‘Migrant Tsunami’: We’re Being Flooded By Foreigners Worries Yank From Daily Tele, Asian From Lib Think-Tank

Even on a good day, it’s impossible to take The Daily Telegraph seriously, but how exactly are we supposed to take them on a bad day?

And by bad day, I mean last week, when they published this lead story headlined ‘Albo’s migrant tsunami: How record arrivals are causing inflation, housing crisis.’ Because, you know, inflation and ridiculous housing prices never existed until we started letting in all those damned foreigners.

The story, which the Tele shamelessly describes as an “exclusive”, is lifted straight from a ‘report’ by the infamous Institute for Public Affairs, a Liberal Party-aligned ‘think-tank’. Over to the Tele’s National Affairs Editor, James Morrow for the straight dope on the ‘coming wave’ of dirty brown people.

“Labor has been accused of putting unnecessary pressure on migration by running a ‘Big Australia by stealth’ program that has seen Australia bring in a record 1.15 million migrants since it took power.

According to an analysis of migration patterns by parliamentary term, this means that, with months to run in its first term, Anthony Albanese’s government has brought in 62 per cent more migrants than the Rudd-Gillard government, which was the previous record holder.

The research shows that this government has already brought in more migrants in just 27 months than the entire Hawke-Keating years that ran for 156 months – more than five times the length of the current government.

The data also revealed that nearly one-third – 31 per cent – of Australia’s population was born overseas, up from 22 per cent in 1983 and far higher than nations like Canada and the United States, where 21 and 15 per cent of the population were born overseas respectively.”

All of which is true. It’s absolutely correct to suggest that migration under the Albanese is considerably higher than under any previous government. Especially the Morrison government. But conspicuously absent from the Daily Telegraph and the IPA’s reporting is the explanation why, and most notably, also the word ‘Covid’, which is a curious omission given the known impact of the pandemic on migration not just in Australia, but all over the world.

And it’s even more curious when you consider that the IPA’s research was based on this recent data release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics… which includes a section somewhat unambiguously entitled ‘Impact of COVID-19’. Over to the ABS:

“Many of the changes observed in the recent data in this release are attributable to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Australian Government introduced travel restrictions on those travelling to or from Australia in March 2020, which were gradually lifted from 1 November 2021. Australian borders were reopened to most travellers from 21 February 2022.”

Whoops.

In case the penny hasn’t dropped, what the Tele and the IPA have done is grab some data from the ABS, strip it of context, then repackage it to try and make it look like it’s ‘open day’ for migrants in Australia under the Albanese Government.

In fact, what’s actually happened is that net migration went backwards during the pandemic, and the Albanese Government is now trying to deal with a massive backlog.

This kind of ham-fisted dishonesty is obviously ‘stock in trade’ for The Daily Telegraph. But how does a so-called ‘think-tank’ like the Institute for Public Affairs publish it with a straight face? Regardless, the further you drill down, the worse it gets.

The IPA tries to break down net migration by parliamentary term, which it seems to think is the best way to make the case that ‘Labor is soft on the dirty migrants, only the Liberals have the guts to bash the wogs’. But to get there, it still requires what you might term ‘flexible thinking and a relaxed attitude to facts, and context’.

You’ll notice that the Morrison government has one of the lowest net migration results on record (272,600). Because, you know, Covid-19 shut the borders for a couple of years, and 2020 actually delivered a year of net migration loss. But the attempt to mislead gets even more ridiculous if you look at the 45^th Parliament – the term immediately before Covid - which included the Turnbull and Morrison governments.

It recorded the second highest migration since 1983, at 704,700, just a few thousand behind the Rudd-Gillard era (710,500). But in what has to be one of the more embarrassing attempts at ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’, the IPA delivers the ‘research’ like this....

If you want to give people an actual understanding of net migration in Australia today, then you’d show them how Covid affected the process. You can get all of that information from the ABS here. Or you could depict it in a simple graph like this:

But where’s the fun and misadventure in that? People would be left with the (correct) impression that migration has been humming along at more or less the same trajectory for decades, although notably, it more than doubled during the Howard years, and exploded under Robert Menzies. Indeed, the Liberal Party has by far the stronger record in terms of growth in migration, as this graph – which charts everything from 1890 onwards – clearly shows.

In other words, while Labor has had slightly higher immigration numbers in the last two decades, historically the Coalition have also been ‘balls-deep’ into migration until a pandemic came along and screwed things up for a few years. Thus, the influx under Albanese – which obviously includes a correction of net loss from the pandemic years - is perfectly in line with the migration trend since the Second World War.

And if anyone’s interested, there’s a simple reason why both major parties chase large migration numbers. Australia lacks the birth rate and population to fill all the jobs our economy produces, and in particular, Australians don’t like doing low-skilled work. Hence, migration – which brings in people who are prepared to work hard in low-paying, low skilled jobs - is crucial to the nation’s economic prosperity.

This is a fact well known to both the IPA and the Daily Tele,

And of course, Australia’s net migration is not just about jobs. What the IPA and the Daily Tele also neglect to mention in their ‘exclusive’ is that a significant percentage of ‘migrants’ coming to Australia – the second largest category after workers - are full-fee paying international students.

How much are they worth to the Australian economy annually? Well, in 2019, prior to the pandemic, it was about $40 billion. The following year (2020-21), it shed almost $14 billion. The year after that, it shed $20 billion.

By 2022-23, the international student market in Australia had bounced back to around $36.4 billion. But can you imagine the headlines in the Tele (and the ‘reports’ from the IPA) if Labor stepped in the way of that?

It’s curious behaviour from both organisations given their claimed jingoistic support for the Australian economy. Even more so when you consider that they both zealousy guard exports like, say, cotton, which contributes just $3 billion or so to the economy each year (but consumes a hell of a lot of water in the process)…i.e, less than one-tenth of what international students generate.

Which brings me to the final punchline for what could be the shoddiest hit-piece we‘ve seen from the IPA and Tele in a while.

The author of the IPA’s report is a man named ‘Dr Kevin You’… and speaking of You… if you, like me, saw that surname and thought to yourself, “Hmm, ‘You’ sounds pretty ‘migranty’ to me,” you’d be correct.

Here’s a photo of Dr You. He’s from South Korea. Now living in Sydney.

At the start of the week, New Matilda sent the IPA some questions about when Kevin arrived in Australia. No response, although we'll add one here if it ever arrives.

And here’s a bonus punchline: The author of the Daily Telegraph story is their National Affairs Editor, James Morrow.

You might remember James from such grating American accents as ‘how YOU doing’…. That’s right, Morrow is also an immigrant.

You can’t make this stuff up… although obviously Dr You and Mr Morrow did.