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A Ponzi scheme is a scam that can only continue as long as new victims sign up. Eventually, the scam falls down under its own weight.

The major parties’ “Big Immigration” plan for Australia works the same way.

Politicians have relied on ever-increasing levels of immigration for decades.

[1] ABS

Immigrants grow the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The GDP is a measure of all the economic activity happening in the country. Every purchase, sale and government dollar spent counts towards the total GDP.

Every new immigrant that arrives needs to spend money to survive, as we all do. This spending on food, housing and other essentials all adds in to the total GDP of the country.

Politicians want higher GDP numbers. If total GDP shrinks for two quarters in a row, the country is defined as being in a recession. Going into a recession is a political disaster for government. They want to avoid it at all costs.

The government’s solution to avoid an ugly recession is easy: just keep immigration levels high and the total GDP will keep going up!

The problem is, total GDP doesn’t measure how good our lives are. It doesn’t measure affordability, access to services or happiness. The average GDP per-person (or per-capita) tells us more.

In fact, before COVID, Australia was in a “per-capita recession”.[2] This means that while the total GDP was still going up because of immigration, the average GDP per person was actually getting worse.

Everything seemed fine to the government. On paper, total GDP was going up so we weren’t in an official recession. Out in the real world, the economy was getting worse on average for every individual Australian.

Like any Ponzi scheme, the immigration scam will eventually buckle under its own weight. As more immigrants arrive, they put more pressure on our hospitals, roads, housing and rental markets and other infrastructure. The pressure builds up far quicker than we can build infrastructure to catch up to the population growth.

With more pressure on essential services, Australia is less productive, dragging down the average GDP. The Government notices this and has to increase immigration even more to keep the total GDP up, yet this immigration puts even more pressure on our essential services dragging the average GDP down again.

This continues in a vicious cycle. The total GDP keeps going up and life for the average Australian keeps getting worse. Increasing immigration is like pouring fuel on a fire that immigration started. As the problem gets worse, the government needs to bring in more immigration to cover it up.

At least 650,000 immigrants will arrive in Australia over the next two years, a surprise increase of more than 50 percent on forecasts in the October 2022 Budget.[3]

If this exponential increase is allowed to continue, eventually the economy and our essential services will buckle. We are already seeing the signs of Australia bursting at the seams.

Australia is already in the middle of a housing and rental crisis. Many young first-home buyers are completely priced out of the market. Desperate tenants continue to tell horror stories of unaffordable rent increases.

Every single one of the 650,000 arrivals will need to find a home, meaning the horror stories of today are just the start of the pain to come. We can’t build the houses quick enough, especially if the government locks up everyone’s’ land to save the Koala trees. The increased demand will skyrocket rents and make houses even more unaffordable.

The immediate decision we need to take as a country is clear. We must immediately cut immigration to net-zero. That means that Australia only takes the same amount of arrivals as people who depart the country.

We must use this time to build essential infrastructure. We need to allow essential services time to catch up to our current population level.

Most of all, we need the government to stop doing things to make themselves look good on paper, and actually look after Australians.

A big immigration plan hurts Australians. Tell the government no and stop the immigration ponzi scheme.


[1] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/migration-australia/latest-release

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-06/gdp-q4-2018/10874592

[3] https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/its-a-major-problem-mark-bouris-warns-government-over-massive-surge-of-650000-new-migrants-in-next-two-years/news-story/0d82bb48d3de996c2e602091115b54db

Westpac estimates 400,000 immigrants arrived last year under the Albanese Government, driving our rental crisis and putting Australians on the street.

Full Story: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2023/03/westpac-record-immigration-drives-sharp-escalation-in-rents/

House prices are skyrocketing out of the average battler’s budget. Despite warnings of a possible housing bubble, APRA is banking on the banks only losing 2% from their mortgage books in their “stress testing”. This threshold sounds very favourable to the banks and allows them to get greedy at the possible expense of Australian homeowners.

Transcript

Stress testing banks during COVID-19 dated 15th of December, 2020. I have a question about one of the criteria APRA uses to stress test a bank, and that is a fall in real estate prices or to use a simple explanation, the ability of a bank to maintain liquidity during a real estate meltdown. Can I say it like that?

Well, I think Senator, it’s more a question of whether they can sustain their solvency, which for us it’s more of an issue of a capital, but liquidity is an important consideration as well.

Thank you. From the report, the figure APRA used as a proxy for a real estate meltdown was the loss of $49 billion in residential mortgages over three years. Is that correct?

That sounds about right, I think Senator. I don’t have the document in front of me, but-

That’s what I’m reading. Thank you. And with that loss being 30% of the total bank loss in the period of the stress test, as a loss rate, this would translate into 2% of Australian banks residential mortgage loan book. Is this correct? And please confirm your figure for the value of residential mortgages held by Australian banks. What is it?

Oh, well I think the, now I think the, if we’ve published that number, Senator, I’m quite comfortable to correct, total mortgages the banking system would be-

In the term of residential mortgages.

Yeah. Sorry. Total residential mortgages. Housing loams We’re talking about here. Owner-occupiers and investors would be, it’s in the order of a trillion dollars, I think Senator that’s something that we can come back to you on.

Thank you for that.

Very happy to take it on notice.

Okay. Thank you. Final question on this topic before moving onto a simple topic, can I confirm that APRA is projecting a real estate meltdown would only cost our banks $49 billion in losses on mortgages, and that loss would accrue over three years? That seems to be a very favourable assumption for the banks.

Well, that’s the, that’s the impact that we expect to have on the bank given they have collateral against their loans. Many loans have very low loan-to-value ratios. So in many cases of banks we have loans that even with a substantial fall in real estate values the banks would incur no loss, that’s not to say the borrowers would be unaffected by any means.

Well, I think that’s the concern. Sorry, go ahead.

Senator, I was going to add, I mean, it’s just to your question of projection or forecast, this is stress test. So, it is a set of assumptions that we use to look at the resilience of the sector and the entities involved. So, it’s not forecast or projection.

Okay. Thank you. It’s just that our constituents are concerned that we’ve had 20 years of the banks putting a lot of money into real estate, and taking it away from small businesses and funnelling it into real estate. And we’ve seen real estate prices increase a lot recently. Some people are calling it a bubble. So basically the question amounts to, are you letting the banks do as they please, and then sweetening the impact for the banks?

Well, Senator we don’t allow the banks to do what they please. We’ve got a raft of prudential standards that ask the banks as they’re making commercial decisions to take risk into account, and where we see risks, and I think an example of that would be the recent increase in the buffer, APRA acts and takes action.

Okay. Thank you.

I can just note for the record that, Mr. John Lonsdale was the one who provided that answer. Just leading into your next question.

Does APRA embed staff in financial institutions, like say the Big Four banks?

[Byres] No.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.