Frank wrote on May 20
th, 2025 at 11:43am:
ProudKangaroo wrote on May 20
th, 2025 at 10:08am:
You've just unwittingly validated my argument.
For over two decades, Coalition governments, both federal and state, systematically gutted TAFE funding. The result? A decimated pipeline for construction apprenticeships and other critical trades, leading directly to the skilled labour shortfall we're now scrambling to address. These are the consequences of the policies you supported by voting for the Coalition (or at least against Labor).
You backed the very governments that sabotaged the local workforce, and now you're clutching your pearls over the migration levels required to plug the gap your side created.
You opposed Albanese's 2022 and 2025 efforts to restore TAFE through increased investment and fee-free training. You sneered at long-term solutions because they didn’t offer instant gratification. But rebuilding the skilled workforce takes time, and political will. Labor has shown both. Their plan funds 100,000 fee-free TAFE places annually from 2027, on top of the half a million places delivered between 2023 and 2026 through a $1.5 billion joint initiative.
Unless you preference Labor over the Coalition, you voted against all of this. So spare us the performative outrage.
You're living in the economic reality your votes helped shape. The high migration numbers you grumble about? They're a band-aid for the structural rot you helped entrench. And if you're unwilling to support the policies that actually address the problem, policies your camp fought tooth and nail to block, then you're another bitter reactionary yelling at clouds as a disguise for your bigotry.
If the real issue for you is that migrants are "tinted" then call it what it is, racism. But don’t expect the rest of us to indulge your delusions while you actively undermine the only credible solutions on offer.
I am not in favour of reducing vocational training, never have been. There is a huge amount of snobbery in Australia about degrees versus trades which doesnt exist so markedly, if at all, in Scandinavia and northern Europe. I have been against Gillard's latte lefty uncapped university funding, channeling young people into useless undergraduate courses regardless of academic ability. So if the Lib side of the Uniparty buggered vocational education by cutting funding, the Labor side of the Uniparty buggered higher education by expanding it to thickos. (Generally speaking, Labor's school curricula pave the way for overall degradation of education)
Thank you. I'm sure it took a lot to admit that you supported the party that defunded TAFE and led to a massive shortfall in trades, one of the gigantic contributors to our current housing crisis putting upward pressure on migration levels and downward pressure due to the cost of living etc, on our birthrate, which again puts upward pressure on our migration levels.
You're so close to understanding the issue better.
So close...
Quote:There is no economic reason for massive immigration into developed countries, no matter the source countries.
There "shouldn't" be an economic reason, however in the current landscape, again shaped by policies of the party you have chosen to trust your vote to, we are.
As I've asked a few times,
ProudKangaroo wrote on May 19
th, 2025 at 10:35am:
surely you can acknowledge this: we can’t just pull the plug on immigration without crashing the economy, given how dependent it’s become on constant inflows of people.
Australia’s fertility rate has hovered around or below 1.6 for decades. We need a TFR of 2.1 just to replace ourselves, let alone grow the population in line with the demands of our GDP-obsessed economic model.
So here’s the question, can we at least agree on that? That without immigration, the entire system starts to buckle? Or are we going to pretend the maths doesn’t matter because it’s inconvenient?
Can we at least agree on that? Start on some common ground?
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