Frank wrote on Jun 11
th, 2024 at 5:13pm:
Why don't you try to make sense? Would be novel experience for you, SadScrots.
What is that solution? What is the difference between being against immigration and complaining about it?
There is a difference between objecting to the migration levels and the individual immigrants who come here.
Then there is the standard motive of blaming all our problems on immigration levels rather than addressing the actual causes. From a conservative standpoint, this is by design because it's their ideology that has us in this mess.
We have a huge skills shortage in the building and construction industry. This is pushing out build time and helping to cause further issues with the housing supply.
Rather than highlighting that fact, the conservatives want to blame it on too many people coming here, pushing up demand.
They do this because there have been significant cuts to TAFE funding under Coalition governments at both federal and state levels. These cuts have led to fewer course offerings, reduced support services, and decreased infrastructure investment. As a result, the capacity of TAFE institutions to train and upskill the domestic workforce has been impaired.
The underfunding of TAFE has directly impacted the availability of skilled workers in various industries. TAFE is a primary provider of vocational education and training in Australia, and reductions in its capacity have led to fewer qualified graduates in trades and technical fields. This has contributed to skills shortages in critical areas such as construction, healthcare, engineering, and information technology.
We need to import these workers or outsource to fill the shortage.
The Coalition and I suspect their supporters, do not want to admit and own this fact.
They are responsible.
The Coalition has done this deliberately on multiple fronts. Forcing us to outsource workers will help push local wages down and tipping the supply and demand in housing will boost their property portfolios.
All of this has come true.
Now for the solutions. In the modern version of capitalism, we need to have infinite growth. So in order to do that, and fill the skills shortages, we need more people here.
More people means more consumers, which on top of the Coalition trying their hardest to kill off manufacturing in the country means it's the only way to keep growth numbers high.
Without growth numbers increasing, we will have a recession.
The short version is, the Coalition ideology and playbook that so many people support here has directly led to the issues we face today.
There is no quick fix. We need to boost funding for TAFE and increase more locally trained workers in the fields we have shortages in, but that takes time, so we need the migration levels to keep things chugging along until we can reach that point.
But it has downsides, mainly housing and pushing infrastructure past capacity if it isn't already.
The alternative is to cut migration levels and accept that it will push us into a recession.
The Coalition and its support base are not forward thinkers. They'll push for lower migration levels and then complain when it triggers a recession and all those with high interest rate mortgages will end up owing many times more than their house is worth as the bubble bursts and won't have nearly the same earning capacity to pay for it.
And if the Coalition is lucky, they'll lose the next election so this happens under Labor.
Since we don't have any sort of manufacturing sector (thanks in large to the Coalition) and our resources are being squandered (again thanks to the Coalition), the housing market is one of the major pillars propping up the economy.
If that falls while we're already in a recession it's going to mean things will be catastrophic.
So we are now facing the cost of a decade of Coalition damage and destruction, with guaranteed pain ahead if we continue to follow their playbook of blaming everything on immigrants and cutting migration levels and leaving it at that.
It's going to take more funding for TAFE, more migration in the short term and more support for families until the housing sector can catch up and boost supply with an increased local workforce, not imported.
This will require more regulation around protections for renters, stricter lending criteria and more banking regulation.
It will require more subsidies for students on top of the greater funding for TAFE to encourage more people to enter the industries we have the shortfalls, and until we see the fruits of that, we will need to keep migration levels up to keep growth increasing.
We will also need to rethink the royalties on the Resources and Mining industries to help full the void from the housing market as what is propping up the economy.
All of that is toxic to the Coalition and their supporters.
Or we just accept that the battle waged by the Coalition against local manufacturing, TAFE, Resources and affordable housing will send us to a recession and embrace it, hoping those who make it through will be better off on the other side.