00:00What are the myths that surround the immigration debate?
00:02There's always myths about immigration, so that migrants are taking jobs away from Australians.
00:08And let's look at one of the biggest, which is housing, and the housing crisis that we
00:12have.
00:13And just to look at really the perhaps the critical period of 21, 23, when we did not
00:19have a lot of migrants arrivals in Australia, because we had lockdown, almost complete lockdown.
00:26Even during those years, we still had problems with housing, we still had problems with rental.
00:31So clearly there is no direct correlation between migrants and the housing crisis, which
00:38of course has other contributing factors.
00:40When you look at the overall migration program, the largest component is always the temporary
00:47migrants.
00:48Those kind of arrivals tend to live in small flats, they crowded, sharing, etc, to reduce
00:56cost.
00:57That is not what is really in demand in terms of the broader population.
01:02They want proper rental supplies, they want proper accommodation supplies.
01:08Australia is a migration nation.
01:10We would not have the Australia that we have today, with its socio-cultural fabric, with
01:14its economic prosperity, without migration.
01:17By and large, Australians have favourable opinions towards migration.
01:22It's more than three quarters in 2024, thought that migration is a good thing for Australia.
01:27It's only when migration becomes weaponised politically, that we have a conversation that
01:34becomes driven by disinformation, by things that have nothing to do with migration as
01:40we know it in terms of either systems and technical infrastructure, or migration that
01:45impacts social, cultural and economic domains.
01:47The main thing to remember is that migration doesn't lead to more security threats, it's
01:53not the main contributor to some of the key challenges that we have in our society, including
01:58housing for instance, or unemployment or inflation, but it needs still to be able to be debated
02:05and people need to be able to articulate their views on migration.
02:09So that's the kind of conversation we need to be having.
02:11What does our economy require that migration programmes can actually contribute to?
02:18In what ways can we turn migration into a net positive contributor to our economic,
02:24social and cultural well-being?
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