(it doesnt come from governments in my view given how unpopular immigration is overall) (it doesnt come from governments in my view given how unpopular immigration is overall)
Of course it does. Labor LOVES immigrants, and voters like labor (or hate the coalition) enough that even if they're not keen on immigrants, Labor dominates in the election.
And part of the reason they love immigration other than serving special interests is the fact that most immigrants become labor voters, which means enough immigration for long enough and Labor just win politics forever. It doesn't mean labor wins every election everwhere always, but if the coalition continue to be a viable major party, it will be significantly because they had to shift their policies to be closer to labor's, so labor still wins in this regard. It's already happening now under Ley.
I just think if we stop 90% of immigration today, I dont think it will have the dramatic effect people expect in the future. On the positive side, I think that house prices will plateau and the pressure on services will ease (transport, healthcare etc). However, at the same time I think there could be negative issues with growth and significant worker shortages in key industries (especially healthcare/aged/disability care, which we need going forward given the ageing population). These negatives could have all sorts of flow on effects with inflation and even unemployment (especially if worker skills dont match demand). Im not saying this from an ideology perspective, (I'm neither here nor there on immigration) just looking at this from a pragmatic perspective. Government policy is the land of unintended consequences and I see some huge risks for that with stopping immigration completely.
If we need specific workers, bring those workers in.
Better yet, we can offer temporary work programs for countries like the philipines, thailand, vietnam etc. to fill many of these roles, paying them more per year than they would as permanent residents but saving the country money long term. Special accomodation could be constructed and provided to them too in many areas to attract them and lessen the burdern on the conventional housing market.
But bringing in unlimited dudes from india is only going to make the effects of an aging population worse. These men are are unlikely to result in a net increase in Australia's fertility rate, but most of them will eventually become elderly people. This means long term the dependency ratio gets
worse, and you need even
higher rates of immigration to make up for it. The population ponzi scheme.
These negatives could have all sorts of flow on effects with inflation and even unemployment (especially if worker skills dont match demand). Im not saying this from an ideology perspective, (I'm neither here nor there on immigration) just looking at this from a pragmatic perspective. Government policy is the land of unintended consequences and I see some huge risks for that with stopping immigration completely.
People say immigrants don't hurt wages, but then somehow less people means more inflation, and so the explanation would have to be that wages would rise without those immigrants due to a "shortage" of workers.
Rents and house prices would be cheaper and rental properties more available, it's hard to see anything else offsetting the positive impact of this. And it's one thing to say that population growth has been a net benefit over the past 25 years, but it's kind of insane to suggest that Australia's population just has to grow indefinitely. And very few people want to stop immigration entirely. But if we're making working Australians compete with other people for housing and physical/social infrastructure, it should be to fill important jobs facing genuine shortages. Not uber eats.
Oddly enough, if we did stop immigration completely I think the country would become a lot more progressive. People across the spectrum (mainly white people) dont really understand just how conservative immigrants are compared to the white population. Having grown up surrounded by immigrant communities and now being engaged to a white Aussie, one is infinitely more conservative than the other (in particular socially conservative).
Conservative in a particular sense, perhaps. But as seen even from this thread, they're also capable of being far-left a-holes who attack white people when its convenient to do so ("White people are evil colonizers who stole Australia from the aborigines but even though im living here I bear zero responsibliity for it"). And they also vote majority labor so any personal conservatism doesn't extend into politics. And i's hard to know how whatever conservatism they have actually influences anything. Not like there's groups of Indian guys going around harassing gays or something.
Also, stopping immigration wouldn't make the country more progressive even if what you're saying is correct. It would stop the rate at which it becomes
more progressive. Stopping immigration doesn't reduce how many immigrants are currently here.
Though even then, it's hard to see this 'conservatism' really persiting beyond a generation except for muslims.
Imagine all the cool studies we would get on far-right psychology 
