Send Them Home

Image: Unsplash

Is it not a government's job to serve their people rather than make life harder for them? Our government, as well as previous governments, appear to not believe this is so. They appear to be very happy to drive your cost of living up to create the illusion of growth in the economy, even if that growth makes life harder for our people. 

Australia is in the midst of a housing cost crisis, both rents and the cost of buying are at phenomenal levels. And what is the plan of our government? To force you to compete with more potential renters and buyers, driving up rental costs and the cost of buying a house:

"International students drive rents into stratosphere...

...Record low rental vacancy rates.

The worst is yet to come, too, given the Albanese Government has committed to driving-up immigration to its highest ever level, including via:

Lifting the permanent non-humanitarian migrant intake to a record high 195,000 a year;

Turbo-charging temporary migration by expanding work rights for international students via:

- Uncapping the number of hours international students can work while studying for another year; and

- Extending the length of post-study work visas by two years."

This can only be described as wickedness, and short-sighted foolishness. There are businesses that want more cheap workers, and there are businesses that want to rely on employees who have been trained overseas, rather than training new employees at home in Australia. But solving these issues via immigration fixes one short term problem and creates many other long term issues, like sky-rocketing living costs. 

Australians are predicted to face increasing mortgage problems in the coming months: "There are fears many Australians will experience mortgage stress by Christmas as interest rates continue to rise." This is already happening to many families, and it will get worse, as interest rates are predicted to rise by quite a bit still going forward.

This will cause house prices to slump: 

"Australian house prices could fall by at least 15 per cent after an aggressive series of interest rate hikes, the Reserve Bank has said."

In April, the central bank suggested house prices could slump by about 15 per cent over a two-year period, should interest rates rise by 2 percentage points.

Since then it has rapidly increased rates from a historic low 0.1 per cent to 2.35 per cent." 

Now, while we do need house prices to go down, part of the reason they will drop in price is families will be forced to sell in the coming months. The last thing these families need is to be forced to sell, and then to compete with foreigners in the rental market. At the very least the government could do what it can not to cause this problem to get worse, like not allowing more people into an already competitive market. 

Send them home, and stop bringing in more people. It is already costing too much for Australians to live in our own country. And the downsides of cost of living increases, outweigh the small benefits of mild economic growth. 

Our government exists to serve our people, not give opportunities to other peoples.