Mike O’Connor: Migration tsunami will wash away our envied lifestyle

Crowded roads, schools, hospitals and an ambulance service stretched to breaking point – we are now feeling the effects of an “open-door” migration policy, writes Mike O’Connor.

If you’re finding that the bus is more crowded than it once was, that the roads are more congested, that you’re being jostled in supermarket queues and have that feeling that there seem to be a lot more people around lately then relax.

You are not being paranoid or suffering from enochlophobia (a fear of crowds).

The reality is that there are a lot more people around these days and thousands more continue to arrive as migrants at our airports every day.

In the year to September, 87,594 migrants settled in Queensland and a further 32,625 moved here from interstate.

In total, after allowing for natural increase by birth, the state’s population increased by 143,589, the third largest increase after Western Australia and Victoria.

In the year to September, 87,594 migrants settled in Queensland and a further 32,625 moved here from interstate.

To put this in context, the population of Cairns is about 150,000.

Nationally, net migration hit 548,000, a 60 per cent increase on the previous year and is clearly out of control.

It is estimated that by June, the number of migrants that will have arrived over the previous two years will exceed 900,000.

The Albanese government has watched these numbers grow and grow.

But it is only now beginning to tinker at the edges by making student visas more difficult to acquire, leading to a predictable outcry from the universities that have become addicted to the fees paid by foreign students, many of whom enrolled with the express purpose of gaining permanent residency.

You can’t blame the migrants, who have reached the same conclusion I did after spending years seeing a fair slice of the planet – which is that there is nowhere else on this Earth that I’d rather live.

Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Picture: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP

Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern once promised to build 100,000 homes. She built 1300, says Mike O’Connor. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

It’s not going to remain that way, however, if the government does not hit the pause button and suspend the migrant intake.

One doesn’t wish to sound un-Christian as Easter looms, but flooding the country with migrants at the rate of several thousand a day is not the action of a responsible government.

We have a long history of welcoming people to these shores.

Unfortunately, we also have a history of suffering politicians whose vision extends no further than the next election.

We are now beginning to feel the effects of what has effectively become an open-door migration policy.

Crowded roads, crowded schools, crowded hospitals and an ambulance service stretched to breaking point.

Tried to get an appointment with your friendly local general practitioner lately without being told you’ll have to wait for a week or more? Good luck with that.

It is difficult to imagine the thought processes behind a political decision that permits migrants to pour into our cities in the certain knowledge that there is not enough housing and infrastructure for the people already living here.

Crowded roads are one of the effects of what has effectively become an open-door migration policy, says Mike O’Connor.

Countries such as France and Germany are paying the price for poorly managed migration. and in the US, the Biden administration’s inept handling of its border with Mexico is helping to power Donald Trump’s campaign for a second term.

Politicians, particularly federal treasurers, like big migration numbers because it increases the tax base, a deliberately simplistic view that ignores the costs incurred by government in providing health care, public transport, social security services and schools for the new arrivals.

The federal government has said that it will build 1.2 million homes over the next five years. Saying it is one thing. Doing it another and this figure will not be reached.

Then-New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern once promised to build 100,000 homes. She built 1300.

Young people hopeful of buying their first property are giving up and resigning themselves to a lifetime of renting, says Mike O’Connor.

You see the result of the policy vacuum that has seen demand for housing far outstrip supply in that favourite Australian barbecue conversation topic of real estate prices that opens with “whaddya think our place is worth?” or ”you won’t believe what that dump next door sold for”.

A friend bought a two-bedroom unit off the plan two years ago and paid $860,000. He moved in recently to discover an apartment identical to his in the same building had just changed hands for $1.2m, an appreciation of almost 50 per cent.

Little wonder that young people hopeful of buying their first property give up and resign themselves to a lifetime of renting.

The deterioration in lifestyle quality that a sharply rising, artificially inflated population is causing in all our own doing.

It’s gradual and inexorable and will continue until the Albanese government shuts the arrival gates.