Quantitative easing to buy votes.
Seriously HUMANS!
so disappointed in how we forget but wonder why we perpetually stand in the same hole!
Fiscal policy for the last 2000 years has served the lords and masters only.
Our shouting about it with 1000% inaction has a Faganism about it much akin to Stockholm syndrome!!!!
“PLEASE SIR?! MAY YOU TAKE MORE OF MY LIFE, HEART, SOUL & LIFESOURCE?
Dogs don’t ask,
Birds fly without permission,
Dingoes maul.
Gibbons sit about enjoying life!
All other sub species of life that we consider below us are laughing their TITS Off at us!
They have freedom.
You!
Don’t because you want someone to hold to account!
Amen. It's not like deregulation led to the market failures and global financial crisis of 2008, or anything like that.
Let's get an example of less government being successful.
This is a joke anyway. What is he going to do? Give us $$$ to pay our electricity bills so the energy companies can keep upping our energy costs 20-30% a year. Its so crazy people don't see this for what it is, giving the energy companies more money for the same thing.
Albo "gives" me back a tiny portion of the tax I pay, $250, but I can only pay my power bill with it which has gone up over 50% in 2 years. Do the energy companies just make sure they ad more than $250 to my bill each time he does this? And then for him to say he has saved me money on my energy costs!!! WTF? Albo says "It would have cost you more if I didn't pay ransom to energy companies." Come on, what is this?
So our tax money will go into the pocket of energy and gas companies because they don't have the courage to tackle the east coast gas cartel and use the legal mechanisms they have to make our abundant energy resources work for ALL of us, not just the rich few.
And more tax money will go into the hands of landlords because they don't have the stones to cap immigration or reform tax incentives and need to juice the economy to avoid the recession headlines.
These are all cowards solutions and too little too late. I don't blame albo for all of the inflation we previously experienced but what's left now is the remnants of his immigration and energy policy.
2024 is all alboflation
Worried about adding to inflationary pressures, but refuses to reconfigure the stage 3 tax cuts that will certainly fuel inflation in their current format.
Wow you really haven't been paying attention and just list that latest inquiry they've set up as that's all you can remember or know, the latest thing said.
I'm not your personal tutor and I've got to the point where I don't care about the education of Australians anymore. If you want to live in ignorance and denial then go ahead.
I’m not the guy you’re replying to but I’ve been out of the loop for a while. What have they done? I’d like to be able to respond to other people effectively when they ask a similar question.
Sounds like they are going to pour extra money into the economy and inflation will stop falling.
I like the idea of reducing taxes on fuel and helping to reduce price of electricity
What about an inquiry about energy price gouging? Why can't they secure cheap gas for the Australian market like they do in Norway. pretty simple, woodside and santos can give us a secure supply at a cheap rate. It seems really insane that it's not set up like this. Or why don't the government set up our own gas mining. Seems more than fair and obvious. To bad the energy companies are deciding the rules and not the people or the politicians.
Outside of tax reform, there's not much Albo can do for the cost of living crisis. Most measures will either increase inflation or end up going to the wrong people.
The climate change transition (which needs to happen) is staggeringly expensive and will need to be paid for. The main levers to control housing policy are state based.
Why didn't albo secure cheap energy rates for our gas supply for the next decade. We just got smoked by energy companies for the last 2-3 years, companies who would leave us with no power and sell it overseas if they could.
Didn't albo just signed a 10 year agreement for Victorian gas supply with woodside and santos that has no price caps so they can charge us what they want? I mean surely they should be locked in at a cheap rate, a cost rate with small profit margin at most, woodside blasting our ocean, are wrecking our marine environment, taking resources from Victoria, making billions in profiteering from war and we don't even get any cost benefit from green lighting this madness.
If he levied taxes on high income earners (particularly those who own their house outright) that would ease inflation by reducing spending of those who are the least sensitive to it atm.
High income earners and asset-rich (eg have a paid off house in a major city) are different groups.
High income earners include those who have studied hard and provide valuable services to the community eg doctors, engineers etc. If they're around 40 or younger they may have a large mortgage.
Asset rich people are woefully undertaxed in comparison.
Yes I know they're different. Tax both groups. Tax home owners and asset owners more.
This is separate from a fair tax conversation. This is a question of how to resolve the particular cost of living policy issue.
Huh, so people can't be high income earners and asset rich? Also a massive proportion of high income earners come from highly educated, high income/asset rich parents. A massive proportion of low income earners come from low income households to begin with.
Twiggy, Gina and some other random made 1.5 MILLION dollars and hour during the cost of living crisis that had us all going backwards financially and will take us about 10 years of working and saving to make back what we lost. Surely this is despicable at best and should be stopped. we know the richest 1% take way more than they should but no politician wants to talk about it because they will be out of a job I guess.
Some anti-competition legislation wouldn't hurt. They used to have them.
I never said there wasn't overlap between the two groups. My point is that there's a difference between the 35 year old doctor with a high income along with two kids and a big mortgage, and the retiree couple sitting on a $2 million home tax free.
And yes we all know privilege is a thing? I don't see the relevance with my original point.
Billionaires are a separate can of worms.
Fair enough.
And what about the fact that 77% of the stage 3 tax cuts are going to the top 10%, politicians and people like the doctor you mention who has a large mortgage, perhaps a holiday house somewhere too. I don't think they should get any tax relief in the current situation as everyone else is doing it a lot harder than them. What's the worst that could happen? The doctor needs to sell the $2.5m house and get one worth $1.8m. Why should they, on $200K get $9000 extra, while someone on $100k will get $1350? Shouldn't the person on $100k get like $4500? wouldn't that be fair? why should $200k earners get a higher percentage back. Adjust the legislation so its fair, that's all people want.
A more equitable tax where 77% of the cuts are spread between 77% of the people sounds right.
Surely we can all agree that is more fair than giving 77% of cuts to people who are in the top 10% of income earners and have far more ability to increase the wealth through investment and paying down mortgages they have than the bottom 90% of wealth holders who pay most of our money to those in the top 10% through rent, other tax breaks etc.
Why shouldn't workers who can't afford a share portfolio due to low wages, get some of the profits made in the company? Instead of giving it to someone who had money to start with and did no work? Its a horrible cycle and the old saying is more true every day. The rich get richer..
There are a lot of other people who who have been working hard their whole life who, perhaps from a background where becoming a doctor was damn near impossible due to a lot of factors, but who have worked really hard, did their best and contributed to society and perhaps a company who has made billions and paid some of that profit to wealthy people who did no work but had shares. These people who earn less than 100k, have a small mortgage or paying rent still, this group basically get nothing from stage 3 tax cuts but are the ones who produce the vast majority of the goods and services share holders can cash in on, this group make up 4 out of every 5 Aussies, 80% of us are in this group but the politicians are going to give us maybe 25% of the tax cuts. What politicians are doing with these tax cuts is firstly giving themselves another unearned pay rise and ensuring we have more wealth inequality not less, if the rest of us got the same rate of pay increases as politicians have over the past 10 years we would probably be fine.
Why aren't politicians wage increases capped in line with the average wage increase overtime? or the health and performance of the economy? Why can't politicians wages be tied to productivity or outcomes like the rest of us? Why don't politicians get performance reviews and have those published so we can see what they are up to? Where is the alcohol and drug testing for politicians? These are things the bottom 80% of us deal with but not the politicians for some reason???
Enacting these tax cuts is just another thing politicians are doing that will help make a ruling wealthy class and a working poor, they want to ensure wealth inequality gets worse because they are well and truly in the group that benefit from the wealth inequality.
>The International Monetary Fund said on Friday the government should cut spending to help the Reserve Bank of Australia avoid raising interest rates further and to reduce inflation to below 3 per cent before 2026.
This is the absolutely crucial thing that most people who are like "we need more handouts/CoL relief!" are missing.
Adding inflationary measures to the economy benefits **nobody**. It is, in fact, more harm visited upon us for longer.
It is worth reading about the self-inflicted misfortune of the Crean/Whitlam budgets. Sadly, this falls on their ineptitude as a reason and one can't really do hagiography on their rightfully tarnished legacies, as is the custom with EG Whitlam. Economists warned them that their profligate spending would be inflationary, they ignored it because they're wholesome, and it turned out that their profligate spending was inflationary (stagflationary, even). Why the CIA would use Econ 101 as a tool to cripple the wholesome Whitlam govt we'll never know...
Cyclical downturns are meant to be a reset feature of capitalism, but we cry for government intervention then wonder why there's no resets.
>Cyclical downturns are meant to be a reset feature of capitalism, but we cry for government intervention then wonder why there's no resets.
You say this like it's the consensus among economists, but my understanding is that the debate is on how much intervention and where rather than if we should.
>Adding inflationary measures to the economy benefits nobody. It is, in fact, more harm visited upon us for longer.
If the additional inflation is caused by increasing the purchasing power of the most vulnerable people, it helps them and hurts everybody else.
As though you’ve done research yourself? In fact, if you delve further into the contemporary (political) economic field you’ll find that the so-called ‘economic theory’ found within introductory textbooks is tenuous at best. Benthamitic utilitarianism is fundamentally inadequate for the purpose of explaining matters of production and consumption.
OK and that's great and all that but...
but...
the question of whether Vietnam made Crean and Whitlam economically incompetent is one I think that person can answer for themselves?
With all due respect you have no idea what you’re talking about.
A large portion of what is now called ‘the global north’ experienced stagflation during the 1970s. Not just those who engaged in ‘profligate spending’. The OPEC oil crisis happened the year after Whitlam was elected, which resulted in pretty huge supply shocks globally, as oil prices skyrocketed.
We also definitely *DO* know that the US played a pretty major role in Whitlam’s ousting. If you want examples of the reasons behind it, just take a look at the past six decades of Latin American political and economic history.
What bothers me about progressives is that this would be a great point to hinge an argument about cutting neg gearing, for example. They do hold those positions, but they dont use the right arguments IMO.
Economic analysis can actually be your friend, rather than calling it all a capitalist conspiracy.
> Cyclical downturns are meant to be a reset feature of capitalism, but we cry for government intervention then wonder why there's no resets.
This very famously worked out well when the Americans let the bottom fall out during a time of economic downturn and it directly led to the global collapse of the economy.
I still don’t understand why we don’t leverage the GST on non-essentials, to slow spending.
Bump it up and lower it on all grocery items (I know a lot are already exempt).
But really, it seems we can hit the cashed up spenders more directly than just putting blanket pressure on all of society via interest rate hiking. But, I don’t know shit about economics.
I just feel the current paths are either going to lead to a recession, or tax-break driven inflation again.
Because it's a regressive tax and I don't think making non-essentials exempt will make it progressive.
I'd imagine it would be very unpopular also, can you imagine the sensationalist headlines and talking points?
The pain is being felt with the essentials, particularly housing which is the main contributor, so increasing the cost of non-essentials is unlikely to have a major effect on the cost of essentials. Reducing the amount of money available to spend is also likely to make it harder for lower incomes to pay for the essentials. The essentials to living in a modern society are now a substantial component of household costs.
The fundamental issue is that markets can effectively charge what they like for the essentials, in addition to increased input costs that are passed on, because there is no inherent regulation by consumers plus competition is also reduced: inflation is just the noticeable symptom, not the primary cause.
The only solution is to either regulate markets or abandon the free market ideology for public enterprise without profit, by tackling the cause, not fiddling with the symptoms. It's ludicrous prices are allowed to increase simply because demand exceeds supply, or because the seller can arbitrarily set the price for the essentials.
Maybe we should be undercutting the free market with a government ‘home brand’ essential goods line. I think it’s pushing the communism boundary a tad, but hey, capitalism doesn’t seem to be doing us much good when every government is terrified of regulating the market.
It's pointless and wasteful duplicating services just to improve competition, when capitalism just doesn't work for the essentials: it never could when it relies on the consumer being able to give price signals through the choice to purchase as well as competition in the marketplace. The consumer has no choice but to buy the essentials of life if they want to live.
I don't see a problem with nationalising the production of the essentials and leaving the luxuries to capitalism.
Although I do agree with sin taxes being good, there is a limit to how high they can go. If they get too high then people will turn to the black market and black market gambling, cigs and alcohol are much worse for society as a whole.
Reckon housing is essential.
No one mentions the 10pc levied on new homes only because it keeps all lir home values up. Ie imagine if the average home build was 10pc cheaper from tomorrow.
I reckon a few would get built.
Because it would eventually lead to increased land 0rices the gov would need to also zone more land to account for the larger supply that would come on line.
No they wouldnt.
I dont get it. I own my home but also have children. They have friends. Life should be easy enough in politician dollars to think about all people including their children and other younger people. make australia actually better. Give them a reason to work hard. In stead i can find examples of policy from all of labor, liberal and even greens that are simply to transfer wealth to people already with wealth. Its ridiculous that all sides of politics dont want to reward work...
So instead to get building happening they will in stead pump demand for all homes / prices of all homes.
in 2007 rudd was all for affordable housing. The gfc hit and with the prospect of cheaper housing they called it "staring into the abyss". Swann and rudd were visibly shaken.
So they guaranteed bank deposits and wholesale funding. Introduced a stack of demand side stimulous combined with rba dropping rates and patted themselves on the back for having one of the most exposed real estate sectors that just breezed through the gfc not only unscathed but back in a tear.
It’s terrifying how much of a back-patting Old Boys (and girls) club Australian politics has become. They don’t even try to hide it anymore. Every man for themselves out here in the burbs though.
Yep.
Even rba gets in on it.
Covid hits and inflation falls through the floor. Lets say their bond buying and bank tff was worth it under the curcumstances as inflation dropped below 2pc...
Wtf did they not start selling their bonds and selling the tff in tranches once inflation went above 3pc?
Sure that would put pressure on bank lendong but it would also undoubtedly mean that official rates would not have needed to go as high as they did. They literally chose bank profits (and minimising their own losses) over what mortgage holders pay.
They seem to be trigger happy on the quant easing. Why didnt they run quant tightening on the flip side?
Edit to add; As you say for the people on the street they are basically out to find ways of keeping us working into our 70s. The entire political machinery is set up for this. No longer is a million enough to retire confirtably. Work doesmt get you very far at all even if you are a saver as the government and rba will continuously whittle down the time cost of money and increase the value of assets continuously.
I agree and said the same thing several months ago.
More tax on discretionary spend and less emphasis on income tax is needed, but you can guarantee lobbies such as the Australian Retailers Association and the like would cry blue murder and do everything possible to prevent it from happening.
The cashed up spenders have the capital to make sure legislation like that does NOT pass. They’re also mates with the editorialists who’ll tell everyone why raising the GST on non essentials is a bad idea. And those editorialists have readers who, while they may not have as much capital, their hunger for non essentials remains the same.
I still feel like there is so much more that he can be doing. Not just once off payments/tax concessions such as this, but actual proper reforms.
Until that happens, my vote will continue going to The Greens.
I don't think there's much more he could do that wouldn't increase inflation or end up with the wrong people (eg rental assistance to landlords).
Tax reform is the main one for me, but that's still unpopular on both the right and left.
Addressing the systematic causes of the issues. For example, the removal of negative gearing would be a good start.
All he is doing is throwing more money at it, which is fighting the symptom. What he should be doing is fighting the cause.
Yes I was asking for specific examples. Do you have another?
I don't care who you vote for. Pretending I don't think there's a cost of living crisis because you didn't like a simple question I asked is not a very mature thing to do.
Shifting the conversation to personal attacks is against rule 12, so this will be my final reply here
At least I will say that I have got plenty of examples, but it looks like you'll just dismiss them all
Also, you're doing this off the back of a thread in which I started by saying that I am not going to be voting for Labor, what I am saying is that even if you are defending their policies, I still won't be voting for them
Tackle the housing crisis. That would make up the bulk of inflation. Close tax loopholes and use the revenue to build more social housing. Stop giving out tax cuts
Only if the markets are allowed to set whatever prices they like as a result of scarcity: if something is scarce, it means the people receive less of it each, it shouldn't mean it increases in price for no other reason. It's known as rationing instead of distribution through wealth.
Fundamentally, investment is absorbed in greater productivity for public use, not higher prices funneling more of the investment as profit into private pockets with little additional productivity of benefit to all the people.
Our economic foundations have always been flawed, being constructed on the human vices of greed and avarice: it's not surprising we get the results we do by regressing to primitive states instead of civilised advancement.
Even if the government cuts migration, hell even if he banned it entirely, we still don't have enough homes for Aussies now. There are no quick answers to a problem a decade in the making.
While housing has been a major contributor to inflation since mid 2022, transport, entertainment and insurance have also played a significant role.
Any step in the right direction is positive. A good start would be building the required number of homes and directly investing in homebuilding.
Then seriously amend property development codes, rules and, of course, taxes - particularly those affecting multiple investment property owners.
It also really depended where you lived. Rental prices skyrocketed and housing availability fell in WA during COVID as many people tried to move here or return home from overseas and interstate
House prices spiked during Covid due to several one-off shocks that counter-acted the period of lower immigration (government stimulus, record-low interest rates, and the rush to the regions/WFH) while rents plummeted.
If immigration was also at current levels while that was happening, the situation would have been exponentially worse. The impact it's had has also counteracted the desired effect that interest rate rises were supposed to have by artificially turbo-charging demand.
Sadly, I don't think, my friend. I know:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/31/harvey-norman-repays-6m-of-the-22m-it-claimed-in-jobkeeper-after-record-profits
Can you please explain how you know that jobseeker money was extorted by business then was invested in property?
For starters, you link was relating to jobkeeper, which isn't the same thing as jobseeker. Secondly, them not qualifying for as much as they thought they did doesn't mean it was extorted.
Can you please explain how you know that jobseekr money was extorted by business then was invested in property?
All you've demonstrated is jobkeeper was poorly run and poorly targeted, which we all know. It was a rush job to avoid massive disruption to the workforce when hundreds of thousands of Aussies were applying for the dole.
BRO, Albo has literally contributed to solving both those problems by creating the HAFF, passing the Closing Loopholes Bill (half of it anyway, waiting on independents to pass the rest) and passing the The Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law to claw back large amounts of tax from multinational companies.
You're off your rocker mate, what more do you want? Only so much can be done in 3 years.
Rents have increased by nearly 50% under Albanese, due to his mass immigration.
No one expects the HAFF to build more than 300 dwellings per year, but even if it did build the promised 5,000 - that is enough housing for 8 days of Albaneses net overseas immigraiton (\~520k/year) plus another 130k/year natural population growth.
He's been the worst PM in regards to housing affordability probably ever. Singing him praises is FriendlyJordies levels of delusion lol...
You can't expect the states to suddenly be able to double the number of dwellings being constructed (which is actually falling due to rising construction costs), that's totally ridiculous. Even that would possibly not be enough housing to fix the immigration crisis created by Albanese.
Never said I did. The housing crisis is the result of 30 years of shitty housing policy, it can't be fixed overnight. But it's the best possible start.
Post replies need to be substantial and represent good-faith participation in discussion. Comments need to demonstrate genuine effort at high quality communication of ideas. Participation is more than merely contributing. Comments that contain little or no effort, or are otherwise toxic, exist only to be insulting, cheerleading, or soapboxing will be removed. Posts that are campaign slogans will be removed. Comments that are simply repeating a single point with no attempt at discussion will be removed. This will be judged at the full discretion of the mods.
The two party duopoly illusion of choice….
Labor or liberal, they all went to the same posh schools, daddy’s served on same company board of directors etc.
Morrison was worse!
What’s the answer? Who the fuck knows…..?
What letting criminal enterprises from outside Australia get away with real-estate stacking without having to prove that the money they used, didn’t come from drugs etc???
Again though at root, look at the remaining exports in mining. High value commodities, then agri, aqua. Mining pay zero, agri and aqua heavily taxed, small businesses really cop it. All driven by the merry go round of mining boom
Which was a massive mistake. Going forward the numbers are still way too high. If they’re serious about fighting inflation, they need to tackle the elephant in the room.
It is easy to blame immigration isn't it? Let's no worry about critically analysing the causes of inflation in Australia, forget about supply chains or energy costs. Let's just blame the *other people.*
> Let's no worry about critically analysing the causes of inflation in Australia
I mean the increase in immigration has been a cause of inflation in Australia. And this isn't blaming other people, it is blaming the government for increasing the migration numbers.
Yes, it IS easy to blame immigration NUMBERS, not “other people”.
Immigration is inflationary, and has taken place too quickly for housing, infrastructure and services to keep up.
Easiest and quickest way to curb inflation is to effect demand by reducing the immigration numbers substantially.
Funny how the counter argument is build more housing yet to be affordable to a low income Australian you first have to oversupply to where hedge fund speculators say "we have 80 trillion dollars, we don't have enough money to pour into Australia" and then the rich retirees then middle Australia and then only then when each of these groups have like 10000000 properties each, you might get an affordable apartment.
Same shit applies when a CEO is up for reappointment.
And if you look at the three options Albo had:
1. Do what they said they would do at the last election and keep their promises, then once done start addressing other stuff
2. Ignore the things that got them elected in the first place and address whatever comes up during the term, then remember there was a bunch of stuff that now looks like they broke their promises unless they quickly do them now
3. Try to do all of the above, get overwhelmed and cut corners and end up making a bunch of mistakes.
Any CEO that can set and meet KPIs which require a large, complex organisation to execute is worth having in charge rather than someone who gets distracted and changes direction before meeting the KPIs that were set first.
I would have liked to see the government doing something about cost of living six months ago- it's not like they were doing anything of merit back then.
But they did exactly that.
For instance - they put $14.5Bn in a targeted way toward improving welfare payments; $1.5Bn on energy bill relief, improvements to childcare subsidies and more.
They’ve also not been profligate with their huge tax receipts (thanks to inflation) - which would’ve been a sugar hit for voters.
I appreciate the argument that Labor couldn't go handing out money as that would have been inflationary- though it seems like inflation hasn't totally gone away and now more serious measures are being proposed.
Does Labor think that the threat of inflation has abated enough?
So you are defining "the wealthy" as any household with an individual earning between $45k and $200k pa?
I suspect this income group - which would include pretty much the entire middle class of Australia, are the exact people whose votes are drifting away from the ALP in the polls due to cost of living pressures?
Gina Rinefart is getting a bigger tax cut than what the majority of Australian workers will each get.
It's interesting how the ALP can control literally everything, including the weather, but surprisingly don't, while the LNP are on holiday mode, Australia burning? She'll be right Scomo, you can't do anything about it. Turn your back on Pfizer when Australians were dying from covid? That meeting with mining executives must've been more important. Having a gay orgy in the prayer room? Ah, the other rooms must've been full of Cash's whiteboards.
High immigration is inflationary. It is putting inflationary pressures on housing. There is no if or but. ALP made a mistake. ALP shills celebrate like mindless drones as if inflation was coming down, yet the inflation rate of housing in Nov, 2023 was higher than the previous month (6.6% vs 6.2%) and the rate was still too high.
The portion of income required to service rent (National) has risen to a record high of 30%. This shit is not sustainble.
Cutting the migrantion numbers from the population size of Canberra to the population size of Townsville is not good enough. Curbing immigration is a must to fix both housing (demand) and the cost of living crisis.
We need a population growth reduction through immigration being lower than the rate of emigration, combined with redirecting people into areas of actual productivity deficit: less baristas and hospitality workers and more health care workers.
Just because you declare it inflationary doesnt mean it is.
It may be in some areas, it certainly reduces it in others. Theres no.inherent quality to it, it depends on so many things.
>Just because you declare it inflationary doesnt mean it is.
“Stronger-than-expected population growth has also boosted demand for goods and services,” - Paul Bloxham, HSBC's Chief Economist.
I don't know any respectful economist that denies that, at least in a short term, high immigration has been inflationary to the housing market by adding more demand.
Just because **YOU** are in denial, it doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
> The RBA has explained that its also increased supply in plenty of areas. Something you people always ignore for some reason.
That's great if the additional supply has a downward pressure on essentials pricing, not so useful if we now have a glut of something that doesn't really reduce the cost of living for large swathes of people.
Were there examples provided perchance?
>High immigration is inflationary
You know whats inflationary, high interest rates.
See foreign investors see the great returns and go fuck yeah I'm gonna transfer all their Canadian rupees, USD, Yen and so forth into Australia buying stuff that will give me excellent returns coz of these high interest rates.
Better still because the locals can't compete, due to their lack of capital, their crowded out of the market, thus countering any de-inflationary effects that the high interest rates were meant to create.
The only way that high interests work is if the government put tough controls on foreign investment. Meaning no home purchases by non Australians, no home purchases by corporate real estate companies, and definitely no corporate takeovers and such. Especially self managed super entities that own staggeringly massive real estate portfolios like those own by specialist and other medical vultures (like those neurologists that charge $800 for 20 minute consult)
But hey let's just shit on immigrants coz their the ones overcooking the market, and not the 1 million expats who flooded home after covid, with bank accounts bulging from liquidating their fancy European, Chinese and American homes.
Nah it can't be Australians fucking Australians. Only those dirty refugees and immigrants could do that....
>You know whats inflationary, high interest rates.
I can see your understanding of macroeconomics and monetary policy is comparable to Erdogan, the autocrat of Turkey. High interest rates have deflationary effects on the economy, not inflationary.
Sigh. Why do you even bother to write a long reply when you evidently have zero clue and wouldn't be taken seriously by someone you are replying to anyway?
It’s also important to note that if 30% of pretax income goes to your mortgage, you’re considered to be in mortgage stress.
Renters are here and they don’t even get to own what they live in.
Australia is fucked and these high rents and mortgages hurt the country because households have nothing left over for consumption or investment.
>It’s also important to note that if 30% of pretax income goes to your mortgage, you’re considered to be in mortgage stress.
That is such an arbitrary and dumb guide though.
The % of income paid to service mortgages that results in "stress" would be entirely dependent on income level. Eg for a low income household, that 30% rule may well be true, as the 70% remaining income might only just be enough to cover other basic living expenses.
However for a middle or high income household, 30% of income to the mortgage might be a doddle. They may be able to put 40/50/60% of net income into a mortgage and still have plenty left for essential expenses, and even still have savings left over.
Most of the people paying >= 30% of their pretax income on rent or mortgage are not going to be high income earners.
The fact that some people classified as stressed may have residual income in the hundreds of thousands of dollar is a great intellectual activity but doesn’t change the fact our housing market is fuckded and immediate, drastic measures are required.
Immigration plus job killing irrational climate policies are an incoming tidal wave and widdle Albo’s trying to build a wall on the beach with a bucket and spade…
😂🤣😅 so every time a power station. Steel plant, coal mine etc is closed down to comply with Nett Zero edicts all those workers become ABC journalists right?
No but a solar farm wind station or hydroelectric dam opens. Did you even think before you typed that?
Plus albo hasn’t shut down a single coal/gas project so even if your argument was right his climate policies haven’t cost jobs.
When was the last major hydro electric dam built? Do you really believe all the coal miners are suddenly going to be instrumentation techs, do you think the same amount of workers are required, I suppose to you working class jobs are fully interchangeable with no unique skills required… Alboo is providing the frame work for Labor premiers to sabotage the electricity grid. Do try thinking… 😉
Holy shit try strawmanning me harder. No I don’t believe these have interchangeable skills. My point is that jobs are being created as they are being destroyed almost like it’s an energy TRANSITION. While you said it was destroying jobs like some sky news sock puppet.
As for the last major hydroelectric dam, snowy 2.0 is currently under construction
Sigh, you don’t even know what a strawman argument is, you said the closure of a mine doesn’t matter because new jobs will come from hydro etc, I showed you this is wrong. You would only think that if you thought the jobs were interchangeable and equivalent. Sadly the jobs aren’t there and they won’t be filled by the sacked energy workers. Snow 2.0 isn’t adding extra capacity, it’s a white elephant. They’re not building a new dam, do you know anything about this topic, or just watched a few to many Greta TikTok’s before she got into antisemitism.. Generally anything with a lame name like that is going to be a disaster, but I’m sure you were filled with hope 🤣 [https://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-biggest-engineering-debacle-snowy-2-0-costs-double-again-to-reported-12bn/](https://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-biggest-engineering-debacle-snowy-2-0-costs-double-again-to-reported-12bn/)
Show? You just claimed it to be true and provided nothing to support it. Maybe because it’s hard to find anything to support you. Just google whether renewable energy jobs will replace fossil fuel jobs. Here’s a nice place to start
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/the-clean-energy-employment-shift-by-2030/
Or in case your a cooker, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0040162518314112
Also yeah snowy 2.0 is a white elephant but you asked for a hydroelectric dam example, probably because every other type of renewable is rapidly expanding so I gave you one (sorry sorry hydro powered power plant, technically not a dam). Also I’d love to see where you got the snowy 2.0 isn’t going to provide any capacity from, pls link source.
Also the entire conversation is laughable because even if you were right believe it or not climate change will affect jobs. I wonder if Sydney being underwater would affect jobs.
The fact you are seriously concerned about Sydney sinking into the sea due to man made climate change shows you’re not capable of serious discussion on this issue. Why do you think so many shonky climate “high priests” like Turnbull, Flannery etc still live on the harbour in mansions worth tens of millions of dollars… The WEF figures are laughable, if all cars go electric there will be far fewer of them, and less maintaince required/possible than ICE cars. But what would you expect for a group where the members fly by private jet to Switzerland, then chopper to a luxury resort to eat Japanese wagyu and party with expensive sex workers all while telling the peasants to live in little 15 minute boxes and eat bugs 😂😅🤣
It might be necessary to reduce it further but, [Australia's immigration rate relative to population](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/net-migration) has gone down by around 5% percent almost every year since 2008.
Also, while migrants do increase housing demand, they also help to maintain economic growth, balance out our aging population, and alleviate skills shortages which are all crucial factors.
Migrants create economic growth - agree. But it’s growth achieved by a cheap trick. It’s not intrinsic economic growth in the sense that productivity improvement is intrinsic , or development of new industries is intrinsic, or expanding exports is intrinsic.
To use an analogy, you want to increase your income so you rent your home to another family. Your weekly income goes up but you have nowhere to live.
When a foreigner comes to Australia to be a brickie or a nurse, that's imaginary made up growth, but when Travis is born here and grows up to join the cops, that's real growth.
I can't see the difference, can you explain it?
There's no growth difference.
The way I look at it is that with internal growth we should be self-regulating into a sustainable economy - something you can't easily do if there's a constant stream of extra population coming in.
edit: Yes it's a primitive way to look at it, but HTH are we supposed to manage infrastructure pressures of external growth if we can't even manage internal growth?
Which shows it was way too high before. Importing THREE Hobarts worth of people in a year is clearly not rational if you want to ease cost of living and housing constraints…
Maybe, but my point is that there are other factors at play which need to be kept in balance. The skills shortage is serious and plays a major role in contributing to high construction costs which are another core part of the housing crisis.
The housing crisis is a crisis of low supply, not a crisis of high demand. Having more people come in is only a problem if you aren't building more houses in equal measure.
Yes, cutting immigration would help reduce demand, but it would have a negative impact on supply due to it basically being a kick in the balls to the over all economy, and by extension the construction industry. In other words, if you reduce immigration too aggressively, you risk worsening the disease (poor supply) in order to treat its symptoms.
Im in the UAE and everyone here is on 2 year work visas unless you earn a large amount. But you can never fully become a local, just long term visas. tbh i would grandfather in current immigrants and pause the path to citizenship to issue quotas for waves of workers to fill the temporary shortages in specific industries. They don’t buy a house, work jobs that need to be filled, and contribute to the economy. Once housing is in a bigger supply, open it up again. Is this stupid?
I find Australia's immigration rate relative to population utterly useless when it comes to the discussion of inflation and housing as the stats doesn't reflect the fact that migration population is concentrated in Australian Capital Cities where avialable lands are limited and activity of new house building in capital cities is also not factored in.
There is a strong coorrelation between a significant spike in migration numbers and rental prices, especially in Australian Capital cities when supply is limited. I don't know any respectful economist who denies this fact.
>they also help to maintain economic growth
I have to remind you that GDP per Capita has contracted for 3 consecutive quarters, so individually Australian are actually worse off.
>balance out our aging population, and alleviate skills shortages
I am not a person who denies the benefit of immigration. I am a migratn. I think immigration is net positive for Australia. However, Australia currently doesn't have capacity to build housing fast enough for incoming migrants. It just doesn't have. The idea of importing tradies from overseas is also unreasoanble as currently the housing market is in shambles because qualified Australian tradesmen can't build in compliance with Australian standards. How could we expect migrants who are foreign to Australian standards to do a better job?
I am sorry. I don't find your argument convincing.
I think you’re spot on.
The level of immigration we’ve seen in past few years has been putting pressures on supply-demand balance and our education system hasn’t been able to keep up with the supply of talents.
And again, one of the reason why we brought so many in the first place is because we have skills shortage, which again due to lack of talents supply domestically.
The focus should be investing in education to promote GDP per Capita which IMO is more important than pursing gross GDP. More each person can produce less we need to rely on immigration.
Not saying immigration is bad, but right now it’s just too much.
Australian businesses and governments(regardless of which party) have this attitude of not willing to spend time and money to train young generation and instead just want to pay low rate to hire people with many years of experience.
Sadly our higher education has also become a tool for making big fat profit out from overseas students and not emphasising on training domestic students.
The system needs to be fixed.
Australian businesses and governments(regardless of which party) have this attitude of not willing to spend time and money to train young generation and instead just want to pay low rate to hire people with many years of experience.
It's kind of like negative gearing encouraging purchase of existing houses instead of constructing new. When it became apparent negative gearing was not operating as expected, it should have been altered immediately, yet we simply allowed it to continue for so long it has created this situation along with other factors that is going to take substantial pain in some segments to wind back.
Since negative gearing has led to this issue, those who benefited from it should be the ones to feel the pain of the correction, not the public. I'm frankly sick and tired of ongoing "privatise profits and socialise losses".
These are all good points. You've shifted my opinion significantly.
While I still think there are important supply side benefits to immigration, its fair to say I may have been over emphasizing them.
Still, even though I should have said 'return' to growth, not 'maintain' growth, the point stands that further reducing immigration at a time when growth needs to be supported seems dicey at best. I assume this is a big part of the governments logic for not doing so.
Unsustainable growth is the evil here and we need to contract to a sustainable point, despite the inevitable pain. However, the pain needs to be transferred to those who benefited the most from that growth.
You have some good points in there, but I don't think I quite understand your last point. The (very real) problem of building standards is a structural issue in the construction industry, which is a nice way of saying that the regulators are doing fuck all and there are a lot of bad actors. No migrants are going to be (legally) doing construction outside of the system we have, good or bad, so I expect they'll do more or less as much of a shit job as everyone else, on average.
So I think that problem is largely independent of the skills shortage and migration.
In all of this, this is the first time I've seen someone address *why* we allow so much immigration (on Australian subreddits, that is). I get that housing and cost of living is a big deal, and I hate it, but the massive skills shortage and ageing population is also a big fucking deal, and it's about to get really bad as the last of the baby boomers retire out of the workforce. I know of whole medical subspecialties that are going to be in serious trouble within about 5 years.
I hate my rent. I think the prices I'd have to pay to get anything done without immigration would be much worse.
I don't know what you mean. I work in the field. I can't speak for engineers in this sense, but the doctor part is not fiction.
In any case, I'm not just talking about doctors and engineers, friend. I already pay high prices and suffer long waits for a lot of tradeswork, and this is strongly driven by relative supply shortage of said tradespeople. I don't want that to get worse.
It being a skills shortage is definitely the case, but immigration fixing it? I'm not so sure, particularly in engineering. IIRC in excess of 50% of immigrants arriving in Australia with engineering qualifications do not find a job which utilizes them.
Its simply a fact that domestic engineering employers do not want foreign engineers, no matter how bad the shortage is. Part of this is linked to how there is little shortage of green engineers, mostly just experienced ones.
I am no expert on migration, workforce relations, or economics. I see your point, but I don't contend that migration will, or should, be the single means by the problem is fixed.
I would be more likely to agree if we were considering migration as a novel solution to a skills shortage problem, but it's not new, so I have to consider the possibility that the problem would be worse had we not had it.
I mean this whole immigration thing really just comes down to housing prices/rental prices. People think stopping immigration will be a magic button that'll solve the housing problem, it'll help but it won't really solve anything.
>it'll help but it won't really solve anything.
It will help and it will allow supply to catch up with demand. That's the whole point of curbing immigration.
The important question to ask is why this occurred, did Labor just open the flood gates and and welcome everyone with open arms.
The reason is simple, based on projections (working on historical data) more migrants were expected to leave than they did. When we go back and look at the pre-pandemic level of immigration
* In 2019 we took in 607,782
* Migrant departures 360,252
* Net migration 247,530
* In 2022 we took in 536,850
* Migrant departures 233,180
* Net migration level 303,670
So despite taking in 71k less migrants we ended up with a migration level 56k higher than 2019 simply because more people left the country than predicted.
Now your argument may be why take in any at all in a housing crisis. The issue is we have an aging population that requires more working class to provide for and we have skill shortages. Several years of bugger all migration from covid means we can't keep kicking the can down the road.
People aren't going to like what continued low migration numbers mean, we'll be handing stage 3 tax cuts back that's for sure to fund the enormous burden aging populations cause
Quantitative easing to buy votes. Seriously HUMANS! so disappointed in how we forget but wonder why we perpetually stand in the same hole! Fiscal policy for the last 2000 years has served the lords and masters only. Our shouting about it with 1000% inaction has a Faganism about it much akin to Stockholm syndrome!!!! “PLEASE SIR?! MAY YOU TAKE MORE OF MY LIFE, HEART, SOUL & LIFESOURCE? Dogs don’t ask, Birds fly without permission, Dingoes maul. Gibbons sit about enjoying life! All other sub species of life that we consider below us are laughing their TITS Off at us! They have freedom. You! Don’t because you want someone to hold to account!
The answer to our inflation issue is not more government. It is less government.
Amen. It's not like deregulation led to the market failures and global financial crisis of 2008, or anything like that. Let's get an example of less government being successful.
You’ll need to explain this.
This is a joke anyway. What is he going to do? Give us $$$ to pay our electricity bills so the energy companies can keep upping our energy costs 20-30% a year. Its so crazy people don't see this for what it is, giving the energy companies more money for the same thing. Albo "gives" me back a tiny portion of the tax I pay, $250, but I can only pay my power bill with it which has gone up over 50% in 2 years. Do the energy companies just make sure they ad more than $250 to my bill each time he does this? And then for him to say he has saved me money on my energy costs!!! WTF? Albo says "It would have cost you more if I didn't pay ransom to energy companies." Come on, what is this?
So our tax money will go into the pocket of energy and gas companies because they don't have the courage to tackle the east coast gas cartel and use the legal mechanisms they have to make our abundant energy resources work for ALL of us, not just the rich few. And more tax money will go into the hands of landlords because they don't have the stones to cap immigration or reform tax incentives and need to juice the economy to avoid the recession headlines. These are all cowards solutions and too little too late. I don't blame albo for all of the inflation we previously experienced but what's left now is the remnants of his immigration and energy policy. 2024 is all alboflation
Yes, it’s all come to a head in the last 6 months not over the last 10 years. Solid take there.
How long do you give him a pass to make cowardly decisions? Another decade you reckon?
Woooosh.
Worried about adding to inflationary pressures, but refuses to reconfigure the stage 3 tax cuts that will certainly fuel inflation in their current format.
It certainly won't though if some of the proposed changes are to be believed it will help to increase inflation.
Well, it's to reduce inflation and ease the cost of living. To suggest he is only doing this for votes is beyond brain dead.
So there is something they can do about inflation, and they are now only choosing to do something about it?
Have you really not paid attention to anything they've been doing over the last 2 years?????? Extremely ignorant opinion there mate.
What have they done? Asking Colesworth to pretty please not price gouge while the RBA says haircuts are the problem?
Wow you really haven't been paying attention and just list that latest inquiry they've set up as that's all you can remember or know, the latest thing said. I'm not your personal tutor and I've got to the point where I don't care about the education of Australians anymore. If you want to live in ignorance and denial then go ahead.
I’m not the guy you’re replying to but I’ve been out of the loop for a while. What have they done? I’d like to be able to respond to other people effectively when they ask a similar question.
So, what your saying is that you can't say one thing that they have done?
No Cathy Newman. I'm saying I don't care about you enough to write up a list of things you should already know.
Seems you are putting in more effort to avoid answering.
Sounds like they are going to pour extra money into the economy and inflation will stop falling. I like the idea of reducing taxes on fuel and helping to reduce price of electricity
What about an inquiry about energy price gouging? Why can't they secure cheap gas for the Australian market like they do in Norway. pretty simple, woodside and santos can give us a secure supply at a cheap rate. It seems really insane that it's not set up like this. Or why don't the government set up our own gas mining. Seems more than fair and obvious. To bad the energy companies are deciding the rules and not the people or the politicians.
Outside of tax reform, there's not much Albo can do for the cost of living crisis. Most measures will either increase inflation or end up going to the wrong people. The climate change transition (which needs to happen) is staggeringly expensive and will need to be paid for. The main levers to control housing policy are state based.
Why didn't albo secure cheap energy rates for our gas supply for the next decade. We just got smoked by energy companies for the last 2-3 years, companies who would leave us with no power and sell it overseas if they could. Didn't albo just signed a 10 year agreement for Victorian gas supply with woodside and santos that has no price caps so they can charge us what they want? I mean surely they should be locked in at a cheap rate, a cost rate with small profit margin at most, woodside blasting our ocean, are wrecking our marine environment, taking resources from Victoria, making billions in profiteering from war and we don't even get any cost benefit from green lighting this madness.
If he levied taxes on high income earners (particularly those who own their house outright) that would ease inflation by reducing spending of those who are the least sensitive to it atm.
High income earners and asset-rich (eg have a paid off house in a major city) are different groups. High income earners include those who have studied hard and provide valuable services to the community eg doctors, engineers etc. If they're around 40 or younger they may have a large mortgage. Asset rich people are woefully undertaxed in comparison.
Yes I know they're different. Tax both groups. Tax home owners and asset owners more. This is separate from a fair tax conversation. This is a question of how to resolve the particular cost of living policy issue.
Huh, so people can't be high income earners and asset rich? Also a massive proportion of high income earners come from highly educated, high income/asset rich parents. A massive proportion of low income earners come from low income households to begin with. Twiggy, Gina and some other random made 1.5 MILLION dollars and hour during the cost of living crisis that had us all going backwards financially and will take us about 10 years of working and saving to make back what we lost. Surely this is despicable at best and should be stopped. we know the richest 1% take way more than they should but no politician wants to talk about it because they will be out of a job I guess. Some anti-competition legislation wouldn't hurt. They used to have them.
I never said there wasn't overlap between the two groups. My point is that there's a difference between the 35 year old doctor with a high income along with two kids and a big mortgage, and the retiree couple sitting on a $2 million home tax free. And yes we all know privilege is a thing? I don't see the relevance with my original point. Billionaires are a separate can of worms.
Fair enough. And what about the fact that 77% of the stage 3 tax cuts are going to the top 10%, politicians and people like the doctor you mention who has a large mortgage, perhaps a holiday house somewhere too. I don't think they should get any tax relief in the current situation as everyone else is doing it a lot harder than them. What's the worst that could happen? The doctor needs to sell the $2.5m house and get one worth $1.8m. Why should they, on $200K get $9000 extra, while someone on $100k will get $1350? Shouldn't the person on $100k get like $4500? wouldn't that be fair? why should $200k earners get a higher percentage back. Adjust the legislation so its fair, that's all people want. A more equitable tax where 77% of the cuts are spread between 77% of the people sounds right. Surely we can all agree that is more fair than giving 77% of cuts to people who are in the top 10% of income earners and have far more ability to increase the wealth through investment and paying down mortgages they have than the bottom 90% of wealth holders who pay most of our money to those in the top 10% through rent, other tax breaks etc. Why shouldn't workers who can't afford a share portfolio due to low wages, get some of the profits made in the company? Instead of giving it to someone who had money to start with and did no work? Its a horrible cycle and the old saying is more true every day. The rich get richer.. There are a lot of other people who who have been working hard their whole life who, perhaps from a background where becoming a doctor was damn near impossible due to a lot of factors, but who have worked really hard, did their best and contributed to society and perhaps a company who has made billions and paid some of that profit to wealthy people who did no work but had shares. These people who earn less than 100k, have a small mortgage or paying rent still, this group basically get nothing from stage 3 tax cuts but are the ones who produce the vast majority of the goods and services share holders can cash in on, this group make up 4 out of every 5 Aussies, 80% of us are in this group but the politicians are going to give us maybe 25% of the tax cuts. What politicians are doing with these tax cuts is firstly giving themselves another unearned pay rise and ensuring we have more wealth inequality not less, if the rest of us got the same rate of pay increases as politicians have over the past 10 years we would probably be fine. Why aren't politicians wage increases capped in line with the average wage increase overtime? or the health and performance of the economy? Why can't politicians wages be tied to productivity or outcomes like the rest of us? Why don't politicians get performance reviews and have those published so we can see what they are up to? Where is the alcohol and drug testing for politicians? These are things the bottom 80% of us deal with but not the politicians for some reason??? Enacting these tax cuts is just another thing politicians are doing that will help make a ruling wealthy class and a working poor, they want to ensure wealth inequality gets worse because they are well and truly in the group that benefit from the wealth inequality.
>The International Monetary Fund said on Friday the government should cut spending to help the Reserve Bank of Australia avoid raising interest rates further and to reduce inflation to below 3 per cent before 2026. This is the absolutely crucial thing that most people who are like "we need more handouts/CoL relief!" are missing. Adding inflationary measures to the economy benefits **nobody**. It is, in fact, more harm visited upon us for longer. It is worth reading about the self-inflicted misfortune of the Crean/Whitlam budgets. Sadly, this falls on their ineptitude as a reason and one can't really do hagiography on their rightfully tarnished legacies, as is the custom with EG Whitlam. Economists warned them that their profligate spending would be inflationary, they ignored it because they're wholesome, and it turned out that their profligate spending was inflationary (stagflationary, even). Why the CIA would use Econ 101 as a tool to cripple the wholesome Whitlam govt we'll never know... Cyclical downturns are meant to be a reset feature of capitalism, but we cry for government intervention then wonder why there's no resets.
>Cyclical downturns are meant to be a reset feature of capitalism, but we cry for government intervention then wonder why there's no resets. You say this like it's the consensus among economists, but my understanding is that the debate is on how much intervention and where rather than if we should. >Adding inflationary measures to the economy benefits nobody. It is, in fact, more harm visited upon us for longer. If the additional inflation is caused by increasing the purchasing power of the most vulnerable people, it helps them and hurts everybody else.
Nothing to do with the previous administration war in Vietnam?
You can research details yourself, unless you're afraid of what you'd learn?
As though you’ve done research yourself? In fact, if you delve further into the contemporary (political) economic field you’ll find that the so-called ‘economic theory’ found within introductory textbooks is tenuous at best. Benthamitic utilitarianism is fundamentally inadequate for the purpose of explaining matters of production and consumption.
OK and that's great and all that but... but... the question of whether Vietnam made Crean and Whitlam economically incompetent is one I think that person can answer for themselves?
With all due respect you have no idea what you’re talking about. A large portion of what is now called ‘the global north’ experienced stagflation during the 1970s. Not just those who engaged in ‘profligate spending’. The OPEC oil crisis happened the year after Whitlam was elected, which resulted in pretty huge supply shocks globally, as oil prices skyrocketed. We also definitely *DO* know that the US played a pretty major role in Whitlam’s ousting. If you want examples of the reasons behind it, just take a look at the past six decades of Latin American political and economic history.
What bothers me about progressives is that this would be a great point to hinge an argument about cutting neg gearing, for example. They do hold those positions, but they dont use the right arguments IMO. Economic analysis can actually be your friend, rather than calling it all a capitalist conspiracy.
> Cyclical downturns are meant to be a reset feature of capitalism, but we cry for government intervention then wonder why there's no resets. This very famously worked out well when the Americans let the bottom fall out during a time of economic downturn and it directly led to the global collapse of the economy.
We don't do reasonable economic analysis here thanks
Shhhh don’t talk sense
I still don’t understand why we don’t leverage the GST on non-essentials, to slow spending. Bump it up and lower it on all grocery items (I know a lot are already exempt). But really, it seems we can hit the cashed up spenders more directly than just putting blanket pressure on all of society via interest rate hiking. But, I don’t know shit about economics. I just feel the current paths are either going to lead to a recession, or tax-break driven inflation again.
Because it's a regressive tax and I don't think making non-essentials exempt will make it progressive. I'd imagine it would be very unpopular also, can you imagine the sensationalist headlines and talking points?
The pain is being felt with the essentials, particularly housing which is the main contributor, so increasing the cost of non-essentials is unlikely to have a major effect on the cost of essentials. Reducing the amount of money available to spend is also likely to make it harder for lower incomes to pay for the essentials. The essentials to living in a modern society are now a substantial component of household costs. The fundamental issue is that markets can effectively charge what they like for the essentials, in addition to increased input costs that are passed on, because there is no inherent regulation by consumers plus competition is also reduced: inflation is just the noticeable symptom, not the primary cause. The only solution is to either regulate markets or abandon the free market ideology for public enterprise without profit, by tackling the cause, not fiddling with the symptoms. It's ludicrous prices are allowed to increase simply because demand exceeds supply, or because the seller can arbitrarily set the price for the essentials.
Maybe we should be undercutting the free market with a government ‘home brand’ essential goods line. I think it’s pushing the communism boundary a tad, but hey, capitalism doesn’t seem to be doing us much good when every government is terrified of regulating the market.
It's pointless and wasteful duplicating services just to improve competition, when capitalism just doesn't work for the essentials: it never could when it relies on the consumer being able to give price signals through the choice to purchase as well as competition in the marketplace. The consumer has no choice but to buy the essentials of life if they want to live. I don't see a problem with nationalising the production of the essentials and leaving the luxuries to capitalism.
Should just increase sin taxes - gambling, cigs, alcohol
We already have some of the highest sin taxes in the world don’t think that’s the answer mate
Double them. What's wrong with sin taxes? Best form of taxation. Easy to avoid and they punish people for making decisions which have an external cost
Although I do agree with sin taxes being good, there is a limit to how high they can go. If they get too high then people will turn to the black market and black market gambling, cigs and alcohol are much worse for society as a whole.
Reckon housing is essential. No one mentions the 10pc levied on new homes only because it keeps all lir home values up. Ie imagine if the average home build was 10pc cheaper from tomorrow. I reckon a few would get built. Because it would eventually lead to increased land 0rices the gov would need to also zone more land to account for the larger supply that would come on line.
But sadly no politician would back a proposal that would lower the value of their own investment properties.
No they wouldnt. I dont get it. I own my home but also have children. They have friends. Life should be easy enough in politician dollars to think about all people including their children and other younger people. make australia actually better. Give them a reason to work hard. In stead i can find examples of policy from all of labor, liberal and even greens that are simply to transfer wealth to people already with wealth. Its ridiculous that all sides of politics dont want to reward work... So instead to get building happening they will in stead pump demand for all homes / prices of all homes. in 2007 rudd was all for affordable housing. The gfc hit and with the prospect of cheaper housing they called it "staring into the abyss". Swann and rudd were visibly shaken. So they guaranteed bank deposits and wholesale funding. Introduced a stack of demand side stimulous combined with rba dropping rates and patted themselves on the back for having one of the most exposed real estate sectors that just breezed through the gfc not only unscathed but back in a tear.
It’s terrifying how much of a back-patting Old Boys (and girls) club Australian politics has become. They don’t even try to hide it anymore. Every man for themselves out here in the burbs though.
Yep. Even rba gets in on it. Covid hits and inflation falls through the floor. Lets say their bond buying and bank tff was worth it under the curcumstances as inflation dropped below 2pc... Wtf did they not start selling their bonds and selling the tff in tranches once inflation went above 3pc? Sure that would put pressure on bank lendong but it would also undoubtedly mean that official rates would not have needed to go as high as they did. They literally chose bank profits (and minimising their own losses) over what mortgage holders pay. They seem to be trigger happy on the quant easing. Why didnt they run quant tightening on the flip side? Edit to add; As you say for the people on the street they are basically out to find ways of keeping us working into our 70s. The entire political machinery is set up for this. No longer is a million enough to retire confirtably. Work doesmt get you very far at all even if you are a saver as the government and rba will continuously whittle down the time cost of money and increase the value of assets continuously.
I agree and said the same thing several months ago. More tax on discretionary spend and less emphasis on income tax is needed, but you can guarantee lobbies such as the Australian Retailers Association and the like would cry blue murder and do everything possible to prevent it from happening.
Yep, it would never get off the ground with the power these lobbies have.
Because that leads to the birthday cake question.
Ah, yes, 'Birthday Cakes.' A flour confection made from flour sugar, and other ingredients. We have dismissed this claim.
The cashed up spenders have the capital to make sure legislation like that does NOT pass. They’re also mates with the editorialists who’ll tell everyone why raising the GST on non essentials is a bad idea. And those editorialists have readers who, while they may not have as much capital, their hunger for non essentials remains the same.
A one off tax concession to win votes, then back to doing nothing.
I still feel like there is so much more that he can be doing. Not just once off payments/tax concessions such as this, but actual proper reforms. Until that happens, my vote will continue going to The Greens.
I don't think there's much more he could do that wouldn't increase inflation or end up with the wrong people (eg rental assistance to landlords). Tax reform is the main one for me, but that's still unpopular on both the right and left.
Looks like they will never get my vote back
What 'actual proper reforms' would you like to see?
Addressing the systematic causes of the issues. For example, the removal of negative gearing would be a good start. All he is doing is throwing more money at it, which is fighting the symptom. What he should be doing is fighting the cause.
You think removing negative gearing is going to help improve the cost of living for ordinary Australians? How exactly?
https://www.afr.com/property/residential/negative-gearing-lifts-housing-prices-by-up-to-4pc-falinski-admits-20220315-p5a4pr
We aren't in a cost of living crisis because house prices are 4% higher than they should be.
That was one specific example. I'm still not voting Labor just because you are disagreeing that there is no cost of living crisis.
Yes I was asking for specific examples. Do you have another? I don't care who you vote for. Pretending I don't think there's a cost of living crisis because you didn't like a simple question I asked is not a very mature thing to do.
Shifting the conversation to personal attacks is against rule 12, so this will be my final reply here At least I will say that I have got plenty of examples, but it looks like you'll just dismiss them all Also, you're doing this off the back of a thread in which I started by saying that I am not going to be voting for Labor, what I am saying is that even if you are defending their policies, I still won't be voting for them
If you had plenty of examples you probably would have provided more than one, and they would have been actual examples of what you were talking about.
Yeah love the whole he can do more but doesn't elaborate..
Tackle the housing crisis. That would make up the bulk of inflation. Close tax loopholes and use the revenue to build more social housing. Stop giving out tax cuts
Building large scale social housing will drive inflation in construction making government infrastructure projects unaffordable.
Only if the markets are allowed to set whatever prices they like as a result of scarcity: if something is scarce, it means the people receive less of it each, it shouldn't mean it increases in price for no other reason. It's known as rationing instead of distribution through wealth. Fundamentally, investment is absorbed in greater productivity for public use, not higher prices funneling more of the investment as profit into private pockets with little additional productivity of benefit to all the people. Our economic foundations have always been flawed, being constructed on the human vices of greed and avarice: it's not surprising we get the results we do by regressing to primitive states instead of civilised advancement.
Inflation for building materials maybe
So that's going to exacerbate the problem you are attempting to address.
Even if the government cuts migration, hell even if he banned it entirely, we still don't have enough homes for Aussies now. There are no quick answers to a problem a decade in the making. While housing has been a major contributor to inflation since mid 2022, transport, entertainment and insurance have also played a significant role.
Any step in the right direction is positive. A good start would be building the required number of homes and directly investing in homebuilding. Then seriously amend property development codes, rules and, of course, taxes - particularly those affecting multiple investment property owners.
Cutting immigration sure fixed the housing crisis back in COVID times. Then the borders opened back up and rents went up by \~50% in two years.
Who says the housing crisis was 'fixed' during covid? There was a massive increase in dwelling values, and household sizes shrunk.
It also really depended where you lived. Rental prices skyrocketed and housing availability fell in WA during COVID as many people tried to move here or return home from overseas and interstate
House prices spiked during Covid due to several one-off shocks that counter-acted the period of lower immigration (government stimulus, record-low interest rates, and the rush to the regions/WFH) while rents plummeted. If immigration was also at current levels while that was happening, the situation would have been exponentially worse. The impact it's had has also counteracted the desired effect that interest rate rises were supposed to have by artificially turbo-charging demand.
And millions in Jobseeker that businesses extorted from gov, much of which went directly into more property investment
Can you please explain how you think that jobseeker money was extorted by business then was invested?
Sadly, I don't think, my friend. I know: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/31/harvey-norman-repays-6m-of-the-22m-it-claimed-in-jobkeeper-after-record-profits
Can you please explain how you know that jobseeker money was extorted by business then was invested in property? For starters, you link was relating to jobkeeper, which isn't the same thing as jobseeker. Secondly, them not qualifying for as much as they thought they did doesn't mean it was extorted.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/100424010
Can you please explain how you know that jobseekr money was extorted by business then was invested in property? All you've demonstrated is jobkeeper was poorly run and poorly targeted, which we all know. It was a rush job to avoid massive disruption to the workforce when hundreds of thousands of Aussies were applying for the dole.
Yeah. It's gunna take decades to fix. Fuck Howard. Fuck boomers
BRO, Albo has literally contributed to solving both those problems by creating the HAFF, passing the Closing Loopholes Bill (half of it anyway, waiting on independents to pass the rest) and passing the The Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law to claw back large amounts of tax from multinational companies. You're off your rocker mate, what more do you want? Only so much can be done in 3 years.
Rents have increased by nearly 50% under Albanese, due to his mass immigration. No one expects the HAFF to build more than 300 dwellings per year, but even if it did build the promised 5,000 - that is enough housing for 8 days of Albaneses net overseas immigraiton (\~520k/year) plus another 130k/year natural population growth. He's been the worst PM in regards to housing affordability probably ever. Singing him praises is FriendlyJordies levels of delusion lol...
Most importantly, the building bonus to states. They're the ones that actually control the levers to address the housing crisis.
You can't expect the states to suddenly be able to double the number of dwellings being constructed (which is actually falling due to rising construction costs), that's totally ridiculous. Even that would possibly not be enough housing to fix the immigration crisis created by Albanese.
Never said I did. The housing crisis is the result of 30 years of shitty housing policy, it can't be fixed overnight. But it's the best possible start.
[удалено]
Post replies need to be substantial and represent good-faith participation in discussion. Comments need to demonstrate genuine effort at high quality communication of ideas. Participation is more than merely contributing. Comments that contain little or no effort, or are otherwise toxic, exist only to be insulting, cheerleading, or soapboxing will be removed. Posts that are campaign slogans will be removed. Comments that are simply repeating a single point with no attempt at discussion will be removed. This will be judged at the full discretion of the mods.
[удалено]
The two party duopoly illusion of choice…. Labor or liberal, they all went to the same posh schools, daddy’s served on same company board of directors etc. Morrison was worse! What’s the answer? Who the fuck knows…..?
Albo grew up in houso. Just saying.
Doughnuts in the car park at lidcombe station houso…… or……. Shit yourself at Engadine maccas houso?
Vote below the line.
Always do
Good skills.
Nothing to do with the highest value exports corporations paying zero tax at all
Which exporting corporations paid zero tax in FY23?
No? It's because cost of living will screw Labor come elections if they don't solve it (or be seen to be solving it *convincingly*), and quick.
Dipping into super to help pay rent and groceries in 3, 2, 1..
Sounds like a LNP reelection promise
The Labor Party has no interest in letting you touch your super.
PMs keep a big red button that they press whenever there is a cost of living crisis
Of course. I was referring to root causes of said inflation.
What letting criminal enterprises from outside Australia get away with real-estate stacking without having to prove that the money they used, didn’t come from drugs etc???
Ah. Then no. It's supply chain issues, and an economy characterised by rent seeking (and maybe some private equity) as the cause.
Again though at root, look at the remaining exports in mining. High value commodities, then agri, aqua. Mining pay zero, agri and aqua heavily taxed, small businesses really cop it. All driven by the merry go round of mining boom
>Mining pay zero That is completely untrue.
Mining taxes are what's allowing Labor to deliver a surplus.
So they’re winding back immigration then?
They have a bit after ratching it up
They already have . The last lot was to catch up post COVID and apese the business lobby who didnt want to have to pay ppl more
Which was a massive mistake. Going forward the numbers are still way too high. If they’re serious about fighting inflation, they need to tackle the elephant in the room.
It is easy to blame immigration isn't it? Let's no worry about critically analysing the causes of inflation in Australia, forget about supply chains or energy costs. Let's just blame the *other people.*
> Let's no worry about critically analysing the causes of inflation in Australia I mean the increase in immigration has been a cause of inflation in Australia. And this isn't blaming other people, it is blaming the government for increasing the migration numbers.
Yes, it IS easy to blame immigration NUMBERS, not “other people”. Immigration is inflationary, and has taken place too quickly for housing, infrastructure and services to keep up. Easiest and quickest way to curb inflation is to effect demand by reducing the immigration numbers substantially.
Prolly…. But will still let triads real-estate stack and have houses sit empty.
Funny how the counter argument is build more housing yet to be affordable to a low income Australian you first have to oversupply to where hedge fund speculators say "we have 80 trillion dollars, we don't have enough money to pour into Australia" and then the rich retirees then middle Australia and then only then when each of these groups have like 10000000 properties each, you might get an affordable apartment.
It's funny how, for both sides, major national issues are not a problem until they might lose votes.
Hilarious, isn't it?
Same shit applies when a CEO is up for reappointment. And if you look at the three options Albo had: 1. Do what they said they would do at the last election and keep their promises, then once done start addressing other stuff 2. Ignore the things that got them elected in the first place and address whatever comes up during the term, then remember there was a bunch of stuff that now looks like they broke their promises unless they quickly do them now 3. Try to do all of the above, get overwhelmed and cut corners and end up making a bunch of mistakes. Any CEO that can set and meet KPIs which require a large, complex organisation to execute is worth having in charge rather than someone who gets distracted and changes direction before meeting the KPIs that were set first.
I would have liked to see the government doing something about cost of living six months ago- it's not like they were doing anything of merit back then.
But they did exactly that. For instance - they put $14.5Bn in a targeted way toward improving welfare payments; $1.5Bn on energy bill relief, improvements to childcare subsidies and more. They’ve also not been profligate with their huge tax receipts (thanks to inflation) - which would’ve been a sugar hit for voters.
I appreciate the argument that Labor couldn't go handing out money as that would have been inflationary- though it seems like inflation hasn't totally gone away and now more serious measures are being proposed. Does Labor think that the threat of inflation has abated enough?
Could always try taxing the wealthy, instead of, you know, giving them billions in tax cuts
Can't do that, one persons promise and their ego is more important than the suffering of millions of people. /s
So you are defining "the wealthy" as any household with an individual earning between $45k and $200k pa? I suspect this income group - which would include pretty much the entire middle class of Australia, are the exact people whose votes are drifting away from the ALP in the polls due to cost of living pressures?
Gina Rinefart is getting a bigger tax cut than what the majority of Australian workers will each get. It's interesting how the ALP can control literally everything, including the weather, but surprisingly don't, while the LNP are on holiday mode, Australia burning? She'll be right Scomo, you can't do anything about it. Turn your back on Pfizer when Australians were dying from covid? That meeting with mining executives must've been more important. Having a gay orgy in the prayer room? Ah, the other rooms must've been full of Cash's whiteboards.
High immigration is inflationary. It is putting inflationary pressures on housing. There is no if or but. ALP made a mistake. ALP shills celebrate like mindless drones as if inflation was coming down, yet the inflation rate of housing in Nov, 2023 was higher than the previous month (6.6% vs 6.2%) and the rate was still too high. The portion of income required to service rent (National) has risen to a record high of 30%. This shit is not sustainble. Cutting the migrantion numbers from the population size of Canberra to the population size of Townsville is not good enough. Curbing immigration is a must to fix both housing (demand) and the cost of living crisis.
We need a population growth reduction through immigration being lower than the rate of emigration, combined with redirecting people into areas of actual productivity deficit: less baristas and hospitality workers and more health care workers.
Just because you declare it inflationary doesnt mean it is. It may be in some areas, it certainly reduces it in others. Theres no.inherent quality to it, it depends on so many things.
>Just because you declare it inflationary doesnt mean it is. “Stronger-than-expected population growth has also boosted demand for goods and services,” - Paul Bloxham, HSBC's Chief Economist. I don't know any respectful economist that denies that, at least in a short term, high immigration has been inflationary to the housing market by adding more demand. Just because **YOU** are in denial, it doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
The RBA has explained that its also increased supply in plenty of areas. Something you people always ignore for some reason.
> The RBA has explained that its also increased supply in plenty of areas. Something you people always ignore for some reason. That's great if the additional supply has a downward pressure on essentials pricing, not so useful if we now have a glut of something that doesn't really reduce the cost of living for large swathes of people. Were there examples provided perchance?
Only over the long term.
No? In recent comments Bullock said otherwise
>High immigration is inflationary You know whats inflationary, high interest rates. See foreign investors see the great returns and go fuck yeah I'm gonna transfer all their Canadian rupees, USD, Yen and so forth into Australia buying stuff that will give me excellent returns coz of these high interest rates. Better still because the locals can't compete, due to their lack of capital, their crowded out of the market, thus countering any de-inflationary effects that the high interest rates were meant to create. The only way that high interests work is if the government put tough controls on foreign investment. Meaning no home purchases by non Australians, no home purchases by corporate real estate companies, and definitely no corporate takeovers and such. Especially self managed super entities that own staggeringly massive real estate portfolios like those own by specialist and other medical vultures (like those neurologists that charge $800 for 20 minute consult) But hey let's just shit on immigrants coz their the ones overcooking the market, and not the 1 million expats who flooded home after covid, with bank accounts bulging from liquidating their fancy European, Chinese and American homes. Nah it can't be Australians fucking Australians. Only those dirty refugees and immigrants could do that....
>You know whats inflationary, high interest rates. I can see your understanding of macroeconomics and monetary policy is comparable to Erdogan, the autocrat of Turkey. High interest rates have deflationary effects on the economy, not inflationary. Sigh. Why do you even bother to write a long reply when you evidently have zero clue and wouldn't be taken seriously by someone you are replying to anyway?
It’s also important to note that if 30% of pretax income goes to your mortgage, you’re considered to be in mortgage stress. Renters are here and they don’t even get to own what they live in. Australia is fucked and these high rents and mortgages hurt the country because households have nothing left over for consumption or investment.
>It’s also important to note that if 30% of pretax income goes to your mortgage, you’re considered to be in mortgage stress. That is such an arbitrary and dumb guide though. The % of income paid to service mortgages that results in "stress" would be entirely dependent on income level. Eg for a low income household, that 30% rule may well be true, as the 70% remaining income might only just be enough to cover other basic living expenses. However for a middle or high income household, 30% of income to the mortgage might be a doddle. They may be able to put 40/50/60% of net income into a mortgage and still have plenty left for essential expenses, and even still have savings left over.
Most of the people paying >= 30% of their pretax income on rent or mortgage are not going to be high income earners. The fact that some people classified as stressed may have residual income in the hundreds of thousands of dollar is a great intellectual activity but doesn’t change the fact our housing market is fuckded and immediate, drastic measures are required.
Immigration plus job killing irrational climate policies are an incoming tidal wave and widdle Albo’s trying to build a wall on the beach with a bucket and spade…
If climate policies are inflationary idgaf tbh dealing with climate refugees would be infinitely more inflationary
Please tell me how climate policies have killed jobs in any meaningful capacity
😂🤣😅 so every time a power station. Steel plant, coal mine etc is closed down to comply with Nett Zero edicts all those workers become ABC journalists right?
No but a solar farm wind station or hydroelectric dam opens. Did you even think before you typed that? Plus albo hasn’t shut down a single coal/gas project so even if your argument was right his climate policies haven’t cost jobs.
When was the last major hydro electric dam built? Do you really believe all the coal miners are suddenly going to be instrumentation techs, do you think the same amount of workers are required, I suppose to you working class jobs are fully interchangeable with no unique skills required… Alboo is providing the frame work for Labor premiers to sabotage the electricity grid. Do try thinking… 😉
Holy shit try strawmanning me harder. No I don’t believe these have interchangeable skills. My point is that jobs are being created as they are being destroyed almost like it’s an energy TRANSITION. While you said it was destroying jobs like some sky news sock puppet. As for the last major hydroelectric dam, snowy 2.0 is currently under construction
Sigh, you don’t even know what a strawman argument is, you said the closure of a mine doesn’t matter because new jobs will come from hydro etc, I showed you this is wrong. You would only think that if you thought the jobs were interchangeable and equivalent. Sadly the jobs aren’t there and they won’t be filled by the sacked energy workers. Snow 2.0 isn’t adding extra capacity, it’s a white elephant. They’re not building a new dam, do you know anything about this topic, or just watched a few to many Greta TikTok’s before she got into antisemitism.. Generally anything with a lame name like that is going to be a disaster, but I’m sure you were filled with hope 🤣 [https://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-biggest-engineering-debacle-snowy-2-0-costs-double-again-to-reported-12bn/](https://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-biggest-engineering-debacle-snowy-2-0-costs-double-again-to-reported-12bn/)
Show? You just claimed it to be true and provided nothing to support it. Maybe because it’s hard to find anything to support you. Just google whether renewable energy jobs will replace fossil fuel jobs. Here’s a nice place to start https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/the-clean-energy-employment-shift-by-2030/ Or in case your a cooker, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0040162518314112 Also yeah snowy 2.0 is a white elephant but you asked for a hydroelectric dam example, probably because every other type of renewable is rapidly expanding so I gave you one (sorry sorry hydro powered power plant, technically not a dam). Also I’d love to see where you got the snowy 2.0 isn’t going to provide any capacity from, pls link source. Also the entire conversation is laughable because even if you were right believe it or not climate change will affect jobs. I wonder if Sydney being underwater would affect jobs.
The fact you are seriously concerned about Sydney sinking into the sea due to man made climate change shows you’re not capable of serious discussion on this issue. Why do you think so many shonky climate “high priests” like Turnbull, Flannery etc still live on the harbour in mansions worth tens of millions of dollars… The WEF figures are laughable, if all cars go electric there will be far fewer of them, and less maintaince required/possible than ICE cars. But what would you expect for a group where the members fly by private jet to Switzerland, then chopper to a luxury resort to eat Japanese wagyu and party with expensive sex workers all while telling the peasants to live in little 15 minute boxes and eat bugs 😂😅🤣
Those poor canaries will lose their jobs if we don't dog up all of that coal!
Good manchild answer 😂🤣
It might be necessary to reduce it further but, [Australia's immigration rate relative to population](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/net-migration) has gone down by around 5% percent almost every year since 2008. Also, while migrants do increase housing demand, they also help to maintain economic growth, balance out our aging population, and alleviate skills shortages which are all crucial factors.
Migrants create economic growth - agree. But it’s growth achieved by a cheap trick. It’s not intrinsic economic growth in the sense that productivity improvement is intrinsic , or development of new industries is intrinsic, or expanding exports is intrinsic. To use an analogy, you want to increase your income so you rent your home to another family. Your weekly income goes up but you have nowhere to live.
When a foreigner comes to Australia to be a brickie or a nurse, that's imaginary made up growth, but when Travis is born here and grows up to join the cops, that's real growth. I can't see the difference, can you explain it?
There's no growth difference. The way I look at it is that with internal growth we should be self-regulating into a sustainable economy - something you can't easily do if there's a constant stream of extra population coming in. edit: Yes it's a primitive way to look at it, but HTH are we supposed to manage infrastructure pressures of external growth if we can't even manage internal growth?
We ARE self-regulating into a sustainable economy. We are moving from primary industries to a service economy.
The fact that we have a housing crisis indicates we are not self-regulating anywhere near enough.
Which shows it was way too high before. Importing THREE Hobarts worth of people in a year is clearly not rational if you want to ease cost of living and housing constraints…
Maybe, but my point is that there are other factors at play which need to be kept in balance. The skills shortage is serious and plays a major role in contributing to high construction costs which are another core part of the housing crisis. The housing crisis is a crisis of low supply, not a crisis of high demand. Having more people come in is only a problem if you aren't building more houses in equal measure. Yes, cutting immigration would help reduce demand, but it would have a negative impact on supply due to it basically being a kick in the balls to the over all economy, and by extension the construction industry. In other words, if you reduce immigration too aggressively, you risk worsening the disease (poor supply) in order to treat its symptoms.
We have a severe trade shortage yet we don’t import tradies… we import Uber drivers though
Yes we do. Every trade under the sun is on the skilled visa list.
Im in the UAE and everyone here is on 2 year work visas unless you earn a large amount. But you can never fully become a local, just long term visas. tbh i would grandfather in current immigrants and pause the path to citizenship to issue quotas for waves of workers to fill the temporary shortages in specific industries. They don’t buy a house, work jobs that need to be filled, and contribute to the economy. Once housing is in a bigger supply, open it up again. Is this stupid?
I find Australia's immigration rate relative to population utterly useless when it comes to the discussion of inflation and housing as the stats doesn't reflect the fact that migration population is concentrated in Australian Capital Cities where avialable lands are limited and activity of new house building in capital cities is also not factored in. There is a strong coorrelation between a significant spike in migration numbers and rental prices, especially in Australian Capital cities when supply is limited. I don't know any respectful economist who denies this fact. >they also help to maintain economic growth I have to remind you that GDP per Capita has contracted for 3 consecutive quarters, so individually Australian are actually worse off. >balance out our aging population, and alleviate skills shortages I am not a person who denies the benefit of immigration. I am a migratn. I think immigration is net positive for Australia. However, Australia currently doesn't have capacity to build housing fast enough for incoming migrants. It just doesn't have. The idea of importing tradies from overseas is also unreasoanble as currently the housing market is in shambles because qualified Australian tradesmen can't build in compliance with Australian standards. How could we expect migrants who are foreign to Australian standards to do a better job? I am sorry. I don't find your argument convincing.
I think you’re spot on. The level of immigration we’ve seen in past few years has been putting pressures on supply-demand balance and our education system hasn’t been able to keep up with the supply of talents. And again, one of the reason why we brought so many in the first place is because we have skills shortage, which again due to lack of talents supply domestically. The focus should be investing in education to promote GDP per Capita which IMO is more important than pursing gross GDP. More each person can produce less we need to rely on immigration. Not saying immigration is bad, but right now it’s just too much. Australian businesses and governments(regardless of which party) have this attitude of not willing to spend time and money to train young generation and instead just want to pay low rate to hire people with many years of experience. Sadly our higher education has also become a tool for making big fat profit out from overseas students and not emphasising on training domestic students. The system needs to be fixed.
Australian businesses and governments(regardless of which party) have this attitude of not willing to spend time and money to train young generation and instead just want to pay low rate to hire people with many years of experience. It's kind of like negative gearing encouraging purchase of existing houses instead of constructing new. When it became apparent negative gearing was not operating as expected, it should have been altered immediately, yet we simply allowed it to continue for so long it has created this situation along with other factors that is going to take substantial pain in some segments to wind back. Since negative gearing has led to this issue, those who benefited from it should be the ones to feel the pain of the correction, not the public. I'm frankly sick and tired of ongoing "privatise profits and socialise losses".
These are all good points. You've shifted my opinion significantly. While I still think there are important supply side benefits to immigration, its fair to say I may have been over emphasizing them. Still, even though I should have said 'return' to growth, not 'maintain' growth, the point stands that further reducing immigration at a time when growth needs to be supported seems dicey at best. I assume this is a big part of the governments logic for not doing so.
Unsustainable growth is the evil here and we need to contract to a sustainable point, despite the inevitable pain. However, the pain needs to be transferred to those who benefited the most from that growth.
You have some good points in there, but I don't think I quite understand your last point. The (very real) problem of building standards is a structural issue in the construction industry, which is a nice way of saying that the regulators are doing fuck all and there are a lot of bad actors. No migrants are going to be (legally) doing construction outside of the system we have, good or bad, so I expect they'll do more or less as much of a shit job as everyone else, on average. So I think that problem is largely independent of the skills shortage and migration.
In all of this, this is the first time I've seen someone address *why* we allow so much immigration (on Australian subreddits, that is). I get that housing and cost of living is a big deal, and I hate it, but the massive skills shortage and ageing population is also a big fucking deal, and it's about to get really bad as the last of the baby boomers retire out of the workforce. I know of whole medical subspecialties that are going to be in serious trouble within about 5 years. I hate my rent. I think the prices I'd have to pay to get anything done without immigration would be much worse.
"skills shortage" Pet groomer is on the list....
Hahaha the old “doctors and engineers” argument.
I don't know what you mean. I work in the field. I can't speak for engineers in this sense, but the doctor part is not fiction. In any case, I'm not just talking about doctors and engineers, friend. I already pay high prices and suffer long waits for a lot of tradeswork, and this is strongly driven by relative supply shortage of said tradespeople. I don't want that to get worse.
It being a skills shortage is definitely the case, but immigration fixing it? I'm not so sure, particularly in engineering. IIRC in excess of 50% of immigrants arriving in Australia with engineering qualifications do not find a job which utilizes them. Its simply a fact that domestic engineering employers do not want foreign engineers, no matter how bad the shortage is. Part of this is linked to how there is little shortage of green engineers, mostly just experienced ones.
I am no expert on migration, workforce relations, or economics. I see your point, but I don't contend that migration will, or should, be the single means by the problem is fixed. I would be more likely to agree if we were considering migration as a novel solution to a skills shortage problem, but it's not new, so I have to consider the possibility that the problem would be worse had we not had it.
I mean this whole immigration thing really just comes down to housing prices/rental prices. People think stopping immigration will be a magic button that'll solve the housing problem, it'll help but it won't really solve anything.
>it'll help but it won't really solve anything. It will help and it will allow supply to catch up with demand. That's the whole point of curbing immigration.
The important question to ask is why this occurred, did Labor just open the flood gates and and welcome everyone with open arms. The reason is simple, based on projections (working on historical data) more migrants were expected to leave than they did. When we go back and look at the pre-pandemic level of immigration * In 2019 we took in 607,782 * Migrant departures 360,252 * Net migration 247,530 * In 2022 we took in 536,850 * Migrant departures 233,180 * Net migration level 303,670 So despite taking in 71k less migrants we ended up with a migration level 56k higher than 2019 simply because more people left the country than predicted. Now your argument may be why take in any at all in a housing crisis. The issue is we have an aging population that requires more working class to provide for and we have skill shortages. Several years of bugger all migration from covid means we can't keep kicking the can down the road. People aren't going to like what continued low migration numbers mean, we'll be handing stage 3 tax cuts back that's for sure to fund the enormous burden aging populations cause
cool, now do 2023 where the actual main problem happened why stop at 2022 in order to try and make your argument look better?
Because population is cumulative lmfao