With all the talk about Australia’s migration “issue”, there is one question that has remained noticeably absent.

What problem are we solving?

It’s not jobs. Right now, 63.9 per cent of adults have a job, which includes those retired and not looking for work. In December 2019, that number was 62.4 per cent, so we can’t claim the MAGA line of immigrants are “taking our jobs”.

It’s also not as though there has been a sudden solution to Australia’s skill shortages – in 2025, 29 per cent of occupations were considered to be in shortage, compared to 33 per cent in 2024. So there has been a slight drop but nothing that would cause this level of national attention.

Two minutes ago, migrants were being blamed for Australia’s unaffordable housing market, but now that there has been a slight drop suddenly that narrative has been dropped (by the way – that “drop” is just 0.3 per cent down in the past quarter. No matter what the headlines are telling you, the housing market in Australia has not seen any major returns to affordability, and is still up from where it was last year – by about 8 per cent – but that’s not the story critics of the federal budget changes want told). It’s no longer about house prices.

There has been a switch to a focus on rents, which is a more complicated story – one in which interest rates plays a major role. But that’s also because while the house price slowdown is welcomed by most punters not connected to a real estate group, rents are biting the government, and that’s something people will happily blame the tax changes for (despite........

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