"Too hard" seems to be this guy's motto. His attitude about deporting failed asylum applicants was identical.
When Rizvi mentioned the population issue, the interviewer should have asked "Given that the aging population was a serious enough issue to warrant this immigration policy, what other steps were taken to deal with it?"
> But the failure of integration implicit in the changing rhetoric from ‘assimilation’ to ‘multiculturalism’ is not encouraging.
This has been the most destructive development. I grew up in very religious Muslim majority country and I see more hijab wearing women on the streets of Adelaide than I ever saw back home.
I thought that interview was very interesting, and ... well, not sobering at all. So what if the bureaucrat thinks his expertise is correct? He's half right, is pretty open about where his expertise stops, and it's clear our politicians ultimately had the whip hand.
I'm trying not to get in to a flame war, but to be honest I thought your article came across as pretty racist. You presented lots of statistics and just seemed to assume I would find them shocking. You also dismissed some pretty bog-standard common-sense claims about the benefits of immigration and a younger population, without making any effort to convince me this was true.
Meanwhile, contra your article, the linked interview took a clear eyed look at both short and long term challenges. Thank you for linking to it!
For better or worse, this is why Australia's high immigration rate will never be legitimately challenged: because all of its opponents just can't help leaning into racist tropes.
Statistics show that things are getting worse for Australians as result of massive immigration, principally from unaffordable housing. Are the stats "racist" for showing this? Or are they neutral facts - and they become racist as soon as they are used to advocate for self-interest of the majority? The word "racist" is the magical shut-up-word to preclude any discussion of the subject.
Super quickly, sorry: affordable housing is a real issue, for which immigration is one of many real causes. Absolutely not racist to worry about it or talk about restricting immigration on that basis. For me, I would hope we focus first on increasing housing stock, and do as little as possible to restrict our supply of bright young people. I'm no expert and don't pretend to know exactly what that looks like. If you disagree, well, I won't assume it has anything to do with race unless you state otherwise.
The actual article we're commenting on, however, clearly expected me to be shocked that the fraction of non-British immigrants had gone up. That seems fairly openly racist to me?
> The growth of non-academic staff employed by Australian universities has grown much faster than the number of teaching and research staff.
Isn't this a somewhat universal trend amongst universities in the Anglo World? It just seems that an organisation gets bloated when times are good.
> And their export value is dramatically overstated.
Over 80 percent of international students go back to their home countries after their education. This likely suggests that the universities have a benefit even without the permanent resident pathway.
Perhaps you think the universities are still primarily used for status signalling. But I still don't see why the Australian government should care if foreigners use our university system for signalling in their home countries.
I do think the whole the graduate to PR set-up is dumb. We should just move to an age adjusted income threshold model.
We should also ban all Muslim immigration as well. If we don't ban Muslim immigration now we won't be able to do it later when they compromise a much larger share of the population.
I'd like to see a justification for banning muslim immigration that isn't blatantly racist. This was an Aboriginal country before it was a Christian country; Christians have no special right to it.
I agree that the question should always be what's good for society. My main argument, however, is that you are excluding certain parts of society from your consideration, such as Aboriginal Australians.
It's your grievance that is the country's problem. Stop whinging. Ya bloody snowflake. What gives you the right to know what's good for the country? This sort of divisive effort are not.
The British got Australia by force. That's basically how any society in the world got their land including the Aboriginals. Post colonial scholarship wants to make the argument that emperors before the 1500s were more legitimate than the ones that make after 1500s for some reason.
As for the Muslim immigration debate, we can ban immigration into Australia for whatever reason. We have no international obligation to take in immigrants. I don't want Muslim immigration into Australia because I don't like Muslims. It's not that complicated. If you wanna invite them in go ahead. Muslims hate infidels and so you'll be screwed eventually as well.
"Post colonial scholarship wants to make the argument that emperors before the 1500s were more legitimate than the ones that make after 1500s for some reason."
Nope, this is not the argument that I and my fellow not racists use to justify criticism of the racism you and your whinging anti-woke people like to use to justify your own grievance industry and make the country mean and narrow minded.
Is that all you got? I'll need some more discussion, you know like some premises and a conclusion to show that you do know what you are talking about.
Even though it's just your opinion that I am a wrong person lol, you should provide some sort of an argument to back up your claim. That the problem I think we not racists lefties just don't know what you want.
So what are your criteria for being right for modern Australia? No Muslims? No woke? No feminism? No money for Indigenous nonsense? What is your particular whinge. How about it's all Marxism causing anti-semitism despite Australia being so anti Jews back when I was a kid in the 50's. I had a lesson I remember well about how one should not discrimate against people because of their race or religion. So much racism back in the day in Australia.
It's like grievance bingo working out what you don't like most about modern Australia.
I've been here longer than you and I think your ideas and prejudices are the problems we have.
I'm liking this article though. It does give me some idea of how the disordered thinking that led to the debacle in the US is playing out here.
Yes the podcast was shocking. Changing a countries ethnicity and demography irreversibly with no debate or consensus or public discussion. It’s utterly appalling.
What I find most shocking about this article is the total disregard of Aboriginal Australians as you invoke both the White Australia Policy and Australia's colonial past. As a reminder, Australia is not Britain, and it was never ceded to Britain. Therefore, why is assimilation into a majority British culture seen as necessary when this was never a British country to begin with? The fresh immigration discussion I'd like to see is how mass immigration is contributing to the ongoing marginalization and erasure of Aboriginal populations, not recycled debates about assimilation vs multiculturism that ring hollow to every young person with a multicultural friend group.
Immigration is hitting people at the bottom-most position in society hardest. That means Aboriginal ppl are worst off from housing costs and competition for low-entry jobs as these are the most immediate effects.
Another effect is that many fresh immigrants have a very hostile attitude to Aboriginal people or are explicitly racist - whereas most Australians internalised the sense of duty of care toward them (however imperfect). If you care about Indigenous welfare these are the answers you're asking for.
The concept that public policy has been hijacked away from open politics by a technocratic elite has been recognised recently by a couple of named concepts. Firstly as a process Wesley Yang has called in the "non electoral politics of institutional capture". The people who are conducting this process have been named the "professional-managerial class" or PMC and the dynamic has been receiving lots of recognition recently.
The point is that pretty much all areas of policy are decided by a technocrat clique without the voting majority ever getting the chance to choose what we want. And when we do the resultant govts simply do what they want anyway. The housing ponzi/market capture is just one area of many.
Is the NDHS another one of these single minded policies? Certainly seems really naive. Why does no one question the ability of the bureaucracy to efficiently administer these blank cheque schemes? Just assume they have super human powers to do the impossible.
What struck me in the interview was that Rizvi was just kicking the aging population can down the road onto future generations to sort out.
"Too hard" seems to be this guy's motto. His attitude about deporting failed asylum applicants was identical.
When Rizvi mentioned the population issue, the interviewer should have asked "Given that the aging population was a serious enough issue to warrant this immigration policy, what other steps were taken to deal with it?"
> But the failure of integration implicit in the changing rhetoric from ‘assimilation’ to ‘multiculturalism’ is not encouraging.
This has been the most destructive development. I grew up in very religious Muslim majority country and I see more hijab wearing women on the streets of Adelaide than I ever saw back home.
Awesome anecdotal evidence. Thanks for that. The bureaucrats should really listen to you.
I thought that interview was very interesting, and ... well, not sobering at all. So what if the bureaucrat thinks his expertise is correct? He's half right, is pretty open about where his expertise stops, and it's clear our politicians ultimately had the whip hand.
I'm trying not to get in to a flame war, but to be honest I thought your article came across as pretty racist. You presented lots of statistics and just seemed to assume I would find them shocking. You also dismissed some pretty bog-standard common-sense claims about the benefits of immigration and a younger population, without making any effort to convince me this was true.
Meanwhile, contra your article, the linked interview took a clear eyed look at both short and long term challenges. Thank you for linking to it!
For better or worse, this is why Australia's high immigration rate will never be legitimately challenged: because all of its opponents just can't help leaning into racist tropes.
Statistics show that things are getting worse for Australians as result of massive immigration, principally from unaffordable housing. Are the stats "racist" for showing this? Or are they neutral facts - and they become racist as soon as they are used to advocate for self-interest of the majority? The word "racist" is the magical shut-up-word to preclude any discussion of the subject.
Benefits of immigration go in different amounts to different people, and the growth used to be spread around a lot. Not in recent decades however, as you can see here: https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Gains-from-Growth-1.png
Super quickly, sorry: affordable housing is a real issue, for which immigration is one of many real causes. Absolutely not racist to worry about it or talk about restricting immigration on that basis. For me, I would hope we focus first on increasing housing stock, and do as little as possible to restrict our supply of bright young people. I'm no expert and don't pretend to know exactly what that looks like. If you disagree, well, I won't assume it has anything to do with race unless you state otherwise.
The actual article we're commenting on, however, clearly expected me to be shocked that the fraction of non-British immigrants had gone up. That seems fairly openly racist to me?
If anything I thought that Rizvi is the one who comes across as a closet racist.
> The growth of non-academic staff employed by Australian universities has grown much faster than the number of teaching and research staff.
Isn't this a somewhat universal trend amongst universities in the Anglo World? It just seems that an organisation gets bloated when times are good.
> And their export value is dramatically overstated.
Over 80 percent of international students go back to their home countries after their education. This likely suggests that the universities have a benefit even without the permanent resident pathway.
Perhaps you think the universities are still primarily used for status signalling. But I still don't see why the Australian government should care if foreigners use our university system for signalling in their home countries.
I do think the whole the graduate to PR set-up is dumb. We should just move to an age adjusted income threshold model.
We should also ban all Muslim immigration as well. If we don't ban Muslim immigration now we won't be able to do it later when they compromise a much larger share of the population.
I'd like to see a justification for banning muslim immigration that isn't blatantly racist. This was an Aboriginal country before it was a Christian country; Christians have no special right to it.
It's not about rights or a drive for self destruction
It's about what's good for society
The question should always be: what's better for this country?
Not which grievance do I dig into
I agree that the question should always be what's good for society. My main argument, however, is that you are excluding certain parts of society from your consideration, such as Aboriginal Australians.
It's your grievance that is the country's problem. Stop whinging. Ya bloody snowflake. What gives you the right to know what's good for the country? This sort of divisive effort are not.
The British got Australia by force. That's basically how any society in the world got their land including the Aboriginals. Post colonial scholarship wants to make the argument that emperors before the 1500s were more legitimate than the ones that make after 1500s for some reason.
As for the Muslim immigration debate, we can ban immigration into Australia for whatever reason. We have no international obligation to take in immigrants. I don't want Muslim immigration into Australia because I don't like Muslims. It's not that complicated. If you wanna invite them in go ahead. Muslims hate infidels and so you'll be screwed eventually as well.
"Post colonial scholarship wants to make the argument that emperors before the 1500s were more legitimate than the ones that make after 1500s for some reason."
Nope, this is not the argument that I and my fellow not racists use to justify criticism of the racism you and your whinging anti-woke people like to use to justify your own grievance industry and make the country mean and narrow minded.
You are hilariously naive and essentially what is wrong about modern Australia in a person.
Is that all you got? I'll need some more discussion, you know like some premises and a conclusion to show that you do know what you are talking about.
Even though it's just your opinion that I am a wrong person lol, you should provide some sort of an argument to back up your claim. That the problem I think we not racists lefties just don't know what you want.
So what are your criteria for being right for modern Australia? No Muslims? No woke? No feminism? No money for Indigenous nonsense? What is your particular whinge. How about it's all Marxism causing anti-semitism despite Australia being so anti Jews back when I was a kid in the 50's. I had a lesson I remember well about how one should not discrimate against people because of their race or religion. So much racism back in the day in Australia.
It's like grievance bingo working out what you don't like most about modern Australia.
I've been here longer than you and I think your ideas and prejudices are the problems we have.
I'm liking this article though. It does give me some idea of how the disordered thinking that led to the debacle in the US is playing out here.
Keep it up you guys.
More utterly unhinged ranting, as to be expected.
Every time you complain we grant citizenship to ten new Muslim immigrants.
Yes the podcast was shocking. Changing a countries ethnicity and demography irreversibly with no debate or consensus or public discussion. It’s utterly appalling.
What I find most shocking about this article is the total disregard of Aboriginal Australians as you invoke both the White Australia Policy and Australia's colonial past. As a reminder, Australia is not Britain, and it was never ceded to Britain. Therefore, why is assimilation into a majority British culture seen as necessary when this was never a British country to begin with? The fresh immigration discussion I'd like to see is how mass immigration is contributing to the ongoing marginalization and erasure of Aboriginal populations, not recycled debates about assimilation vs multiculturism that ring hollow to every young person with a multicultural friend group.
Immigration is hitting people at the bottom-most position in society hardest. That means Aboriginal ppl are worst off from housing costs and competition for low-entry jobs as these are the most immediate effects.
Another effect is that many fresh immigrants have a very hostile attitude to Aboriginal people or are explicitly racist - whereas most Australians internalised the sense of duty of care toward them (however imperfect). If you care about Indigenous welfare these are the answers you're asking for.
This is the premise for a much better article.
Sobering.
Holy Cow that interview linked was… sobering.
Move over Clive Humphries!
"Left unchecked, rule-by-technocrat leads nowhere in particular, only forward, blindly. It’s time Australians took back the wheel."
How should we take the wheel back? Voting isn't enough driving wheel for you?
Oh I know, we need Elon to come and fire all the bureaucrats. Or a revolution?
The concept that public policy has been hijacked away from open politics by a technocratic elite has been recognised recently by a couple of named concepts. Firstly as a process Wesley Yang has called in the "non electoral politics of institutional capture". The people who are conducting this process have been named the "professional-managerial class" or PMC and the dynamic has been receiving lots of recognition recently.
The point is that pretty much all areas of policy are decided by a technocrat clique without the voting majority ever getting the chance to choose what we want. And when we do the resultant govts simply do what they want anyway. The housing ponzi/market capture is just one area of many.
Is the NDHS another one of these single minded policies? Certainly seems really naive. Why does no one question the ability of the bureaucracy to efficiently administer these blank cheque schemes? Just assume they have super human powers to do the impossible.