When asked about Labor’s record net overseas migration (NOM) by ABC Radio’s Patricia Karvelas, Treasurer Jim Chalmers displayed a textbook example of gaslighting: the insidious alteration of the markers of reality until we no longer know what is real.
“On our current forecasts in the budget net overseas migration will still be cumulatively 315,000 people lower than the pre-pandemic forecasts by the middle of this year and 215,000 people lower by the middle of next year”, Chalmers said.
“What that means is because during COVID they didn’t get the growth in migration that we anticipated, even with this rebound in students and tourists we still haven’t caught up with what the previous government was forecasting in their budgets and I think that completely torpedoes this ridiculous campaign from Peter Dutton and others about migration”.
