Big business, unions join with government on grubby immigration plan

Australia is facing a severe shortage of construction workers.

The Albanese Government’s own Infrastructure Australia has delivered an utterly damning condemnation of the government’s immigration plan – just a day after it was unveiled by ministers O’Neil and Giles, flanked by big business and big Labour.

Why do I emphasise that last point?

Because big business – the Business Council - wants the massive immigration Ponzi to continue to fuel spending and pour in certain types of workers.

Because big Labour – what’s left of it in the form of the ACTU – absolutely doesn’t want those extra workers to come into precisely the sharp end where they are most needed - building and construction.

That would threaten the lush wages and conditions in building and construction – which, along with the public services, also effectively excluded - are the residual epicentres of union power.

Even though the tradie shortage is hurting, and hurting badly and permanently, all Australians - forcing up the costs of infrastructure builds and of housing and so also rentals.

And so that’s the grubby deal they got on Monday.

With ministers O’Neil and Giles being both so shameless and clueless, as to actually parade the grubby – and, frankly, fundamentally stupid - deal that puts the national interest and the interests of most Australians well and truly last, in the persons of the BCA chief and the acting ACTU head.

On Tuesday – exquisitely sandwiched between the immigration disgrace and the mid-year budget update Wednesday – we got Infrastructure Australia’s rocket.

Now of course, the government body didn’t explicitly nail the O’Neil-Giles boondoggle. But its central message unequivocally did.

Infrastructure Australia identified the number one problem for infrastructure – and, indirectly, building more generally - and especially those 1.2m Albanese-promised extra new homes.

Right in the first sentence: there’ll be a “shortfall of 229,000 public infrastructure workers”. That includes 131,000 tradies.

And note very importantly, Infrastructure Australia was not noting the arguably even bigger tradie shortfall in home building.

You could legitimately double the shortfall to 250,000 – an entire year’s immigration. If of course we ever get down to that now ‘low’ level.

Yet, tradies were specifically and uniquely excluded from the fast-track $135k visa program –

supposedly designed to fill worker shortages in areas such as healthcare, the digital economy and, of course, you guessed it, climate change.

We already knew, thanks to the High Court, that this hopeless and hapless ministerial duo were in way above their level of functional ineptitude. On Monday, they actually paraded what a ministerial disgrace they also were.

They have actually managed to conceive the worst of both possible worlds: keeping the overall migration floodgates open, while slamming the door shut on the one group of workers we actually desperately need.

Further, there’s nothing in the new regime to prevent the overall migrant numbers blowing out again, like they did in 2022-23, to over 500,000.

To sort of round out the insanity, Victorian premier Jacinta Allan chose Tuesday to formally commit to the insane $200bn tunnel – tunnels - from nowhere to nowhere.

Suggestions are invited for what Victoria can do with two, say, 10km tunnels that will never be used for trains.