Australia and the West have experienced, hand over fist, improvements in GDP and living standards since we moved our manufacturing and resource extraction overseas*.
Even as the working class got sold out**, living standards improved across the board. The rich got richer and so did the middle class - with most Australians joining the middle class, during and, since the post-war era.
We were getting a good deal on our imports, taking more from poorer countries (Global South) than we gave in return, but that has been coming to an end.
The Global North (the First World) has monopolised trade with the Global South, by Capital and demand but also coercion and regime change, which ensured a good deal. But with the rise of the BRIX and China’s Belt and Road initiative, the Global South has more opportunity for equal exchange of goods and services.
While the IMF used third world debt to influence policy change, allowing Western Capital to buy up and exploit industry, Chinese banks are forgiving debts and negotiating mutually beneficial agreements (to the benefit of China).
While Western Capital built limited infrastructure to extract a specific resource, China is investing in not just general infrastructure but education and the creation of a local workforce.
The Global South are trading with each other. They have more options, trade is more competitive - we get less of a deal.
Where previously Australia could afford to give Corporations absurd profits and still have money for the people, this will be less and less possible. Australia needs to re-embrace the policies of the post-war era, which ensured a dignified life, and roll back the last 50 years of neoliberal policy built for an age which no longer exists.
* Not just in the neoliberal era, but all the way back to the start of colonial expansion.
** With manufacturing moving overseas and the denationalisation by various Liberal -and some Labor- governments.
*** consent manufacturing became harder to enforce
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49687-y
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-globalization
[4] https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2377740023500173
CC SA NC
I agree, vast influxes of people can be detrimental for a time including putting a strain on housing. I also agree immigrants are being used to score polical points. Immigrants are not the cause of the house crisis, bad policy has brought us to this point.
The issues you have spoken about are not caused by immigration, sure immigration can put pressure issue or even make it worse but we should look at fixing the underlying issue rather than blaming people who weren’t even in the country when the problem was created.
We can fix the system.
We can’t fix the underlying issue while we continue to make it exponentially worse though. Immigration didn’t cause the issue, but immigration is the main reason why it currently keeps getting worse and worse and worse.
Stop the flood of immigration, get things under control with the population we have, fix the underlying problems, then open up immigration again at a rate that is sustainable (and constantly re-evaluate this rate with regard to things like homelessness, per capita gdp, housing availability, etc).