The Australian’s Robert Gottliebsen has demanded a rapid return to mass immigration to back fill the oversupply of property investment and infrastructure:
Our nation is structured on migration plus overseas students covering a declining birthrate, but migration and student intake have stopped. We will need to start them again…
Around Australia we are building large amounts of infrastructure, including massive industrial and residential property expansion on the basis that our population will increase as it has done in previous decades…
For those countries seeking migrants the most exciting prospect at the moment is Hong Kong, and the UK is leading the way and taking a migration market that was “ready made” for Australia…
But if students do not return in something like the numbers of previous years and our migration remains restricted then we will need to adopt a new series of economic assumptions.
House prices will not keep rising because we will have built too much accommodation. The massive infrastructure projects we are now building assume a continuation of strong population growth.
The debt the states and the Commonwealth are building up as part of this investment will not be easily covered if the population stagnates and interest rates rise.
One of Australia’s problems will be that whereas the British are welcoming migrants, particularly those from Hong Kong, Australians are divided on this issue and have very little understanding of the impacts they face if migration does not resume.
What Gotti has described above is Australia’s ponzi economy and tail-wagging-the-dog economics.
The primary reason why Australia embarked on such a large infrastructure and housing build was to cater for its ballooning population caused by mass immigration:
The obvious question for Gotti is: what’s the point of building all of this housing and infrastructure if it will simply be ‘filled-up’ with migrants? How does this benefit existing Australian residents, especially given these infrastructure projects will be funded via escalating user charges such as tolls, and future Australians will be forced to live in expensive cramped apartments:
Houses only for the rich.
This type of economic model only benefits private companies like Transurban and Meriton, while existing residents see their cost of living rise and their quality of life degrade.
You see, mass immigration-led development is the ultimate Ponzi scheme, with Gotti’s industry mates privatising the gains while the costs are socialised on the existing population via: 1) funding the increasing infrastructure needs (water, power, transport, recreation facilities etc); and 2) suffering the downsides of increasing congestion, being crammed into defective high-rise apartments, paying higher housing costs, lower wages, and watching the natural environment get destroyed.
A Ponzi scheme is no way to apply government policy for the good of the people.
Sadly, in the property Narco state of Australia, industry pulls the strings. Nothing boosts their profits like flooding the place with millions more migrants.
This is why the Intergenerational Report projected that Australia’s population will swell by a whopping 13.1 million people (~50%) over the next 40 years to 38.8 million people – equivalent to adding another Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to Australia’s existing population. And this will be driven by annual net overseas migration of 235,000 (see above chart).
Relax Gotti. The mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy will be rebooted quickly enough and you’ll get your way. Always follow the money.
