controls.
Mr Burke cancelled a long-planned address to the National Press Club on Thursday after his spokesman said “it became clear that some elements of the speech” could not be finalised in time.
Translation: the caucus is split, the unions are growling, the multicultural seats are nervous and One Nation is eating their lunch. Labor’s own target is still 245,000 next year, sliding to a still-massive 225,000. Even if they somehow hit those numbers for the first time ever, the coalition’s analysis shows housing shortages lasting until 2033.
The Liberals are circling like sharks, promising to keep migration below the number of homes actually built. Fair enough as far as it goes. But history is not kind to their sudden conversion. For years they ran the same high-migration machine, delivered the same housing squeeze and treated any talk of real restraint as political poison. Their current posture looks less like principle and more like opportunistic capital-banking off Labor’s spectacular mismanagement. Commitment to meaningful reform remains, as ever, optional.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson says Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s decision to cancel an address unveiling Labor’s plan to overhaul the nation’s immigration settings was made to appease the unions, progressive segments of his own party and the Greens […]
Confirming her party’s 130,000 cap would apply to permanent migrants into Australia, Senator Hanson claimed it was an “absolute scam” that so few migrants to Australia were entering the construction sector.
“We don’t need any more Uber drivers, nail technicians, dog walkers. These people – gone. Stop all that.”
Pauline Hanson, at least, is saying the quiet part out loud. The so-called “skilled migration” program absolutely is a scam. Even on the government’s own definition of ‘skilled’, which is wobblier than a housing frame built by Indian migrants, barely 12 per cent of permanent places go to genuine offshore skilled primary applicants. The rest is family chain migration dressed up in skills clothing, plus secondary applicants who arrive with no skills assessment at all. We are importing dependents, students who never leave and people who end up driving Ubers or painting nails while the housing queue lengthens.
One Nation’s 130,000 permanent intake is a welcome step in the right direction, but it’s still too high. Net migration needs to fall far enough, for long enough, that infrastructure and housing can actually catch up. Anything less is rearranging the deckchairs on a ship that is already taking on water.
As for Hanson’s complaint that “so few migrants to Australia were entering the construction sector”, that may be the one silver lining. The Site Inspections YouTube channel shows exactly what some of those migrant-built houses look like: walls out of plumb, gaps you can fit a hand through, insulation that would shame a cardboard box and finishes that will need ripping out within a decade. The channel can blur the workers’ faces, but the thick Indian accents are the tell.
If the alternative is more of that quality, perhaps we should count our blessings that the numbers remain low.
