Labor True Believers, Political Analysis and Satire

ONE NATION’S FUNDING GAP

One Nation’s promise to repair Victoria’s finances while cutting taxes faces a multibillion-dollar funding gap, with identified savings insufficient to cover even one of its major proposed tax cuts, The Age reports.

The party is campaigning for the November 28 Victorian election on a platform of lower taxes, cheaper housing, increased law-and-order spending and rebuilding what it describes as the state’s “broken finances”.

But despite promising voters it would be “honest about the numbers” and “tell the truth about what it costs”, One Nation has not published detailed costings for its program.

Its The Real Deal platform promises to wind back increases in land tax, increase the payroll-tax threshold for small businesses and abolish stamp duty on insurance.

The party has separately promised on social media to abolish payroll tax for regional employers.

It also proposes substantial additional spending, including three new magistrates’ courts, 30 additional magistrates, a 24-hour bail court, increased funding for prosecutors and Legal Aid lawyers and sign-on bonuses aimed at attracting experienced police.

One Nation says savings would come principally from cancelling the Suburban Rail Loop and repealing Victoria’s treaty with First Peoples.

Independent Parliamentary Budget Office costings, however, indicate those measures would not generate enough money to fund the party’s tax promises.

The PBO previously examined cancelling the first $34.5 billion stage of the Suburban Rail Loop after Libertarian MP David Limbrick proposed the same measure.

It found cancellation would initially cost the budget $618 million before producing savings of about $5.5 billion across the forward estimates.

Separate PBO modelling prepared for the Liberal Party estimated that repealing Victoria’s treaty legislation and winding up the associated Gellung Warl governance structure would save another $342 million.

Together, those measures would generate savings of just under $6 billion over the forward estimates.

But abolishing stamp duty on insurance alone would remove considerably more revenue.

Victorian Treasury forecasts show insurance duties are expected to raise about $2.35 billion this financial year and approximately $10 billion across the forward estimates.

That means the savings from cancelling the rail project and repealing the treaty would fall about $4 billion short of replacing the revenue lost from that single tax change.

That calculation comes before accounting for One Nation’s proposed land and payroll tax reductions or its additional spending commitments.

Another quantifiable saving is a pledge to reduce public-sector wage expenditure by $1 billion over four years by fully implementing recommendations from former senior public servant Helen Silver.

One Nation candidate Mark Nicholson has argued Victoria’s problem is excessive expenditure rather than insufficient revenue and says the party would examine the budget line by line.

Independent economist Saul Eslake said cancelling the Suburban Rail Loop would reduce capital expenditure but have relatively little effect on Victoria’s operating balance.

Eslake supports removing taxes on insurance as an economic reform but says the lost revenue would need to be replaced, potentially through a broadly based property levy.

The questions surrounding One Nation’s arithmetic come as the party records support of about 20 to 25 per cent in published Victorian opinion polls.

Its housing platform also promises to release under-used government land, make it easier to rent granny flats and spare rooms, encourage private investment in lower-cost housing and increase additional duties imposed on foreign property buyers.

One Nation argues rapid population growth driven largely by overseas migration has contributed to rising rents and construction costs.

But major Victorian housing industry organisations dispute important elements of that diagnosis.

The Urban Development Institute of Australia, Housing Industry Association and Master Builders Victoria say reducing taxes and regulatory barriers could help construction, but warn further discouraging foreign investment could instead reduce the supply of new housing.

National Housing Accord figures indicate Victoria is on course to build about 266,000 homes during the next five years, around 36,000 short of its target.

UDIA Victoria chief executive Linda Allison said increasing the foreign-purchaser additional duty could make it harder to attract the investment required for new housing developments.

HIA Victoria executive director Keith Ryan said foreign investors generally cannot buy existing homes and instead help finance new construction, with completed properties subsequently adding to rental supply.

Master Builders Victoria chief executive Michaela Lihou said population growth contributed to housing demand but rising labour, materials and regulatory costs were also constraining supply.

Both Labor and the Liberal opposition have called for election promises to be properly costed.

The central problem for One Nation is therefore not simply whether individual tax cuts or spending measures are desirable.

It is whether its promise to simultaneously cut taxes, increase spending and repair Victoria’s finances can be reconciled with the numbers.

On the independently costed measures currently available, the savings identified by the party do not cover its commitments.

Based on reporting from The Age

Former deputy immigration secretary Abul Rizvi examines the Coalition’s newly announced migration policy and questions whether its headline target of reducing net overseas migration to 100,000 a year is actually achievable.

Drawing on his experience in immigration policy, Rizvi argues the numbers do not add up — particularly while Australia has a strong labour market and the Coalition simultaneously proposes increasing skilled temporary migration.

He concludes the proposed migration numbers are political targets rather than policy targets.
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Angus Taylor’s immigration plan misses the target – on politics and on policy

By Abul Rizvi, The Guardian

The most surprising aspect of the Coalition’s policy is that in six pages of detail there is not a single mention of the labour market

Under pressure to match One Nation’s most recent iteration of its immigration policy of negative net overseas migration (Nom) for three years in a row, Angus Taylor has announced the Coalition’s new Nom target will be 100,000 in its first two years from 2028-29, rising to 130,000 then 160,000 by 2032. That sits conveniently between Labor’s target and One Nation’s.

The most surprising aspect of the Coalition’s announcement is that in six pages of policy detail, for which the opposition should be commended, there is not a single mention of the labour market.

There is no chance a Nom figure of 100,000 a year over two years can be delivered if the labour market remains at around its current state. That is, an unemployment rate of 4.6%, and a participation rate of 67% with about 325,000 job vacancies. The Coalition would be overwhelmed by pressure from the business community to increase its target.

In my experience, the Coalition can never stand up to the business community on immigration levels. It was why it stomped on the immigration accelerator after the lifting of Covid lockdowns by introducing unprecedented reductions in immigration standards that Taylor now says need to be increased. The Coalition kept urging the Labor government to increase immigration levels in the second half of 2022.

Labor was too slow to act on the blowout in Nom in 2022-23 and is now paying the price for pretending it didn’t need to be managed.

The Coalition may point to Canada successfully reducing Nom from well over 1 million in 2023-24 to less than 200,000 in 2025-26. That was driven by a very weak labour market with unemployment about 7% and a falling participation rate in most of 2025. In that weak labour market, Canada massively cut student and temporary worker numbers. It smashed university budgets. But Nom in Canada is now rising strongly as its labour market strengthens.

Massive fluctuations in Nom are never good policy. Business and government agencies need stability and predictability to plan and invest. That includes the housebuilding industry which, without massive government support, will be reluctant to increase housebuilding against the background of an ongoing competition for huge cuts to immigration levels.

That is not to say there aren’t aspects to the Coalition’s announcement that may be necessary. Reducing the humanitarian program from 20,000 to 10,000 is sensible when you consider we are now struggling to provide adequate settlement services to this highly vulnerable cohort. The finding that 90% of refugee kids live their first year in poverty is not the sign of generosity but of policy failure.

It also makes sense to reduce the number of temporary graduate visa holders in Australia as well as the number on bridging visas.

But the claim that the policy will “virtually eliminate bridging visas” from more than 400,000 currently to 20,000 is arrant nonsense. A very large portion of the bridging visa backlog is onshore applications for not just student visas but also parent visas, partner visas and asylum. While some of the Coalition’s and Labor’s tightening of onshore visa applications will help reduce the flow of applications into bridging visas, the bulk of the backlog will remain.

At more than 270,000, there are too many temporary graduates in Australia chasing too few permanent residence places. Labor should have done more to address this. However, the Coalition’s policy of trying to reduce this to 10,000 is going too far.

Temporary graduates are a key feeder group into skilled temporary visas, the regional visa, state and territory-nominated visas and the skilled independent visa. The Coalition is not proposing to cut any of these – indeed, it is proposing to increase skilled temporary visas by over 100,000. If that is the case, it will need to find more people directly from overseas to fill these visa places. More people coming directly from overseas would increase Nom, not reduce it. It would also require a reduction in standards, not the increase Taylor is promising.

The Coalition is proposing to reduce annual student commencements to 245,000 from the government’s national planning level (NPL) of 295,000 in 2026 and 2027. But under Labor’s own policy, with eye-wateringly high levels of student visa refusals, the 295,000 will not be delivered. Essentially, Labor and the Coalition are very close on student visa policy. It’s One Nation’s policies that are more likely to smash the international education industry, forcing taxpayer-funded bailouts of universities and/or huge job losses.

The permanent migration program is to be held at 185,000 a year. That contributes about 75,000 a year to Nom, which the Coalition seems to have not considered.

The Coalition says the number of New Zealand citizens in Australia will increase by 45,000 to 776,600. That would require both continuation of a strong labour market as well as a major contribution of NZ citizens to the Nom of about 35,000 a year. That is because between 20,000 and 30,000 New Zealanders become Australian citizens annually – thus are no longer counted as NZ citizens in Australia.

The large annual contribution to Nom from working holidaymakers is to continue. In 2024-25, that was well over 50,000 which could fall marginally but would largely continue in a strong labour market.

With a strong labour market, there will also be high numbers of Australian citizens returning and fewer leaving although the net contribution to Nom would remain negative.

On its own calculations, the Coalition would not come close to delivering its Nom target of 100,000 in years one and two. Those are political targets, not policy targets.

- Abul Rizvi is a former deputy immigration­ ­secretary

Image - Deputy Leader of the Opposition Jane Hume (left), and Leader of the Opposition Angus Taylor speak to the media during a press conference at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices (CPO), in Sydney, Tuesday, October 6, 2026. (AAP Image/Bianca De Marchi) NO ARCHIVING Source: AAP / BIANCA DE MARCHI/AAPIMAGE

From The Point

New questions over security failures before attempted attack on Israel-bound flight

New details about the attempted seizure of an Israel-bound FlyDubai aircraft have raised questions about security failures in both the United Arab Emirates and Israel, after it emerged the co-pilot accused of attacking the captain had previously been barred from flying in Oman.

The Omani co-pilot, identified by officials as Hamam al-Hammami, allegedly attacked the Indian captain of FlyDubai Flight 1073 with a cockpit crash axe and attempted to take control of the aircraft as it plunged sharply over Saudi Arabia.

The flight, carrying 182 people, mostly Israelis, was travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv when the incident occurred.

The wounded captain managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers and others aboard to overpower the co-pilot and help regain control of the aircraft before it made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.

The United Arab Emirates, which is leading the investigation, has described the incident as an attempted terrorist attack. Investigators are still examining the co-pilot’s motive and whether he acted alone or had connections with extremist organisations.

It has now emerged that al-Hammami had previously been prevented from flying for Oman Air because of concerns about extremist views.

He was reportedly transferred to an administrative position before leaving Oman Air and later being employed by UAE-based FlyDubai.

A Gulf diplomat told the Associated Press the co-pilot underwent standard security checks before being hired, but those checks appeared to focus on criminal convictions rather than a more extensive examination for indications of radicalisation.

It remains unclear whether FlyDubai or Emirati authorities were informed about the concerns that had led Oman Air to remove him from flying duties.

The revelations have also raised questions about Israel’s own security procedures.

Regional officials told AP that UAE authorities provided Israel with information about the flight’s passengers and crew before departure, including their nationalities, as part of standard aviation procedures.

Israel raised no warning about the co-pilot or anyone else aboard the aircraft.

That is significant because al-Hammami was an Omani citizen and Oman does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel has longstanding agreements with foreign airlines preventing pilots who are citizens of countries without diplomatic relations with Israel from operating flights into the country.

It remains unclear why that restriction did not prevent an Omani national from serving as co-pilot on the Tel Aviv-bound flight.

Israel’s Transportation Ministry and domestic security agency Shin Bet have since disagreed publicly over responsibility for the screening failure.

The Transportation Ministry says security agencies are responsible for aviation security, while the Shin Bet says responsibility for checking passenger lists from foreign flights rests with the ministry.

Israel’s head of aviation security has said authorities rely heavily on security procedures in the country from which a foreign flight departs and do not have the capacity to conduct individual background investigations on everyone aboard.

Netanyahu has ordered a review of all security arrangements governing foreign civilian flights into Israel.

The new information adds another layer to an incident that initially produced conflicting accounts about what occurred aboard the aircraft.

It is not yet established whether Israeli authorities knew that Oman had previously prevented al-Hammami from flying, and there is no evidence they were provided with that information.

But Israel apparently did know something much more basic before the aircraft departed: the co-pilot was an Omani national. Under Israel’s own stated security arrangements, that fact alone should have raised a red flag.

Australian counter-terrorism authorities are also examining the co-pilot’s previous connections to Australia, where he spent time as a student.

With additional reportingAAP

The Coalition has unveiled what it calls the biggest cut to migration in Australia’s history, including sharply reducing net overseas migration and temporary visas.

Writing in The Conversation, migration expert Alan Gamlen examines the assumptions underpinning the policy and argues several of its central claims are based on false premises.
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The Coalition’s migration policy rests on a series of false premises

- Alan Gamlen, The Conversation

Following months of discussions and partial announcements, Liberal leader Angus Taylor has unveiled the Coalition’s migration policy, including the “biggest cut to immigration in the history of this country”. One Nation and the government got in first, announcing their plans last month.

If elected in 2028, the Coalition has pledged to cut net overseas migration (called “NOM”) to 100,000 annually in their first two years of government. Currently, annual NOM is around 292,000.

The Coalition’s plan would also see a crackdown on visa-hopping, the abolition of temporary graduate visas and the number of new arrivals capped by housing completions – a measure the party had announced previously.

On the whole, the plan is based on a series of false or highly questionable premises. Let’s break down five of them.

Myth 1: Labor has ‘lost control’ of migration

The policy is based on the false premise that Labor has lost control of migration.

Migration globally has been unusually volatile since the pandemic.

But that pattern has been repeated across much of the rich world. Has the Australian Labor government also lost control of migration in Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Estonia?

Clearly that makes no sense. Yet those countries have experienced broadly similar post-pandemic migration patterns.

So this is not simply a story of one government “losing control”. It is a story of migration systems still working through the consequences of an extraordinary global shock.

Myth 2: changing NOM will fix the problem

The Coalition’s policy is also based on the premise that a much lower net overseas migration target will fix the situation.

Net Overseas Migration, or NOM, is a rough measure of overall migration, but it can be confusing because it’s calculated by subtracting departures from arrivals.

That means NOM can rise in two ways: because arrivals increase, or because departures decrease.

Most people assume Australia’s high NOM since the pandemic has primarily been caused by more people arriving.

That is misleading. The main contribution to unusually high NOM has instead been unusually low departures.

We have had low departures because, like other rich countries, Australia granted extensions and relaxations to temporary visas during the pandemic. The effects of those changes have not yet fully worked their way through the migration system. Some will take years to unwind.

These measures began under the Coalition and some were continued or extended under Labor. Finger-pointing doesn’t get us very far.

Under a NOM target, it doesn’t matter whether governments reduce arrivals or increase departures: either approach can bring the headline number down. The problem is that only one of those approaches directly addresses the current distortion.

If we cut arrivals to solve what is substantially a departures problem, we risk swallowing the spider to catch the fly. The solution may fail to fix the underlying problem while creating several new ones.

Myth 3: being tough on migration is good politics

The United Kingdom pursued a migration crackdown in the years leading up to the Brexit referendum.

Under David Cameron, the Conservatives promised to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands”.

They knew from their own modelling they would miss their own target. But politically, sounding tough on migration served an important purpose.

At the same time, British businesses and universities did not want severe migration caps.

The Conservatives therefore faced an internal contradiction: they needed tough rhetoric to satisfy the anti-globalisation wing of their party while remaining sufficiently open to migration to satisfy business.

There is an obvious parallel here with the tensions between sections of Australia’s business community and parties such as One Nation.

When the Conservatives repeatedly missed their promised migration targets, however, that failure contributed to a widespread perception government had “lost control” of migration.

That perception became central to the Brexit campaign’s promise to “take back control”.

Most Britons now say Brexit was a mistake. Would Brexit have happened without the politically convenient but misleading net migration targets Cameron adopted? We’ll never know.

But Australia should learn from the experience.

Myth 4: migration and housing have a simple relationship

The Coalition’s policy also rests on a dubious premise about the relationship between migration and housing.

It says it will “cap net overseas migration each year below the number of new homes completed”.

But what exactly does that mean?

It is certainly not the case that every new migrant requires one new house.

The housing needs of migrants depend on where they live, how long they stay, the purpose of their stay, their age and household composition, among many other things. Australia has hundreds of different visa categories and circumstances. Changing the composition of migration can therefore have very different effects from simply changing the headline number.

There is clearly a relationship between migration and housing. But it’s not the simplistic one-to-one relationship the Coalition’s policy implies.

Australia’s current housing crisis has many causes that have accumulated over decades. Migration is one piece of that puzzle, and it operates on both the demand and supply sides of the housing system.

Population growth creates demand for more housing. But Australia will also struggle to overcome its existing housing shortage without migration supplying workers throughout the construction and housing supply chain.

Recent movements in property prices also underline the danger of treating migration as the dominant explanation for everything happening in housing. Housing markets respond to tax settings, interest rates, credit conditions, construction costs, land supply and many other factors.

In a few years, the habit of lumping migration and the housing crisis together as though they were the same problem may look increasingly strange.

Myth 5: signing a ‘values statement’ will keep people safer

Other elements of the Coalition’s migration policy look more like political symbolism than serious migration policy. One example of this is the requirement that new arrivals sign a “values statement” as a binding condition to get a visa.

Requiring migrants to sign a values statement is rather like Facebook asking users to read its terms and conditions. Almost nobody reads such documents carefully, even when they fully intend to follow the rules.

Signing a statement is not what makes someone internalise Australian values. That happens through experience: by living in this country, through adapting to Australian institutions and social norms, and through developing a sense of connection and belonging to local communities.

That process is more likely to occur when newcomers experience a warm welcome, support while adapting and an eventual sense that they belong. It’s less likely when they experience hostility and exclusion.

Consider an example that Liberal leader Angus Taylor has repeatedly raised. Asking Sajid Akram to sign a values statement would not have prevented the Bondi massacre.

To understand acts of this kind, we need to examine what happened after arrival. We need to ask how someone who had lived in Australia for around a quarter of a century, and had an Australian child, could come to feel such violent hatred not only towards Jews but towards the Australian society in which he had built his life.

That is a much harder question than asking somebody to sign a piece of paper. And it’s exactly the kind of question serious migration and integration policy needs to confront.

𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐔𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞
By Giles Parkinson for Renew Economy

A 470 megawatt (MW) wind project in Western Australia has become the latest to reach financial close and give the go-ahead for construction, the ninth to do so since the wind investment drought was ended late last year, and the biggest in Australia in more than two years.

The Parron Maam Marang project is owned by Atmos Renewables, and is being built in the wind-rich wheatbelt region about 200 kms north of Perth, and is benefiting from a power purchase deal with the state government owned retailer Synergy.

The announcement on reaching FiD was revealed by W.A. energy minister Amber-Jade Sanderson on Friday. Atmos was not available for comment as it was said to be preparing for a bigger and broader announcement.

Read more:- https://reneweconomy.com.au/biggest-wind-farm-in-two-years-reaches-financial-close-the-ninth-in-last-12-months/

THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM — COALITION DECLARES WAR ON MIGRATION

Well, it didn't take long.

With Jane Hume standing beside him wearing that familiar dreamy look, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has made one thing perfectly clear: the Coalition is determined to win the race to the bottom when it comes to immigration — and One Nation is setting the pace.

The Coalition has announced plans to slash net overseas migration from almost 300,000 a year to around 100,000 in its first year in government, describing it as the biggest reduction in migration in Australian history.

And that's only the beginning.

The Coalition is also promising a "border blitz" that could see tens of thousands of unlawful non-citizens rounded up and deported, reviving a former Home Affairs function.

Of course, the Coalition insists this bears little resemblance to the sort of immigration crackdowns being pursued in the United States.

Australians can make up their own minds about that.

What is particularly remarkable is that Angus Taylor's 100,000 target is actually more generous than One Nation's proposal for net negative migration of 130,000.

In other words, the Coalition isn't merely responding to One Nation.

It's chasing it.

The political message is becoming increasingly difficult to miss.

One Nation says immigration is the problem.

The Coalition says immigration is the problem — just not quite as much as One Nation says it is.

And somewhere in the middle, Australian businesses are scratching their heads and asking the rather obvious question:

Who is going to fill the jobs?

Employer groups have already warned that drastic cuts to migration could worsen workforce shortages at a time when many industries are struggling to find workers.

Australia needs a sensible migration system — one that is properly planned, targeted at genuine skills shortages, protects Australian wages and conditions, and ensures infrastructure keeps pace with population growth.

What Australia doesn't need is a political auction where parties compete to see who can promise the biggest cuts.

Because once immigration policy becomes nothing more than a competition to capture voters from One Nation, economic reality tends to get left somewhere at the back of the queue.

The Coalition has apparently decided that the road back to government runs through the One Nation voter.

The question is whether, in trying to win those votes, it ends up abandoning the millions of Australians who understand that migration has been an important part of Australia's economic success.

The race to the bottom is officially underway.

And Angus Taylor appears determined to win it.

THE NATIONAL HERALD
Independent political commentary — because someone has to say what everyone else is thinking.

Welcome to the Gronkocracy: How smart institutions become intellectually stupid

Writing in New Politics, David Lewis uses the Reserve Bank’s latest interest-rate rise to examine a broader problem: how institutions filled with intelligent, highly qualified people can become intellectually narrow.

Lewis questions whether suppressing domestic demand through higher interest rates is the appropriate response when some inflation is being driven by factors Australian monetary policy cannot control, including disrupted oil supplies, energy costs and international events. Higher mortgage repayments cannot produce more oil, he argues, while increased financing costs can make Australia’s housing shortage harder to address.

Drawing a contrast with Australia’s response to the Global Financial Crisis, when governments used monetary and fiscal policy, regulation and public investment together, Lewis argues institutions can lose their capacity to consider different solutions as accepted methods become entrenched.

He calls this a “gronkocracy” — not rule by unintelligent people, but by capable, credentialled people who become too comfortable with established assumptions and processes.

His proposed antidote is not replacing experts with amateurs or contrarians, but creating greater “intellectual friction”: expertise accompanied by curiosity, doubt and people prepared to ask whether a sophisticated answer actually addresses the real-world problem.

Read David’s article https://open.substack.com/pub/newpolitics/p/welcome-to-the-gronkocracy-how-smart?r=52pnv&utm_medium=ios