The Morrison Government is gearing up for a post-COVID immigration boom under the guise of skills shortages:
Skilled migration into Australia will be reviewed in a quickfire government inquiry looking for fast solutions to help businesses get the staff they need and grow the economy…
Immigration Minister Alex Hawke asked Parliament’s joint standing committee on migration to review the rules that determine whether people can get a skilled visa to enter the country…
Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows 2,720 people arrived in Australia on permanent skilled visas in December 2020, compared to 34,770 in the same period a year earlier…
Liberal MP Julian Leeser, the committee chair, said it would focus first on whether immediate changes were necessary to help the economy recover once borders reopen, with an interim report due by mid-March.
“The reporting period is short so we can present options to the government for their consideration in a timely manner,” Mr Leeser said. “This is not a navel-gazing exercise that’s theoretical.”
Skilled migration would lead people to create businesses that would then employ Australians, Mr Leeser argued.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a national employer lobby group, agreed but called for big changes to the migration program in the wake of the pandemic. Permanent skilled migration was capped by the Morrison government at 160,000 places a year, but ACCI’s employment director Jenny Lambert said it should go back up to the previous figure of 190,000…
First, how did 2,720 people arrive in Australia in December on permanent skilled visas when there are tens-of-thousands of Australians stranded abroad? How about we bring actual Australians back first?
Second, the mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy was an unmitigated disaster pre-COVID, oversupplying the labour market; crushing wages; crush-loading roads, trains and other infrastructure; crush-loading schools and hospitals; and cramming people into tiny apartments. It was also disproductive, encouraging slave labour over capital deepening which kills profits in the long run.
How about we let local wages rise and train locals instead? This will trigger automation and lift productivity plus incomes and profits over the long run.
Australia should instead seek to emulate the well-run Nordic countries. They are renowned as being among the wealthiest, happiest, best functioning nations in the world with the highest living standards, high exports and high productivity. They achieved this success without mass immigration-driven population growth:
The world has 7.6 billion people. Australia doesn’t need to import them to sell to them.
