“Racist” Coalition gay rights MP says cut immigration

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Via The Australian:

The Australian economy will need to produce 13 million extra jobs in the next half century just to ­accommodate population growth, according to Liberal senator Dean Smith, who has urged Malcolm Turnbull to put further curbs on immigration levels to protect the nation’s standard of living.

With a Lowy Institute poll last week showing most Australians think the immigration level is too high, Senator Smith has upped the pressure on the Prime Minister about population, arguing there should be a new cap for immigration levels in Sydney and ­Melbourne.

The West Australian senator said the government was missing a political trick by not doing more to further reduce immigration levels, arguing the issue had become a key economic concern to voters.

“I travel around Perth metropolitan area, but importantly (in) regional Western Australia, population issues are becoming more top of mind,” Senator Smith told The Australian.

“At their core, population ­issues are about economics, which is a key Coalition strength and a debate that we should own.”

Correct. The political dividend will be immediate and devastating for Labor rendering it a terrifying prospect given:

  • negative gearing reform will land on materially lower population growth;
  • its foreign policy dalliance with China;
  • our cities will be ghettoised even faster, and
  • the ongoing crushing of wages.
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It will also immediately install the Coalition as the greenest party in Parliament and wipe out One Nation, repairing the the Coalition’s divided base, plus drive a very useful public wedge between itself and corporate Australia to offset the Labor attack about Coalition unfairness and bias.

In fact, it is such a political and policy no-brainer that the fact that the Colaition has not done it can only be the result of either gargantuan stupidity, corruption or both.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific's leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
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