We know that Big Business that run the universe, will be returning to its mass immigration Asianisation scheme soon, like we have never seen before, needing to catch up. But, for a time it was good to see that we did not die without mass immigration, and all the supposed benefits of immigration were just for the corporate elite, not for us; only negative consequences.
“Covid-19 has derailed the Big Australia express. In an extraordinary shift, more people will be permanently leaving the nation than arriving, something not seen since the end of World War II.
With borders closed to foreign tourists and students, temporary residents rushing to the exit and fertility in decline, population growth will fall to a 100-year low.
The Morrison government fears a cycle of misery — shrinking the economy, hastening population ageing, reducing already feeble productivity growth, holding back housing construction and investment, and putting the squeeze on the tax base.
Migration has been the economy’s key driver for years. Since the global financial crisis, average annual population growth has been 1.6 per cent. In the four years leading up to the pandemic, GDP increased by a cumulative 9.5 per cent. Per capita GDP, however, rose only 3.3 per cent.
Australia’s population growth rate is expected to drop to 0.6 per cent this financial year, putting us in an ageing Euro group that includes Britain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Norway.
So-called net overseas migration (NOM) — the difference between arrivals and departures, both permanent and long-term (greater than 12 months) — has been running at twice the rate of natural increase for the past three years. Population has been growing by 400,000 a year, with NOM running at about 250,000.
In the July fiscal update, Treasury estimated NOM to plunge from about 154,000 in 2019-20 to just 31,000 in 2020-21. But the October 6 budget will reveal a bigger decline in NOM — with net migration outflows now likely in both 2020-21 and 2021-22.
“Australia’s future population will be smaller, and older, than we previously assumed because of the sharp drop we are seeing in net overseas migration,” Josh Frydenberg said on Thursday.
Even before the pandemic, the nation’s fertility rate was falling. The Centre for Population, based inside Treasury, is expecting the average fertility rate for 2019 to 2024 to be 1.69 babies per woman — the lowest level on record.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday shows the number of people leaving Australia for good rose 20 per cent in the year to March. The Treasurer said that while migration would eventually return to the levels we are accustomed to, the lost migrants would not be replaced.
“Given our migrant workers tend, on average, to be younger, this will lower labour force participation and average hours worked across the economy,” he said.
That slack in the economy will keep wages down, squeezing consumer spending and leading to a lower tax take, higher deficits and a drop in house prices.
Ai Group chief Innes Willox says the population pause would pressure companies and governments to lift their performance.
“If we experience net outflows, this will mean a loss of what has been an important growth driver. It will place even more urgency on the need to lift productivity,” he said.”
Well, those who live by immigration will perish from the lack of it. Just like the universities, it was pure ideology mixed with short-term greed that led to this immigration economy, and I hope that the present collapse is just the beginning, in the convergence of catastrophes, as Faye calls it. If we are to be anything more than a short-term nation, we need some sense of localism and self-reliance, but otherwise even collapse is looking pretty good to me. If you are sick with a terrible illness, at some point you just look forward to death, and sometimes I think Spengler was right, if not pessimistic enough: