I guess we all knew that, post-‘pandemic,’ barren Australia would crank up the immigration Ponzi jalopy. We should be equally unsurprised that it’s a Liberal demanding the prestige of citizenship be lowered even further. For a useful example of how little the political class values the quondam privilege of becoming one of us, look no further than Daniel Andrews’ tyranny sliver. Its capital is now a game reserve for a strangely Mohammedan, strangely unshy and strangely gay ‘underworld’ of Versace-wearing gangsters-cum-Village People. When these boys aren’t Instagramming, they’re shooting each other – to the consternation of policemen required to face reporters and pretend to care. They don’t quite control drugs and extortion – Pfizer and Victorian Labor have those rackets cornered – but they cause a lot of bother and paper work. There’s a reason they’re contemptuous of gangland conventions standardised by crooks of old: they viscerally hate the Anglophones in whose midst they or their parents were thoughtlessly plonked. For the first time, though, I’m starting to wonder whether some of the scorn is warranted.
By asking this week that Anthony Albanese “stamp the passports” of tens of thousands of allegedly skilled immigrants, NSW Treasurer Matt Kean was at least retailing some politics over against the Ruddian wankery of next week’s jobs and skills summit. Having secretly appointed himself adjunct Opposition Leader, the Morrison-obsessed Prime Minister continues to avoid the irksome duties of governance; the summit was intended to belittle Peter Dutton if he attended and caricature him as recalcitrant if he didn’t. Kean also insists, however, that the nation’s top immigration priority is the “care workforce” and that the Federal government should create a new visa class for “lower-skilled occupations.” The taxonomy here is hard to follow. One of the three most in-demand “professions,” according to Commonwealth projections, is preschool ‘teachers.’ In the top ten: child and aged care workers. Western immigration is now an inversion of the Emma Lazarus sonnet on the Statue of Liberty: we’re not taking your tired, your poor, your huddled and your wretched. We’re lumbering the newcomers with ours because we can’t be bothered. It’s a seller’s market too: as The Australian editorialises, we need “300,000 a year until 2030.” Why this desperate scramble? We’re competing for post-covid coolies with every other dying nation of the West.
The one thing Albo promised that was actually a good idea, straight into the bin. A nation can survive many things, but it can’t survive being replaced.
All part of the plan. Bring in the immigrants who will mostly vote Labor. Same tactics as the Dems use in the US.
CL: there may be many Italians, Hungarians and Greeks in Melbourne. Tgst is no excuse for your ranting. Many Don’t even like hip hop.
C.L.
An excellent post, thank you for that.
One correction that should be made is that “the political class” are a sub-set of “The Parasite Class of so called elites”.
Passing Wind has (yet) another brain gart.
I wonder if Elbow’s mate Jobson Skeehls is related to Talkbull’s mate Jobson Grothe
Cl showing he does not understand economics , basic economics at that.
We have more job vacancies than unemployed.
We therefore need greater immigration. the major question is how much more immigration.
Or, we could let the economy go through readjustment to a better, less immigration dependent beast.
Trampo showing he doesn’t understand English (which is not exactly a surprise to anyone who has read his contributions over the years).
I haven’t commented on the “need” for immigration.
I’ve commented on the fact that Mr Kean and federal government officials cite ‘childcare’ and aged ‘care’ servants as the country’s top immigration priority. That points to a moral deficit, not an immigration deficit.
– Job vacancies (ABS): 480,100.
– Officially unemployed (ABS): 494,000.
Bjorn Jarvis, head of labour statistics at the ABS: “This equates to around one unemployed person per vacant job (1.0)…”
There are also 935,300 people on the dole – creating a statistical paradox explained here by Whiteford and Bradbury.
It seems I understand basic economics better than you do.
Crime in Sydney vs Melbourne.
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Sydney
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Melbourne
Note that Melbourne is worse in every aspect measured here … this is a survey site, so it’s perceived crime … the official crime statistics may vary somewhat. Of course, if there’s victims who don’t feel comfortable reporting to the cops, for whatever reason, the official statistics might undercount somewhat.
The Commonwealth are dreadful at managing the economy, and picking and choosing supply in different vocations is pretty darn close to a central managed labour market. Ideally they should select immigrants based on quality of character … although far, far easier glancing at a certificate from some overseas dodgy training company that says “This guy knows how to push a mop around a hospital, and fill in the sanitation checklist.”
It’s interesting that we are supposed to simultaneously believe that immigration does not push down wages … but also believe that if wages go up in any particular vocation this means a desperate shortage requiring skills and jobs targets to be managed by government. Why not just let the market find it’s own level? If wages go up in some sector that’s a sign that either it’s unpleasant work and people don’t want to do it, or there’s been recent growth in that sector which will settle down as people retrain and move across at their own pace.
Tell me NT… what occupations would those job vacancies be in?
Non Mentis
We have more job vacancies than unemployed.
We therefore need greater immigration. the major question is how much more immigration.
Nitwit, do you support that other nitwit, Matt “Green” Kean in seeking a special visa for low-skilled migrants?
If we had a genuine labour shortage productivity and real wages would be rising.
Gerry shows little knowledge of the power relationship in the labour market.
given we are at full employment yes wages should be rising strongly but productivity could be rising but more likely to be falling.
Err nitwit we have to call on immigrants to do low or unskilled work because the locals do not want to do it. however we have known that for yonks. Pacific islander or backpackers to help out farmers anyone??
Any occupations I cannot fil locally bozo. clearly you have never had to look for people to fill jobs.
Non Mentis
Err nitwit we have to call on immigrants to do low or unskilled work because the locals do not want to do it.
Errr fvckwit, perhaps the “incentive” of never-ending dole payments, followed by transfer to the Disability (“rorters”) pension might have something to do with that reluctance?
Maybe an economic “genius” like you could suggest a different approach, to remove the “brown sugar” from the table? Or would that involve effort on your part, and maybe make you unpopular among your colleagues?
except there is no research to back that claim up.
you might notice the people who go on the disability pension are ahem elderly Australians.
both the dole and the disability pension are worth far less then an unskilled job.
C.L., you understand many things a lot better than he does!
Non Mentis
Ahhh, “research”, is there nothing it can’t do? Other than find out why people prefer the dole to higher paid work. Perhaps more “research” might help?
How about a Pigouvian tax to cover the negative externalities of being supported long term by the taxpayer? Start at 10% after three months, increase by the same amount after every further three months?
PS, you might also do some more “research” on the disability demographic. Lived experience in places like Fairfield suggests that not all are elderly Australians.
Mass Immigration will not go well for the LGBT, Feminists, Woke and Voice people, just give it 20 years or so.
Horatio, if wages are based on “power relations”, meaning they are indeterminate, then the so-called current labour shortage would see employers bidding up wages just as they did in fourteenth century England after the plague had drastically reduced the population.
To put it very simply indeed, the value of the product determines the wage. Australia during the Great Depression is an example of this basic truism. As the ratio of the manufacturing wage to the value of output continued to fall the demand for labour continued to rise so that by 1938 manufacturing was employing 25 per cent more people then in 1928. Yet the real value of the wage did not fall.
https://gerardjackson.com/
https://gerardjackson.com/passing-thoughts-on-wages-and-the-fallacy-behind-union-bargaining/
https://gerardjackson.com/the-minimum-wage-economics-and-dishonest-studies/
Gerry,
We aint in the 1930s.
the RBA is stunned tat wages are stagnant given the business cycle. The only explanation for why wages are soo weak given where unemployment is that labour is weak. This has to do to the lack of people in trade Unions.
The only way you get a wage rise these days is to get another job.
The best unemployment got to after the great depression was 8% which is recession territory as well. Manufacturing has a huge devaluation to take advantage of. Also important back then was inflationary expectations would have been high giveen that devaluation.
I think you will find most people who go from the dole ,although it isn’t called that now, to a disability pension are elderly australians. sorry you can’t. that would be reading research.
BJ: On the contrary, quite a lot of immigrants are highly skilled. You might not notice, but we have a skills test for migration. Migrants are in fact substantial contributors to tax revenue, not the other way around.
Non Mentis
I think you will find most people who go from the dole ,although it isn’t called that now, to a disability pension are elderly australians. sorry you can’t. that would be reading research.
You are changing the terms of your earlier statement. It said:
people who go on the disability pension are ahem elderly Australians.
No mention there of transition from the dole to disability pension. Perhaps you might think before typing half baked comments, that later need further explanation? Nah, that would involve thought, above your intellectual level.
And what is the demographic on the disability pension among younger recipients?
Falsies
BJ: On the contrary, quite a lot of immigrants are highly skilled. You might not notice, but we have a skills test for migration.
Define “quite a lot” as a proportion of the immigrant population. And while you are doing that, comment on the suggestion by that idiot Matt “Green” Kean for a lower skilled visa category.
Government creates barriers to self-employment: red tape.
Government creates barriers to regular employment: payroll tax, vaccine mandates, lockdowns.
Government sucks labour out of provate enterprise and into the public-sector vortex.
Government incentivises rorting as a lifestyle.
Government incentivises choosing not to work.
Government wants to solve the problem by unfettered immigration.
So governments and businesses/employers which sack many thousands of perfectly healthy employees who refuse to be vaccinated (“my body, my choice”) are quite okay with importing thousands of workers to fill job vacancies.
Something is not right about this.
Also, why are unions silent on this?
Lee
Also, why are unions silent on this?
Unions have become part of the establishment against which they formerly protested. The rot set in when union “researchers” and secretaries were recruited from university graduates, with no direct connection to the work of the union members (unless perchance, they had a parent who once worked in the specific industry).
Then being a union secretary became the path to a seat in Parliament, so they learned not to rock the boat along the way.
The old slavery propaganda never dies does it?
Many of the “skilled migrants” I’m dealing with are complete and utter retards and frauds and are destroying entire industries with their mass entry.
Something which you could say of the left generally.
Much of what the left is now in favour of, or trust, they once opposed.
Censorship or banning of alternate points of view; U.S. alphabet agencies, etc., etc.
An added huge problem right now is that all of the Western countries with ZPGs are in the market for cotton pickers. Many of the best of these will be trying for Europe or North America. The truth is, the Federal government has no meaningful quality control over these people. This is just straight-up ‘buying by the bushel.’
Employers have to take some blame here. They’re good at whining about shortages in this country but not all of them are willing to pay for what they need. I know their margins are sacred (and often tight) but there is a limit to the economies you can impose.
Judith Sloan on the wage/demand nexus:
Unless productivity rises, get used to low wages growth.
A few things Sloan doesn’t mention: the disappearance of old-style union wage (and even rights) campaigning in Labor states (and generally) – and perhaps the advent of a more sheepish generation that is more easily gyped.
Overlay that with a culturally ceaseless dampening of material expectations vis-a-vis the ‘climate’ and covid and it’s possible that what we’re charting here is a decline in quantifiable ambition on a psychological level. Yes, wages may only increase with productivity growth (per Sloan) but productivity won’t grow as much as it could without incentives either. Is this market failure, then, or an economy so constantly bombarded by state decrees, interventions and easy money that employers and employees no longer operate within a market whose signals are mutually coherent?
Usually only one party in a bust-up says “it’s not you, it’s me.” They’re both saying it.
The other problem is that nowadays everything in politics is manic. Everything has to be be ‘solved’ in a hurry. By 2050, no no – by 2030! The market will deliver but it’s going to take time. Meanwhile, populations are their own worst enemies when they continue to vote for these manic (and fake) problem solvers trading in the vibe of the current thing.
Indeed, so called nurses for example, who do not know what is, or have ever done, an enema or an irrigation.
Interesting that you use the term ‘mania’ CL to describe govt now. Someone I look up to once said that when Kevin Rudd was elected PM a sort of mania descended on the country. “Kevin Rudd was Australia’s St Vito’s Dance” he said.
One of the reasons socialism and communism will never work, IMO.
St Vitus – bloody autocorrect
CL: you talk like an old Afrikaner.
I don’t know what that means.
CL
Neither does Passing Wind, who shows some of the signs of being a particularly poorly-programmed trollbot.
Sloan was always saying a wages break out was just around the corner. It never was.
Productivity has increased although slower in recent times. This has not translated into higher wages. Wages as a % of GDP is at a pretty poor level
It’s odd how silent and indifferent unions are these days. They ratted on workers during covid and they routinely rat on them re the coming climate hoax redundancies.
Screwing workers is now a unity ticket deal between corporates and the ACTU.
Bill Shorten was the thin edge of the wedge with the deals that he created that benefited unions and corporates but diced out workers. The success of contract trades has effectively diced out the unions in many sectors, the only dependents are the people that keep complaining they can’t get a decent deal, teachers, nurses etc. They just don’t want to admit the problem is that government shouldn’t deliver goods or services.
CL
As I noted above, unions have become part of the establishment against which they formerly protested. The rot set in when union “researchers” and secretaries were recruited from university graduates, with no direct connection to the work of the union members (unless perchance, they had a parent who once worked in the specific industry).
Then being a union secretary became the path to a seat in Parliament, so they learned not to rock the boat along the way.
As for “screwing workers”, see Shorten and the CleanEvent and Chiquita Mushrooms EBAs, where he screwed his members for employer contributions to his election fund.
I might also add that immigration is the ponzi scheme that keeps workers wages low, so corporate bosses can pay themselves 72 times the average workers wage, while Cannon-Brooksing the whole country by swanning around telling us how to live our lives instead of delivering outcomes for their customers, shareholders and employees.
PB, if you’re referencing my use of “coolies” and “cotton pickers,” this is a send-up of an exploitative attitude in immigration and “care force” policy, not how I see people.
But you knew that.
The last ACTU President who wasn’t a university graduate and who didn’t springboard into parliament was electrician Cliff Dolan (1980-85).
CL
Cliff Dolan, an actual shop floor worker. What a radical concept, the ACTU should try it sometime.//sarc