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Australian news and politics.

SocceroosFan84 said:
I told you. I've been a Sydney FC fan since 2004. Never bothered with the old NSL as there was no team in my local area. Had a casual interest in Northern Spirit in the late 90's but that was it.
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WOW, good on you for embracing the club of a graduate of the Leningrad Financial and Economic Institute and upstanding member of the State Commercial Industrial Construction Bank of the USSR comrade. Im impressed.
 
SocceroosFan84 said:
Labor loses ‘workers party’ mantle as Australia’s wealthy flock to Albanese

www.skynews.com.au

No Cookies | Sky News Australia

SkyNews.com.au — Australian News Headlines & World News Online from the best award winning journalists
www.skynews.com.au www.skynews.com.au
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Looking at the results, it’s mostly cause of vote splitting. For middle-class voters it says 33% Labor, 25% One Nation, 19% Coalition and 11% Greens. That gives 44% for Labor/Greens and One Nation/Coalition, with the rest going to independents and others.

It does appear that “well off” voters are becoming more progressive, at least according to that poll. It’s odd that 22% of “well off” voters are picking the Greens when their policies are detrimental for businesses and people with a half-decent income.
 
HonestSpursFan said:
Looking at the results, it’s mostly cause of vote splitting. For middle-class voters it says 33% Labor, 25% One Nation, 19% Coalition and 11% Greens. That gives 44% for Labor/Greens and One Nation/Coalition, with the rest going to independents and others.

It does appear that “well off” voters are becoming more progressive, at least according to that poll. It’s odd that 22% of “well off” voters are picking the Greens when their policies are detrimental for businesses and people with a half-decent income.
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We seem to be emulating the US in a sense where over there traditional working class voters are going to the GOP and the well-off college educated seem to be flocking to the Democrats.
 
SocceroosFan84 said:
We seem to be emulating the US in a sense where over there traditional working class voters are going to the GOP and the well-off college educated seem to be flocking to the Democrats.
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To be fair Democrats are more centrist than Labor here and Republicans are much further right than the Coalition, probably even further right than One Nation.
 
Football us life said:
It's probably too simplistic to blame immigration for the housing affordability and availability crisis in Australia....

but the relationship is more complicated than either side of the debate often presents.

Immigration increases demand for housing. If Australia adds hundreds of thousands of people per year, those people need somewhere to live, whether they're international students, (un)skilled migrants, or family migrants. All else being equal, higher population growth puts upward pressure on rents and prices.

The question is whether immigration is the main cause of the affordability crisis or whether it is exposing deeper supply problems.

So I would frame it this way:

Immigration is likely a contributing factor to Australia's current housing shortage because it increases demand. But the severity of the crisis suggests there are also major failures on the supply side. If housing construction had kept pace with population growth for many years, immigration would probably be far less controversial in this debate.

The interesting policy question isn't really "immigration or housing?" but whether Australia can align migration levels, infrastructure investment, and housing construction so they grow together rather than getting out of sync.

And then when it comes to immigration you also have the big business angle....

Businesses often favour a large, flexible workforce because it helps fill jobs, supports growth and can reduce wage pressure. Critics argue this may weaken wage growth and training incentives, while supporters say it addresses skill shortages and helps the economy operate efficiently.

These businesses and business groups wull often lobby governments and politicians for policies that maintain a large flexible labour supply because it reduces recruitment difficulties and wage pressure.

Critics argue this can create an oversupply of workers, weakening employees' bargaining power and slowing wage growth, particularly in sectors with lower skill requirements.

But more workers in the economy means you need more accommodation for them and their families....

It's becoming a vicious circle!!
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In 2015, the Reserve Bank of Australia published this article:

https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2015/sep/pdf/bu-0915-3.pdf

The past decade saw a stabilisation of debt-to-income levels,
but also a prolonged period of strong population growth
– underpinned by high immigration – and smaller
household sizes that led to increases in underlying
demand exceeding the supply of new dwellings.
Looking ahead, it seems unlikely that there will be a
return to the rather extreme conditions of the earlier
episode when significant increases in household debt
supported high housing price growth. Nonetheless,
protracted periods of changes in population growth
that are not met by adjustments in dwelling supply
could lead to periods of sizeable changes in housing
price growth.

Which is exactly what happened, predicted 10 years ago.

Its absurd to argue that housing demands from immigration equal to the size of Canberra in A SINGLE year can be met and will not increase house prices.

I just shake my head that anyone could believe that.

Regretably the debate has been clouded by those whose politics won't allow them to accept that there are limits to the benefits of immigration because they see that as being immoral, and that doesn't sit well with the view that they are THE moral people. Anyone who disagrees is a racist and therefore an immoral person whose opinions must not be only rejected, but silenced.
 
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zimbos05 said:
I'm not even against the idea of reducing migration. It's obvious that it would be a contributing factor. The issue is that the rhetoric is that migration is the only problem. It also talks about migration in a manner that "migrants" are only a specific group of people. It creates a view that anyone who isn't white is the problem and it emboldens public acts of racism. It allows those that are part of the cause to get away with it. It creates division amongst the masses, whilst the rich get richer and continue to further entrench the financial divide, buy up the homes, and continue to let the masses suffer.

To me it feels like we all want the same things, but we are addressing the wrong issues.
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That's exactly why Australia has no official population policy, and not even a debate about whether there even should be one. Its the result of a fear that it will stoke racism.

It doesn't work.

It makes people angry because they can see the outcomes for themselves every single day: competition for housing, road congestion, hospital waiting lists, schools over-crowding, public transport over-crowding.

Yet the grievances all falls on deaf ears.

That's how you end up with One Nation and Trump winning elections.
 
kiro kompiro said:
That's exactly why Australia has no official population policy, and not even a debate about whether there even should be one. Its the result of a fear that it will stoke racism.

It doesn't work.

It makes people angry because they can see the outcomes for themselves every single day: competition for housing, road congestion, hospital waiting lists, schools over-crowding, public transport over-crowding.

Yet the grievances all falls on deaf ears.

That's how you end up with One Nation and Trump winning elections.
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Yeah but the majority of people should just be called racist and dumb. That'll fix it.
 
If you read the document and think of the time frame it rings true. The fact it was personal musing and not what was ultimately done does certainly mitigate it though. Given his worry about Japan it does make you wonder about 'pig-iron' Bob though.
 
kiro kompiro said:
In 2015, the Reserve Bank of Australia published this article:

https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2015/sep/pdf/bu-0915-3.pdf

The past decade saw a stabilisation of debt-to-income levels,
but also a prolonged period of strong population growth
– underpinned by high immigration – and smaller
household sizes that led to increases in underlying
demand exceeding the supply of new dwellings.
Looking ahead, it seems unlikely that there will be a
return to the rather extreme conditions of the earlier
episode when significant increases in household debt
supported high housing price growth. Nonetheless,
protracted periods of changes in population growth
that are not met by adjustments in dwelling supply
could lead to periods of sizeable changes in housing
price growth.

Which is exactly what happened, predicted 10 years ago.

Its absurd to argue that housing demands from immigration equal to the size of Canberra in A SINGLE year can be met and will not increase house prices.

I just shake my head that anyone could believe that.

Regretably the debate has been clouded by those whose politics won't allow them to accept that there are limits to the benefits of immigration because they see that as being immoral, and that doesn't sit well with the view that they are THE moral people. Anyone who disagrees is a racist and therefore an immoral person whose opinions must not be only rejected, but silenced.
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Your RBA quote from 2015 actually supports the more nuanced view, not a simplistic "immigration is the sole cause" argument.

Yes, high immigration increases housing demand — no serious person denies that. Adding the population equivalent of Canberra in a single year obviously pressures rents and prices, especially when concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne. The RBA was clear....

Strong population growth underpinned by immigration, combined with smaller households, pushed underlying demand ahead of supply. But that's exactly why my point holds: immigration is a contributing factor that exposes and worsens deeper supply-side failures. If Australia had maintained responsive housing construction, planning reforms, and infrastructure investment over the past decade-plus, this level of migration wouldn't have produced the same crisis. The severity of today's shortages — chronically low completions relative to need, zoning bottlenecks, slow approvals, and infrastructure lags shows the supply system has been broken for years, not just overwhelmed recently.

The 2015 RBA piece itself framed it as a mismatch or periods where population changes aren't met by dwelling supply adjustments lead to big price swings. We've had that mismatch. Blaming immigration alone ignores how inelastic supply turns normal demand growth into a crisis. Ignoring supply failures while running very high migration creates the vicious circle.

The mature policy question isn't "immigration or housing?" It's whether we can coordinate migration intakes with actual housing delivery and infrastructure so they don't keep getting out of sync. Business lobbies love the flexible labour supply, but that doesn't magically build homes. We need both realistic migration settings and serious supply reform. Anything less is performative politics, not solutions.
 
SocceroosFan84 said:
Certainly a few of their prominent ones are.
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Not so much antisemetic but certainly haters of Israel and the Israeli project in general.

Ironically the Australian Labor Party was strongly pro-Israel at its founding. Under PM Chifley and Minister Evatt, Australia was first to vote for the 1947 UN partition plan and recognised Israel in 1949.

This support continued for decades (e.g., under Hawke) due to post-Holocaust sympathy and shared values, before shifting toward more critical, two-state positions.

Now it's turned further a significant more critical stance on Israel....

Ive heard of "From the River to the Sea" being sung after ALP conference fringe meetings!!
 
Being antisemitic and criticising Israel are two different things, unless the one is motivated by the other (and I haven't seen anything to suggest it is, in the Labor party's case).
 
Toebash said:
Being antisemitic and criticising Israel are two different things, unless the one is motivated by the other (and I haven't seen anything to suggest it is, in the Labor party's case).
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Yes, antisemitism and Israel criticism are conceptually distinct: fair policy critique (like any nation) is legitimate. But in practice, much of this "criticism" crosses into antisemitism via double standards....

For example, denying Jewish self-determination, Nazi analogies, blood libels, collective Jewish blame, and eliminationist calls "from the river to the sea"....

Data shows surges in incidents tied to such rhetoric, not the pure debate theory. Consistent standards often expose the overlap.
 
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