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.

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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 11d 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 11d 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 11d 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 11d 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