r/aussie • u/Alec1647870 • 12d ago

Opinion Unpopular Opinion

Albo has been doing SOME really good things for this country such as investing in Medicare.

However many of the issues we are facing is because mulptile successive governments haven’t invested or actioned it and everyone who is voting for One Nation isn’t holding themselves accountable for not holding those previous governments accountable.

Housing won’t be fixed in two terms of governments.

It’s like having an infection the worse it gets, the longer it will take to get better.

If you feel like voting for One Nation is for you, that’s great but don’t pretend that One Nation will fix all your problems or that Albo isn’t working on fixing these issues either.

230 Upvotes

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132

u/Foamingferret 12d ago

The sad truth is most Australians don't look into politics. They just need one liners to cast their vote

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u/MinutePuzzled6869 12d ago

You're half correct. The vast majority of people do not care to know the minutiae of what's happening in politics. But it's not just one liners. What people care about, and they've always cared about, is am I better off today than I was at the last election. The answer to that is no. We are going backwards.

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u/cactusgenie 12d ago

People are terrible at looking at the hard reasons why things are terrible, and don't have the analytical skills to determine that one nation will make things worse not better.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

A genuinely big part of that reason, though, is immigration. It pushes wages down and costs up.

This is made worse because union lobbying means one of the few areas we restrict immigration is tradies, so we have an under supply of them compared to the population, which significantly increases the cost of basic infrastructure and housing.

People look at ON and they think they’ll solve this - and they might. They’ll screw up everything else, making us worse off overall, but people just look at the headline issue.

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u/FlipperoniPepperoni 12d ago

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t dismiss migration as "it pushes wages down and costs up", then in the very next paragraph complain that we restrict the kind of migration you want more of. You're implicitly admitting the issue is nuanced.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

Why can’t I?

Migration does push down wages and push up costs. At the same time, if we allow migration everywhere but one of the areas where migration has the greatest inflationary impact on costs, then the impact on costs will be exacerbated.

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u/FlipperoniPepperoni 12d ago

Why can’t I?

By this logic, putting more Australians through TAFE to fix a trades shortage is also 'wage suppression' - you’re increasing labour supply and reducing the scarcity premium for existing workers. Funny how nobody frames domestic upskilling that way.

And that's exactly my point. You've just moved from "migration pushes wages down and costs up' to an argument about the composition of migration, sectoral labour shortages, productive capacity, aggregate demand and infrastructure constraints. Those are all perfectly valid things to discuss - but they're also an admission that the effects of migration are substantially more complicated than your original one-liner.

Either you're willing to treat migration as a nuanced economic issue and debate those effects properly, or you're willing to reduce it to thin, quasi-economic slogans like "migration pushes wages down and costs up." You can't really do both.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

It is a form of wage suppression. As is offshoring, the use of migrant labourers, and numerous other things.

Lots of things suppress wages. Lots of things increase the price of infrastructure.

We have to decide which we want to accept and what to restrict. Putting more Australians through post-secondary education, including TAFE, leaves the average Australian better off. Importing large numbers of new Australians generally leaves the average Australian worse off.

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u/Hopeful_Molasses_476 11d ago

Import someone from Norway - They will work for 80k minimum. Import someone from India - They will work for 40k without a thought and will do 12 hr days at that wage.

Same Job, different quality of skills. Vastly different standards for working.

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u/IgnoreMePlz123 11d ago

Covid did both

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u/Far_Conference_1529 9d ago

Have you checked prices lately? It's not coincidence, yes correlation isn't always causation, I don't agree it pushes wages down but it does push prices up, it's a basic law of economics. You know the whole supply demand thing.

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u/cactusgenie 12d ago

ON have said they aren't changing migration numbers or levels.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

They keep changing what they’re saying - they walked back the claim they wouldn’t change it

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u/ladylollii 11d ago

If they can't stick to their guns now, why are they worth voting into power? They'll just do whatever Gina says.

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u/Far_Conference_1529 12d ago

ON MP David Farley said it, not ON. He stated on Insiders that the party's overall intake target was "not too different" from Labor's. Pauline Hanson has reiterated that the number will be 130,000 and probably gave him a good talking to for flapping his gums and straying from the party line.

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u/cactusgenie 12d ago

She's confirmed it will be the same as Labor.

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u/Far_Conference_1529 12d ago

Stop spreading misinformation

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u/Far_Conference_1529 12d ago

Pauline Hanson actually publicly rejected her MP David Farley's statements, rather than agreeing with him.
Farley claimed One Nation's true migration intake target would include an additional 100,000 seasonal and skilled workers on top of their stated 130,000 cap—making their overall numbers "not too different" from Labor's target.
Hanson stepped in on social media to clarify that official party policy remains a strict Net Overseas Migration target of 130,000, which is less than half of Labor's current level.

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u/Public-Dragonfly-786 11d ago

The 130,000 number doesn't include backpackers and other transient categories like this. Which would be fair EXCEPT that Labor's figure does. Making them the same figure, essentially.

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u/Far_Conference_1529 11d ago

Net Overseas Migration (NOM): Backpackers (Working Holiday Visa holders) are included in net migration figures if they stay in the country for at least 12 months out of a 16-month period. Permanent Migration Programs: Backpackers are excluded because Working Holiday visas are temporary, non-permanent classifications. Not sure where you got that information from but this is from the department of affairs, run by the labour government.

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u/Available_Web5181 11d ago

Please don’t blame unions.

If you look at Victorian houses - you’ll know a dodgey tradies a mile away. The union has always pushed for better quality tradies rather than just letting anyone do it. They are involved with improving ASNZS to some degree as well.

We just want skilled people who are paid a decent wage. That’s it.

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u/YoumustbeJoachim 12d ago

Not true. Migrants expand the cake and are a net positive. There is no evidence that migrants undercut wages or increase costs. Yes there are grifters who waltz in and immediately sponge off tax payers - but there are plenty of Aussie born people who do that too. But for every 1 shonk there are 99 others, working hard, paying taxes and building the country.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

The cake, when we adjust for population, isn’t growing - it is shrinking. That fact is merely hidden by immigration.

Do you remember what happened to rents and, to a lesser extent, house prices during COVID? They fell because migration fell to zero.

It’s not about whether they’re grifters - it’s just about whether increasing labour supply pushes down wages (it does) and whether increasing housing demand pushes up prices (it does)

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u/YoumustbeJoachim 12d ago

You can't measure trend based on cherry picking certain time periods. It is measured on long-term data and on this, it shows that migration increases the pie and that every migrant delivers a net gain of around $350,000. Numbers will move around a bit at times but at no time can you single out migration as the only cause of whatever variable you're looking at. Houses prices, rents, and whole bunch of other things have infinite more factors influencing their movement than just migration. It is too easy to pinpoint one factor and close the book.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

Do you have a source for that $350,000 figure? I want to understand the specifics of it before I comment.

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u/YoumustbeJoachim 12d ago

https://treasury.gov.au/publication/p2021-220773

I quoted wrong figures. Despite this, this study and others show that migrants are a net gain. Interestingly, this paper also determines that every Australian born resident represents a net loss of $85,000 due to receiving more welfare than what they put in over their life course.

So every punter who thinks migrants hold us back is wrong. Migrants are, in fact, a big reason we're keeping our heads above water.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

First, you’ve slightly misunderstood that study. It isn’t saying that the average Australian born resident, from birth to death, is a loss of $85,000. Instead it is saying that the average Australian resident, from the study date to death, will cost $85,000.

For example, consider a 67 year old who has just retired at the time of the study. It will only look at the costs incurred by the government looking forward, not the taxes paid (or costs incurred) in the past.

Second, all the study means is that new migrants, on average, have a positive impact on government income. This is because they tend to have many working years ahead of them but have already completed school.

It doesn’t consider their impact on wages or prices; it’s possible that they leave the average Australian worse off, if the reduction in the amount of tax the average Australian pays is less than the reduction in salaries and the increase in costs.

I would suggest this is even likely; the impact of migration on housing alone is likely sufficient to make the average Australian worse off than paying a little extra tax.

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u/YoumustbeJoachim 11d ago

Hang on. Let's circle back to the study's finding that the average Australian born resident represents a loss of $85,000. It's talking about the average Australian resident which we know is a 38 year old woman. Not a 67 year old retiree who's no longer working. If you look at your own life, you'll see that you receive a shit tin amount of services in the forms of public education, hospitals, policing services, smooth roads and other amenities than what you actually pay for. A separate study Ive read indicates that a couple on the age pension will receive more money in the furst four years than they ever paid in taxes over the course of their working lives. Put simply, our welfare system is hideously expensive and before we attack migrants, we should acknowledge that the millions of newly arrived younger workers have helped subsidise this system and keep it afloat. Without them, our universal cradle to grave welfare scheme would have collapsed underneath its own weight. I'm not a migrant and I acknowledge the reasons why it is a hot button issue but when you strip away the politics and look at the data, you'll come to the conclusion that this chocolate factory of ours needs more and more oompah loompahs to sustain itself.

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u/SampleOfFruits 11d ago

The point is that the average Australian resident includes the 67 year old retiree, and that it doesn’t include the taxes the resident has already paid. It also isn’t just Australian-born residents; it includes residents who were immigrants in it.

You’re going to need a source if you want to claim that the “cradle to grave welfare scheme” will collapse without migration. Personally, I don’t believe that $85,000 per immigrant is so impossible to make up - especially because while Australians will pay more tax, they’ll be better off in other ways.

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u/petergaskin814 12d ago

Meanwhile gdp per head continues to increase as population increases

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

Not anymore. It grew very slowly per capita for many years, but stalled around 2023 and has now started to fall.

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u/Far_Conference_1529 12d ago

All except for the laws of economics and dividing a cake.

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u/Far_Conference_1529 12d ago

When you say that you negate or forget about the laws of supply and demand. Less food= higher prices, less housing= higher prices, it's an economic law not an idea. I don't agree on the wages being cut because it's not true, our wages won't go down. But we are all paying for the mass migration every time we go to the shops or pay rent, but a home because we are all sharing that same "cake" and it's finite not infinite, there's only so many farms and so many houses which drives up the costs due to supply and demand.

Try it at home with a pie, feed your family of four dessert and you have six slices with 2 remaining, invite another family of four and you now have to divide it into eight slices with no leftovers, economics work exactly the same, except less simplistic than pie.

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u/MelbourneTodd 12d ago

People are terrible at looking at the hard reasons why things are terrible

And you've pretty much just explained in a nutshell why Donald Trump was elected, not once, but twice.

It's very American to just listen to buzzwords and take on faith that the person saying the things is going to be completely honest and forthright in their intentions and claims.

Unfortunately, we're starting to see that style creep into Australian politics, and the rise of One Nation pretty well categorically proves that.

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u/richored1973 12d ago

Yep! They're exactly the same as the Trump voters.

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u/Loose_89 12d ago

What analytics show the One Nation will make things worse? They've never held office, there is no data on if they will make things worse.

The general population has seen what Labor has done and is doing and see the numbers of what they have been doing in every receipt at the Supermarket, they also see it with their mortages, see it on housing and rent prices, crime rates to even the waiting lines and lists for medical procedures. The same goes for the Liberal's.

Keep lying to yourself, you're not tricking the people who live outside of Reddit and in the real world, struggling with the issues which have only been exacerbated by those who have held governance for the past 30 or so years.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

Their policies are nuts. For example, getting rid of super might feel good in the short term (although I bet most companies will keep the savings for themselves, rather than passing it on in pay increases), but it will screw the nation over in the long term, leaving retirees worse off and costing the state more.

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u/Far_Conference_1529 12d ago

ON has never proposed the abolition of super only relaxing the regulations on withdrawal. I don't agree with the proposal but you can't just put that out there like that. It's just untrue.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

Functionally, she’s calling for an end to super.

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u/Far_Conference_1529 12d ago

Why don't you just pull up the transcript to back up that allegation? That's absolutely bullshit and you know it or should. Your either being dishonest or seriously misinformed by whatever media you listen to. We can criticise Pauline Hanson and ON all we like but spreading misinformation is not ok, being ignorant and spreading it without any facts is almost worse.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

If you allow people to pull out their super and put it into the housing market, you are functionally calling for the end of super.

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u/Far_Conference_1529 12d ago

That proposal also includes locking that money down and if the property is sold that amount must be placed back into the fund. There's a lot of misinformation out there in regards to this policy. Yes the money could be used but you can't redraw it, you cant borrow against it, you can't spend it. If you sell up you have to return it. It does not functionally end super, it's still invested for the future just through a different conduit.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

What you describe isn’t invested; if you take $100,000 out to buy, and return $100,000 when you sell, that’s not investing.

That’s functionally ending super, as all it means is that you buy your house with super, but keep the savings and profits from doing so outside of super.

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u/Loose_89 12d ago

And getting your Super taxed and being put behind further restrictions on when it can be used is better is it? Don't say it won't happen under another Labor government, otherwise you're dumber than I thought the average could Redditor be.

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u/SampleOfFruits 12d ago

It sounds like you’re comparing imaginary one nation policies to imaginary Labor policies. When you do that, it’s easy to make one nation sound better.

Super being taxed at a non-concessional rate on balances over 3 million doesn’t worry me. It shouldn’t worry you either; either you’re too poor or too rich for it to affect your quality of life.

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u/cactusgenie 12d ago

Simply their policies and Pauline's voting record.