Ponzi scheme

Innes Willox, the Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group or AIGroup, aims to bolster the economy by resurrecting the discredited mass-immigration agenda. His group has been described as: A leading organisation representing business in a broad range of sectors including manufacturing, defence, ICT and labour hire, by the Australian Advanced Manufacturing Council (accessed 1 September 2020), which lists him, among other positions, as “Board Member of Migration Council of Australia,” and notes that he “was Chief of Staff to the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, from 2004 to 2006.”

To appreciate the agenda, in the article, Migration, tax reform a key to revival, (Geoff Chambers, The Australian, 24 August 2020). Chambers wrote that the Australian Industry Group was calling for “a long-term, systematic shake-up of the tax system focused upon the removal of the worst taxes.”

But the overriding aspect of AIGroup’s push requires the Federal government to achieve,“An increase of the migration cap.”

Innes Willox, repeats his decades-long mantra:

“Restore the migration cap to 190,000 places a year and [furthermore] move to [implement] a growth rate target for annual permanent migration [levels, because] migration was critical to Australian prosperity.”

Willox and, indeed, that coterie of like-minded Big Australia cohorts, construe that merely importing copious numbers of immigrants will bolster ‘demand’. Therefore, the sacrosanct supply and demand factors which economic-rationalists embrace, will summarily kick-in - and boost economic growth. It all seems so straightforward and logical.
There’s nothing there about what might happen when these immigrant groups become so large that they could use their numbers to establish political entities to organise for their own benefit and possibly against Australia’s!

Of course, this disaster already seems obvious to many. Rancour inside the major parties shows it. In Victoria an Indian woman in the Liberal Party has established a ‘religious Right’ faction based on certain migrant groups. In South Australia a Chinese woman and upper-house MP is openly advocating for China and Chinese migrants. Are we surprised?

Without doubt, Innes Willox and Co would gloat about this scenario, as being culturally diverse and enriching. When, in fact, what it really is cultural separatism; if not downright divisive. And this is evident in that, outside workplace requirements, many in the array of ethnocultural groups in Australia, rarely interact with those outside of their cultural-bubbles. Except, perhaps, as Clive Hamilton, in Silent Invasion: China's Influence in Australia, argues, they seek to flatter and influence people holding political and business positions.

At any rate, Australia’s Prime Minister has reacted, introducing legislation requiring Federal oversight of any agreements with foreign powers/investments: “The government will introduce legislation next week empowering the foreign affairs minister to review and cancel agreements – such as Victoria’s decision to sign up to China’s belt and road initiative – if the commonwealth judges the arrangement adversely affects Australia’s foreign relations.” See, Victorian premier defends China deal as PM pushes to override state pacts with foreign nations. On the other side of the coin, many Australians continue to worry about Australia’s role as an international deputy to the United States war machine. (See, for instance, The Independent and Peaceful Australian Network, “Don’t buy into war.”). Most of us can probably agree that we would rather be independent and sovereign.

In past times, advocates of open-door immigration programs claimed this would enrich Australia. Alas, what has transpired is that immigrants had arrived in such droves, over the past decade, that they have rapidly displaced established Anglo-Celtic-European ethnicities from scores of suburbs in Sydney and Melbourne. The end result more closely resembles a collection of peoples, with diverse national or ethnic allegiances, rather than those of what once-was, termed ‘mainstream Australia’.

Further, over the past few months, we’ve seen the Big Australia advocates, like Willox and the AiGroup, calling for the government to fast-track international students in Australia from temporary migrants to permanent residents, as the stepping stone to fill job requirements. The effect of this would be to counter the drop in immigrant numbers which has followed from COVID-19 closing the borders to foreigners. What manner of gross-insanity exists here, with them demanding international students fill the void, when unemployment presently stands at 14% and underemployment is at a comparable percentage?

Willox reportedly purports that

”Immigration was critical to Australian prosperity and the pandemic has necessarily constrained inward immigration, but Australia would need to think long and hard before any decision [was made] to sustain lower levels over a longer term and the reduction in permanent migration visas had contributed to a reliance on temporary migration flows, dominated by students and backpackers. (”Coronavirus: migration, tax reform ‘key to recovery’”.)

Clearly, what Willox and AiGroup’s long-term migration strategy entails is summed up in the following two statements:

“[Australia’s future prosperity] would be enhanced by moving to an annual growth rate target for annual permanent migration that is linked to [the] national labour market growth, instead of a fixed quota number.”

“The changed outlook for immigration has huge implications for many industries, especially of immigration in housing and construction, which have been fueled by high levels both permanent and temporary levels.”[Emphasis added]

Well, taking into account that immigration intakes into Australia between January 2014 until June 2019 were, comparatively, 2.25 times higher than that of the US, prompts these queries:

If, as Willox and his cohorts claim mass-immigration makes Australia richer, then how come we are the most indebted society in the world? Surely, if the theory espoused by Willox and all of the Big Australia Brigadistâs is correct then prices/costs should, at the very least, be stagnant? Unlike as over these past 75 months during an era of huge immigration levels - since the LNP won office in September 2013 - house prices have increased by 60%, but wages only rose 15%?

Clearly, in spite of the relentless-claims made by the Big Australia Brigade, open-door immigration into Australia, hasn’t made us wealthier at all. These policies have actually encumbered the country with the exact opposite scenario. Alas, in spite of this situation being indisputable, we yet again find lobbyists like Willox calling for the government to resurrect those failed schemes.

But Willox is so concerned about the decline in building, if immigration is not increased, talking of:

“[…]The huge implications for many industries, particularly housing and construction.”

And it is the housing/construction sector interests that expose precisely what the whole Big Australia agenda is built upon. Excessive numbers of highly compliant immigrants will fall for the con-trick of borrowing big sums of money to buy a property. This will sustain the huge Ponzi-scheme.

Australia is now wallowing in crisis but those with the money are pushing for a new round of lunacy in furthering the disaster dumped upon Australians.

Australia is running an “investment” scam that relies on an ever-increasing number of punters to join in, writes Stephen Williams.

(This article was first published at https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/australias-population-ponzi-scheme-,11964 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License.) In this republication tweets with links have been represented as pictures, to save time in reformatting.

IF YOU ARE LOOKING for discord between policies that the major parties offer and what most people actually want, it is hard to beat population policy.

Okay, okay, the major parties don’t actually have population policies, they have immigration policies that, as the Productivity Commission says in its 2016 Migrant intake into Australia report, work as de facto population policies.

But let’s start with what most people actually want.

Macro Business’s Leith van Onselen has been relentless in his coverage of the population issue in the past few years and he summarises the recent opinion surveys here.

Van Onselen misses the first Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) survey of 2015, which I spearheaded, although Adjunct Associate Professor Katharine Betts did most of the work. I also had a minor role in The Australian Population Research Institute survey of 2017 that built upon the 2015 SPA survey.

At the very least these surveys show a clear voter dissatisfaction with our high population trajectory as our major cities become crush-loaded.

Do we have “high” population growth?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics releases a quarterly report that summarises our population numbers.

As you can see, Australia is increasing its population by almost 400,000 a year — natural increase is about 38% of that and net overseas migration is about 62%.

The increase is 1.6% per year. To the non-statistician, that might not sound like much, but it means we would double our population every 44 years at that rate of increase. We are now at 25 million, so that would be 50 million in 2062.

To put that in context, the shit hit the fan in October 2009 when then Treasury head, Ken Henry, expressed concern over our projected population of 35 million people by 2050.

That led to prime minister Kevin Rudd’s baptism of fire when, like a boy scout enthusiastically collecting kindling at his first jamboree, he chortled his enthusiasm for a “big Australia”.

Yes, we could all get nice and cozy around Kev’s big bonfire and toast some marshmallows!

But the public backlash was fierce, with Julia Gillard eventually distinguishing herself from Rudd with the empty phrase “sustainable Australia” rather than big Australia.

Back to reality, comparable countries to Australia have much lower population increases. Japan even has a decrease.

The Federal Government largely determines our population numbers, both through spruiking pronatalism, as former treasurer Peter Costello did in 2004, or through adjusting net overseas migration, with former Prime Minister John Howard turbo-charging it in about 2006.

(Do not confuse our refugee intake with our overall migrant intake — the former tends to be between 3 and 5% of the latter.)

Such high-population increases, mostly through net migration, then allowed successive governments to smugly say the Australian economy was the envy of the world, with a record-breaking run of “economic growth”.

Translation: GDP keeps increasing because you keep adding lots of new people.

Growth sounds good, doesn’t it? It is the opposite of death, decay or stagnation. But growth can also be a cancer, or a “population Ponzi scheme”.

As I have argued elsewhere, there is good evidence that Australia has gone from economic growth up to the decade of the 1970s to uneconomic growth as the costs of expanding the economy become greater than the benefits.

Expanding the economy wouldn’t be so bad if it led to full employment in good jobs and equitable wealth distribution, with reasonable commute times in efficient public transport, but I could sell you a nice big harbour bridge if you believe we are heading in that direction.

Australian governments have conducted a number of inquiries that were largely, or partly, into our population numbers: The Menzies Government’s Vernon report (1965), the National Population Inquiry (Borrie report, 1975), FitzGerald report (1988), Withers report (1992), Jones report (1994), Sobels report (2010) and the already-mentioned Productivity Commission report on migration (2016).

Space does not permit an analysis here, other than to say that governments generally ignore those reports that tend to highlight a lack of objective or scientific justification for ever-increasing high population increase in a country with Australia’s limited water resources; limited arable land, unpredictable climate, exposure to natural disasters and sensitive biota with record extinction rates.

Indeed, the Australian Academy of Science has been concerned about our population numbers for decades, although you will rarely, if ever, hear population boosters mention this.

As the Academy said in 2010:

‘The Academy has consistently advocated that a large increase in Australia's population should not take place without a full analysis of the consequences for the environment, in terms of land, water, sustainable agriculture, pressure on native flora and fauna and social issues.’

People advocating business as usual – or even higher rates of population increase – almost never mention the natural environment, probably because they know next-to-nothing about it and its life-support systems.

On the other hand, people who express concern about our population trajectory often have scientific or environmental credentials, or are at least environmentally literate: contributors to the regular Fenner Conference for the Environment are good examples.

No, it is largely the business community, its think tanks and its big accounting firms that push for a big Australia, with the mainstream media being largely complicit in not challenging base assumptions that the growth agenda is built on.

For instance:

• What would be an ecologically sustainable population for Australia?
• What would be an optimal population for Australia?
• Does expanding the size of the economy always lead to increased well-being?
• Who are the winners and losers from the current Neoliberal growth strategy?
• What are the costs and benefits of increasing our population and what weight should we give to these costs and benefits?
• Why do many successful societies have relatively small populations?
• What can Australia realistically do to help an overpopulated planet that is still expanding by 80 million people a year?

The population boosters trot out questionable arguments about the dire consequences of an increase in the proportion of older Australians; alleged skills gaps in the native workforce and fatuous ideas to do with “dynamism”.

Meanwhile, we have almost 2 million people who want more work but can’t get it, full-time jobs are disappearing, wages have stagnated, private-sector debt has skyrocketed and wealth has concentrated at the big end of town.

What sticks in my craw is the seeming capitulation of both the once-great environmental movement in Australia and the progressive left in general, to the notion of demographic inevitability and Neoliberal orthodoxy.

In fact, we have a choice, if only we would exercise it.

Stephen Williams is a freelance journalist. He has done paid work for Sustainable Population Australia.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

Update: See new article, "AWPC Wildlife Planning Officer says, "Don't cull roos; Plan wildlife corridors!"" A wildlife “consultant” has called for a radical new plan to cull kangaroos along Melbourne’s urban fringe before there is any more housing development.  What’s “radical” about this solution to wildlife?  Due to lack of vision, foresight and planning, it means killing them!

This new “plan” is about caving into the whims of property developers, and the plans of our State government to blow out our urban fringe for more growth-gluttony  and housing.

First published on Australian Wildlife Protection Council website here: http://awpc.org.au/kangaroos-must-be-culled-for-urban-sprawl/

Thanks to Melbourne’s obesity, urban sprawl keeps stretching out north, causing problems for residents and wildlife. There are more fences, road and houses, causing chaos and causing kangaroos to become trapped in factories, rooftops and school yards.  Their habitat is being impinged upon and eaten away by infrastructure and choked by human population growth.

Instead of addressing the problem, and implementing any real plans for the city, the waist-line of Melbourne keeps expanding as 100,000 new people per year keep it engorged.

Wildlife Victoria has received about 6,500 emergency calls about kangaroos this year, double the number they received three years ago.

DELWP, the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, is meant to administer the Wildlife Act, and enforce the protection of our native species, is also the State government department responsible for Planning! There are massive and blatant conflicts of interests here. 

According to DELWP’s own website, they have control over our population growth!  By 2051, there will be a projected 10 million people in Victoria, a “natural increase” of 1.7 million, and a whopping 2.8 million due to net migration.

Wildlife Victoria spokeswoman Amy Amato said “It’s definitely not an increase in the number of kangaroos in Melbourne….we’re just seeing the number of incidents in human conflict with kangaroos rising.”  In fact, our government does not know how many kangaroos there are in Victoria.

(image: The True Cost of Sprawl)

Victoria’s Department of Environment has engaged independent wildlife management consultant Ian Temby to review the situation.  His solution is to kill the kangaroos before development goes ahead, arguing kangaroos are being slowly culled by cars anyway!  So, their deaths are inevitable, and shooters don’t kill will be finished off by cars.   Then, the housing industry won’t be hampered by obstructed by native animals.

Author Ian Temby, in the past, recommended learning to live humanely with wildlife.  Known to Wildlife Victoria members as a long time as wildlife advocate with over 30 years in the DSE.

He claimed that “action to resolve conflicts with wildlife does not have to be lethal. Exclusion, repellents, changing human practices and habitat modification are all examples of non-lethal actions”.  And, “rather than killing wildlife, our real challenge is to develop and apply methods of problem resolution that are proactive, anticipating where problems may occur and taking action to prevent them from actually happening”. 

Now, his solution is CULL, CULL, the easy and lazy way of removing the problem.

There are no interconnecting wildlife corridors in Victoria, so whatever “Planning” happens doesn’t include the fate of our native species. [Candobetter.net Ed.: See here for concerted attempts to create such corridors by the AWPC: /taxonomy/term/73.]

For too long our capitalistic economy has gorged on “growth”, and worshipped the real estate industry, caving into it’s whims for resources.  Already our infrastructure is choked and overloaded, and congestion is impeding productivity.   We are falling into an abyss of infrastructure deficit.

What values are we promoting and what benefits are there from our city’s explosive growth- except for property developers and real estate investors?

The high immigration that was beneficial in the 1950s, and 60s is now causing our cities to be over-crowded and overpopulated. Our governments are addicted to growth, and our economy is on thin ice if it depends on rising house prices and population growth.  It’s admission of being bereft of ideas, innovation, and enlightenment. It’s lazy economics, to just turn up the immigration tap to boost our economy, and expect the public to finance the retro-fitting of our city, endure a crumbling housing market, and all the deprivations of perpetual growth imposed on us!

The lack of innovation and diversity in our economy means that there’s an over-reliance on housing and population growth.  It’s a lethal and self-destructive Ponzi scheme, and will not only have a deadly impact on our wildlife, biodiversity and environment, but eventually cause impoverishment, deprivation, eroded living standards, congestion, and spiralling costs of living for human inhabitants.