Australia: Labor Party’s immigration hypocrisy: young and vulnerable hit hardest

Chris Minns – who lives in a house – seems to think you should live in an apartment, and the Labor Party doesn’t want any further questions on the subject.

Speaking at the Sydney 2050 Summit in May this year, he told the audience that ‘we have to get more comfortable with the idea of going up’.

But unfortunately for most people, Minns’ idea of ‘going up’ means their living standards going down, especially for the young people and workers who will likely be the ones getting crammed into these new apartment buildings.

Two recent polls show that people aren’t too happy about Minns’ idea, with more people preferring to cut migration than they would downsize into apartments.

A Twitter poll run by ABC’s Q+A showed that 65 per cent of Australians think the government should reduce the immigration intake to ease pressure on housing – matching roughly with several other polls showing similar results.

Meanwhile, less than half of people polled support Minns’ policy to increase supply through more apartments in city suburbs, coming in at a rather disappointing 48 per cent.

And is it any wonder, with a 2021 study by Strata Community Association NSW showing nearly four out of every ten new apartment complexes in NSW contained major flaws…

Sydney’s population growth, driven almost entirely by Federal Labor’s record overseas migration intake, is placing mountains of stress on the New South Wales housing and rental market.

To ease this pressure, state Labor is proposing building higher unit blocks alongside main roads and above train stations – perhaps not exactly what we had in mind when the party campaigned on ‘A Better Future’.

And though it may certainly sound like a solution, Minns’ ‘house for me and dog box for thee’ approach to fixing the housing crisis, reeks of elitism and political favouritism, as it completely ignores the community-preferred option of lowering migration.

Yet it’s no surprise really, because the truth is that maintaining high levels of migration is advantageous to Labor’s union and business mates, giving them an endless supply of job sites and workers.

Only it hurts the very people that voted for them, and Labor knows it.

In a recent sitting week, NSW Independent MP Rod Roberts asked Housing Minister Rose Jackson whether she would liaise with her federal counterparts to lower migration to help the housing crisis. Her response said it all.

Instead of conceding community concern about immigration, Rose instead resorted to calling the question a ‘dog whistle’.

One can only assume the 50 per cent of Labor voters who also want lower migration are dog whistling too.

The hypocrisy is astounding. Rose Jackson is also the Minister for Youth and Homelessness, two areas heavily affected, and least benefited, by mass migration.

On the youth front, young Australians, who are most likely to be renters or first-home buyers, are being squeezed out of both a housing market and rental market by record migrant arrivals of nearly 400,000 in the last year alone.

For example, recent data released by the Institute of Public Affairs shows that an incredible 70 per cent of new homes built last year were filled by international students alone.

And homeless numbers are up 5 per cent, with tent cities popping up around the state, as rental availability drops below 1.8 per cent.

This brave new Australia comes with deep social ramifications, including the delay of family formation, worsening of fertility rates, and even worsening mental health, as the stresses of trying to find a place to live weighs heavily.

And sadly, if you have a question about it, you’re dog-whistling.

On the altar of the housing market, working and young Australians are being sacrificed for the greater good of economic growth, and the Labor Party is using culture war tactics to silence any opposition to it.

With no end in sight, people will undoubtedly look for more radical solutions and fringe parties to show their anger, while parties like Labor will continue to try and grapple with this dual allegiance of the wealthy few, and the voting many.

In a way, Minns is achieving his goal of going up, except so far the only things ‘going up’ in New South Wales are the number of migrant arrivals, corporate and union profits, and the stress levels of people trying to find a place to live.

Everything else – living standards, birth rates, and young people’s patience – will continue declining.

If Labor ever truly does want to achieve their election promise of solving the housing crisis, they’ll first have to reconcile these deep hypocrisies of wanting high migration and low housing demand.

But don’t hold your breath, because right now all they’re doing is building castles in the sky, without any regard for what people really want.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/labors-immigration-hypocrisy-young-and-vulnerable-hit-hardest/

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http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
    
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
 
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