aquascoot wrote on Jul 16^th, 2026 at 8:48am:


What % would be here working to pay tax?

A much larger % of the imports are uneducated, unskilled, can't speak English & welfare & govt housing dependent.

aquascoot wrote on Jul 16^th, 2026 at 9:16am:


By generating public service support jobs.  Which is what is hapening now - the public service is soaking up employment.



And most 'skilled migrants' are nothing of the sort.



If we look at net migrant arrivals, skilled visa holders only make up 23 per cent of Australia’s new migrants. If more than half of those so-called ‘skilled’ visa holders are, in fact, just dependants of people with skills – as is the case with the permanent skilled visa holders – then genuinely skilled migrants are actually only about 11 per cent of our annual net intake.

Of that already small cohort, many are: retail managers, graphic designers, and beauticians. All are considered ‘skilled’ by the federal government’s official list. The list of skilled workers even includes salesmen and call centre managers.

Only a very small number of that already small percentage of new migrants are mining engineers, physicians, mathematicians, architects, and educators – people with the most commercially valuable skills needed in Australia’s most critical sectors.

This is not to say that retail workers and call centre operators do not have important jobs; they absolutely do. But competency in their roles do not require years of structured study and the most rigorous training.

Rather than looking overseas to import these skills, the federal government can simply remove the financial disincentives that punish pensioners, students, and veterans for contributing more of their time and valuable skills to the labour market.

IPA Research Fellow Saxon Davidson noted:

‘Australian pensioners and veterans still face an effective marginal tax rate of 66 per cent should they earn over $226 per week. This occurs as a 50 per cent claw back is applied to their pension for every dollar earnt over $226, with normal tax rates on top. Similarly, students face an effective marginal tax rate of 76 per cent should they earn over $288 a week.’

Moreover, troublesome reporting requirements present an additional barrier to labour market participation for benefit recipients.

So, while hundreds of thousands of Australians are effectively being locked out of paid employment, the federal government is looking overseas to fill Australia’s skill shortages.

But it gets even worse.

Many of the engineers, physicians, and educators that are granted skilled permanent visas did not come to Australia carrying those skills with them.

They came to Australia unskilled – as international students, used Australia’s domestic resources to develop their skills (at Australian universities), and then applied to become skilled permanent residents.
https://ipa.org.au/research/australian-way-of-life/were-we-lied-to-about-skilled...

When Australia closed its borders during the pandemic, labour productivity skyrocketed, rising 4.2 per cent between the March quarters of 2020 and 2022. Over the course of this period, not only was net migration effectively zero, highly productive Australian expats returned home with their skills and contributed to Australia’s productivity boom.

When borders reopened, productivity swiftly collapsed. Between the March quarter of 2022 and the end of the 2023 financial year, labour productivity fell by more than 5.0 per cent. Since then, productivity has stagnated.

The largest contributor to this unprecedented productivity collapse has been the massive influx of unskilled and low-skilled migrants, who are the foundation of Australia’s migration programme. A skills-focused migration system would not have produced such perverse economic outcome.

Setanta wrote on Jul 15^th, 2026 at 7:50pm:


I have not claimed to be a billionaire. And I hardly claim that living in a house owned by relatives is a super help to me. If only Centrelink paid me the full amount instead of means income testing me to give me about half of the full payment. Even Centrelink workers have admitted that I get sweet f.a. in Centrelink payments, when the Centrelink workers are seeing welfare payments to the protected species 2 to 3 times what I get, and without any mutual obligations.

I don't know what easy life you have had, but you are obviously spoiled. Not everyone had an easy life like you. And had you lived a rich life (even $100,000+ per year) you would have not bothered posting on ozpolitic. In fact, you would not have this idea that a billionaire would be eager to move home to avoid paying tax.

I don't consider myself lonely. I probably have been laid more times this year than you have in your life.

Gnads wrote on Jul 16^th, 2026 at 8:58am:


The people of London and New York are not idiots. They don't get tricked into promises so easily that even a child would call it out. Likely, the electorate would have looked at the alternative candidates and voted on what was best. If they were that sore about someone's religion, both Muslim candidates would have been rejected.

Gnads wrote on Jul 16^th, 2026 at 9:10am:


Setanta is exposed as the imbecile who does not know how the world works. He also has little idea about human psychology -- particularly about people who only do as much as they need for their purposes.

thegreatdivide wrote on Jul 16^th, 2026 at 3:38pm:


Rich people tend to pay more tax on their incomes in a year than those who are impoverished. If my boss had to pay a higher tax rate, there is a likelihood that I would not be getting the hours that I do.

A surgeon has been found guilty of professional misconduct and barred from practising medicine for six months after she failed to detect cancer in one patient and operated on the wrong end of the bowel of another.

The New South Wales civil and administrative tribunal considered the treatment of 13 patients by Dr Liu-Ming Schmidt, finding her management of them fell significantly below reasonable standards.



Skilled migration....