Dangers of failing to match migration increase with investment

Judith Sloan notes who will bear the benefits and costs of the recent review (“Migrant review fails to take note of the negatives”, 28/4). Even the Reserve Bank of Australia governor has said we are not building enough infrastructure to support population growth. The losers are the many impacted by housing unaffordability. But despite our population’s rise or decline, our governments would always under-invest in infrastructure. They are put off by a circular problem – poor investment leads to less investment.

Peter Egan, Mosman, NSW

I could hardly believe my ears when Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil placed full blame for the mess of our vacillating ­migration policy on the Coalition. You can attempt to fix the problem or escalate it with mature ­decision-making. What you cannot do, even with a warm smile and sunny manner, is to blame a past government for problems now firmly in your court.

Rosemary O’Brien, Ashfield, NSW

Rewind to January last year when Anthony Albanese said the Coalition government was too reliant on overseas workers and that the long-term solution is to train more Australians to meet our own labour needs.

And then fast-forward to now, with a PM taking migration to its highest ­annual intake ever.

That’s the pot calling the ­kettle black.

Indeed, this is a good opportunity for Peter Dutton to articulate what the Libs’ population policy is. This issue is too important to continue being left in the hands of unelected Treasury ­bureaucrats.

Mandy Macmillan, Singleton, NSW

Let’s forget about bringing in ­migrants and concentrate instead on getting those who are either unemployed or underemployed into jobs. In recent months there has been much discussion about employers being reluctant to take on workers they do not deem suitable, such as older workers. Surely we should be using the expertise we already have on hand.

Con Vaitsas, Ashbury, NSW

Despairing youth

Claire Lehmann’s poignant article (“Progressive ideologies send the wrong message to our kids”, 28/4) reminded me of Saint Augustine of Hippo’s quote: “Our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.” It is truly abominable that young people within the Western world – who enjoy wealth, freedom, prosperity, health, employment opportunities and a life expectancy unprecedented in human history – can concurrently be so despairing or incensed about the prevailing ­social culture. Robert Menzies’ civil quip from 1948 is indeed still pertinent: “We cannot hack away at the foundations and then express surprise when some day the house falls.”

Peter Waterhouse, Craigieburn, Vic

Claire Lehmann writes the truth. Many young people of today have fallen victim to becoming the victim themselves. Conservatism, as Lehmann describes it, is definitely not “cool” but no other ideology has yet replaced that gap in the eyes of progressives.

Glenda Ellis, Bardon, Qld

Papal overreach

My thanks to Henry Ergas for his look back at the Papal involvement in the history of Europe and discovery of new lands in the 15th and 16th Centuries (“Papal ‘mea culpa’ only weakens the West”, 28/4).

I’d always thought it was the Treaty of Tordesillas rather than a brace of Papal Bulls that had ­allocated all newly discovered lands west of a line down a meridien about halfway between the Cape Verde Islands and the newly discovered Hispaniola, to Spain, and those to the east, including Brazil, to Portugal. A similar carve-up later took place between Rome and the two Kingdoms, of newly discovered lands in the eastern hemisphere. Henry Ergas is a national treasure. Is there any topic on which he might be speechless?

John McHarg, Maylands, WA

Henry Ergas provides a masterly contextual balance to the modern-day accounts of Western society’s alleged historical sins. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has dutifully fallen in line with today’s First Nations narrative in its Doctrine of Discovery apology, which blurs the reality of older modern history. Ergas is right; the fair and just “res nullius” legal principles of our Western justice heritage law have been eroded in our society since the 20th century.

John Bell, Heidelberg Heights, Vic

The commentary by Henry Ergas is another revelation of what we can learn from the past. The moral and legal debates over displacing earlier occupiers of land have clearly raged for centuries, at least back to Roman times when two years of residence gave a person ownership of land. Even now, looking back to pre-colonial Australia, ownership of land must have changed dramatically as the surface area of the country has almost halved since the last glacial maximum thousands of years ago.

In 1889, the Privy Council decided that British common law applied in NSW which was “practically unoccupied” prior to 1788. That legal position was accepted until 1992. We have come a long way since then, but steps towards sovereignty, especially those outlined in the Uluru Statement, cannot undo the past. There are more practical ways to “close the gap”.

Ian Wilson, Chapel Hill, Qld