Time and again I have suspected there was something fishy about our politicians spouting about the ‘obvious’ benefits of high migration levels and strong population growth. Maybe that is because I experienced exactly that for years in Britain under Tony Blair, and the only noticeable results were negative – shortage of housing, increased competition for the Health Service which resulted in  longer waiting times for hospital treatment, increased welfare uptake, longer traffic jams and social strife caused by the Muslims refusing to integrate, many of whom would not even speak English and so could not work.

The pollies make it sound good – more workers pay more tax, and our GDP goes up, but they hope that we will not notice that these are only the gross figures, not per capita . Actually when that is taken into account tax payable per head goes down, as does production.

But now, Infrastructure Australia has put a figure on the increased costs of this migration – 300,000 people per year. The agency calculates this rapid growth will cost $55 billion to keep up with the increasing population’s needs in the next 15 years. That does not include health care, welfare, schooling, policing and other additional government services, for some immigrants make additional demands beyond the average Australian.

The Agency also predicts the population of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane will reach 30 million in the next 60 years. Since 1990 Australia’s population has increased by 40% ! That is higher than for most countries – double the rate in the US says the World Bank. In the year 2016-2017 Australia’s population increased by 388,100, or 32,341 per month. That far outstrips the 20,000 jobs expected to be added each month, so no wonder wages have not risen.

And yet when Tony Abbott suggested reducing the immigration rate the pollies were lining up to slam his suggestion, with traitorous Scott Morrison claiming his plan would cost the economy $5 billion over 4 years.

He quite ignored the additional government spending required to maintain the current intake, as we have seen. His assistant, Matthias Cormann added,  “To criticise the experts and say someone who is not an expert knows better is not the right approach”.

Maybe not the right approach for the pollies, but for other Australians it sounds rather like the wise recognition of a variation on a Ponzi scheme, which will only result in falling standards all round.

Proverbs 14:8, ‘The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way: but the folly of fools is deceit.‘  King James 2000 Bible.