James Morrow: Why huge immigration helps Labor but hurts Australia

Let’s start out by saying the obvious — migration, properly handled, can be a great benefit for Australia. But it is not hard to see that something has gotten very out of whack.

Commuter Joanna Lambert stands on overcrowded Castle Hill to Sydney CBD bus after boarding at Baulkham Hills.

Let’s start out by saying the obvious — migration, properly handled, can be a great benefit for Australia.

I would not be here were it not for an Immigration Department bureaucrat approving a partner visa more than 20 years ago.

But it is not hard to see that something has gotten very out of whack.

Businesses love more people because it means more economic activity but that doesn’t necessarily mean a better quality of life.

The fact is that there is more to high migration than new restaurants and cuisines.

Commuters queue at Baulkham Hills, in northwestern Sydney, to board an overcrowded Castle Hill to Sydney CBD bus service.

Traffic, crowded schools and hospitals, rising rents and inflation caused by more competition for everything disproportionately hits the less well off.

And no matter how big our population gets our actual GDP per person never seems to budge, leading some economists to suggest that we are already in a recession that’s being hidden by demography.

Passengers on Platform 19 of Central Station in Sydney waiting for an overcrowded train service to take them home during evening peak period.

Chris Minns belled the cat during the election campaign when he said it was not fair that western Sydney was being forced to grow while the east and lower north shore’s housing stock is allowed to stay pretty much as it is.

His analysis was simplistic but there is a greater truth that high population growth is not a pain free exercise.

And there is a real cynical edge to the politics of this as well.

It is not hard to think that federal Labor loves the idea of a Big Australia — not just because it keeps it tight with corporate Australia — but because it thinks there are future votes in it.

Former Labor minister Craig Emerson wrote earlier this year that migration would eventually make Australia a less politically conservative nation.

On Wednesday, Labor pollster Kos Samaras tweeted about the migration surge saying, “When these eventually enrol to vote, 20% more of them vote Labor” and cited an academic study to prove it.

Any way you slice it, Big Australia is turning out to be an increasingly raw deal for Australians.