Category: Economics

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, Cultural Marxism, Economics, Free Speech, General, Jihad, Religion

Eventually, our decline becomes difficult to wilfully ignore. On a personal level, the inability to fit into a favourite pair of trousers is a harsh and obvious indicator of change.

At a national level, articles such as this are a sign we’ve lost our confidence and have done a deal with those who wish us harm.

There is an undercurrent of racism about the negative coverage of Qatar during the World Cup, the first to be held in a Muslim nation.

Western sensitivities around banning alcohol, homosexuality and demands around worker’s rights have a ring of moral colonialism.

Does it? Sensitivities?

That second sentence smuggles the concepts of killing migrant workers through negligence and jailing gays in the conversation under the cover of our differences over alcohol. Moral colonialism indeed.

Dr Tanveer Ahmed goes on to equate dressing as a crusader with wearing Nazi uniforms.

Again, really?

Can you name another culture in the world that would invite immigrants to their country and then provide column inches for such self-loathing in their national newspaper?

Would China allow it? Nigeria? Qatar? Argentina? Singapore? I don’t think so.

Here’s another article to consider, bemoaning the decline of New Zealand, particularly in the quality of its education. The statistics comparing it to Singapore are damning. Even if the Kiwis woke up to the problem today, it’s a multi-generational effort to reverse the decline.

In the UK, we talk of a managed decline since the days of empire, a melancholy acceptance of a slow fall down the world rankings since the war.

It’s worse than that though, as the title of this article infers; “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly”, is how a Hemingway character describes his process to bankruptcy. Perhaps we are in the suddenly stage of our cultural decline.

Britain has been here before, of course. A thousand years ago, we had this pathetic notion of paying off the Vikings to leave us alone, the Danegeld.

But, as Rudyard Kipling wrote, “…once you have paid him the Danegeld, You never get rid of the Dane.“

We’ve lost our cultural self-confidence and now our guilt over the past is preventing us from progressing in the future.

Those who would do us harm have noticed this and, like Dr Tanveer Ahmed, they are keen to exploit our insecurities.

Also, as Douglas Murray points out in The War on the West, many of those who would do us harm are us. We’re doing it to ourselves.

Cultural relativism doesn’t stand up to historic or logical scrutiny.

For example, murdering wives on their husband’s funeral pyre is not just an aspect of culture, it’s immoral. Fortunately, those nasty colonial British were culturally insensitive enough to ban it. It’s not clear whether Dr Tanveer Ahmed thinks this was an intervention too far.

Slavery has been the default condition in every human culture forever. The first time in history it was banned was 1833.

When did Dr Tanveer Ahmed’s culture ban slavery? Well, if he identifies with the Islamic world, not until the 20th century. Perhaps he would prefer to identify with the country of his birth, Bangladesh. If so, maybe he could visit some clothing factories there and let us know his findings.

Bill’s Opinion

My Christian faith is not particularly strong, but I’m very grateful for the benefits accrued to me by those who came before us with that strength of faith. Perhaps I am a cultural Christian.

The Victorians had a concept of “muscular Christianity” underpinning much of their global endeavours. We could cynically suggest it was convenient to have a justification of morality to explain why they imposed Common Law on the colonies, but Indian widows benefit from it today, nonetheless.

We’ve since replaced our faith with atheism and lost our confidence in the superiority of our culture along the way.

How do we reverse this cultural decline? are we too late?

Perhaps we could make stronger counter arguments to the cultural relativists. Maybe it’s time for us to seek our own reparations; the abolition of the global slave trade cost Britain dearly.

We not only had to pay compensation to the slave owners but the Royal Navy acted as the oceanic police for a century to close down the trade, both in the Atlantic and the Indian oceans.

There are people alive today in Britain who lost family members at sea in battles with slavers and the entire British economy had a brake on progress during that time, relative to those nations that were late in banning the trade.

If a politician could show their working to calculate a figure, they’d get my vote if they vowed to send some invoices to other countries. Let’s get that dialogue started, rather than taking domestic lectures from Bangladeshis on the negative impact of colonialism.

Are you a “blue collar worker” in Australia?

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, Economics, General, Incentives Matter

Are you worried about your job security or wages growth relative to your domestic outgoings?

Did you vote Labor (sic) at the last general election?

If you answered “yes” to both of those questions, consider the possibility you’re a bit of an idiot.

Don’t get me wrong, my opinion is that voting is a diversionary tactic to prevent us from forming lynch mobs and distributing instant righteous justice to politicians.

However, voting for a party that was always going to open the immigration spigots just as the country was hitting 40 year highs in inflation is nothing short of an act of self-harm. Do you practise bulimia too?

Perfect economic storm to hit Australia 2023.

To be fair, the article is written by Leith van Onsolen, a man even more famous than me for predicting 17 of the last zero housing crashes in Australia, so caveat emptor. The difference between us is, the economy isn’t my career expertise unlike LvO.

At the same time as the economy will slow in response to the RBA’s aggressive monetary tightening, Australia’s labour supply will grow sharply in 2023 on the back of record-high net overseas migration (NOM).

A key reason why Australia’s unemployment has fallen to its lowest level since 1974 is because Australia lost hundreds of thousands of migrants over the pandemic. Therefore, many of the jobs created went to unemployed Australians rather than migrant workers.

Record high net overseas migration is going to cause economic stress for Australian workers?

If only there was a lever someone, anyone could pull to influence that. Bueller, anyone?

Bill’s Opinion

Since becoming an Australian citizen, I have never exercised my right (legal duty, actually) to cast a vote. I’ve simply not appreciated the false choice offered me.

The “unaparty” choice became all the more apparent in Covid time when the only difference between the two major parties was who would lock us down earlier and harder.

If I were to vote though, I’d be highly suspicious of a party claiming to be for the working class whilst overseeing a return to immigration at exactly the same time a four decades record slowdown and interest rate shock arrives.

There is one member of the Australian left who gets it though; (National) Socialist, Sally McManus, head of the ACTU.

Wendyball’s revealed versus expressed preferences

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, Cultural Marxism, Economics, General, Identity Politics, Incentives Matter

As I regularly tell my kids, don’t listen to what people say, pay more attention to what they do.

The Wendyball World Cup is about to kick off in Qatar. Millions of dollars will be spent on mysteriously expensive, nasty nylon replica national shirts, manufactured on the cheap in Asian factories.

If the merchandise supply chain of the competing national sporting bodies has no modern slavery issues, perhaps we might look at the labour practices of the host nation, Qatar.

According to the Guardian, reprinted by SBS, perhaps 6,500 foreign workers died in the construction of the stadia, infrastructure and general upgrades in the country.

To be fair to Qatar for a moment, the Guardian wouldn’t be my go to media source for any story involving integers greater than ten, as they spent the last three years trying to convince us a bad cold had a case fatality rate equivalent to the Black Death.

So let’s split the difference; say, about 3,000 died. What did they die of? Cardiovascular and respiratory issues. i.e. heatstroke. Unsurprising considering it’s still 35 degrees in the middle of the night there.

Also, the Qatari labour laws give employers rights over the workers that would make a Medieval king blush. Employers can prevent immigrant labourers from switching jobs and can cancel residency permits. Don’t like the working conditions? How about I send you home to Bangladesh tomorrow?

The Qatari treatment of the Wi-fi password people also falls well short of the western standard of acceptance and celebration. It’s illegal to be homosexual in Qatar.

So, as you can imagine, the international outrage has been intense and the coordinated responses have been significant and tangible, in line with earlier precedents such as those against the 1980 Moscow Olympics following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan or the global response to South Africa’s Apartheid regime.

A reminder of those two precedents; 66 countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and South Africa had pariah status on the international sports stage for several decades. In fact, the boycott gifted New Zealand their first rugby World Cup win in 1987.

So, as we’ve mentioned, equivalent boycotts are currently planned in response to, effectively, working to death several thousand dirt poor men from the sub-continent and jailing gay men and women.

Well, when when say boycotts, what we mean is the cities of Barcelona and Paris aren’t going to put up a big screen in a park. Spain and France are still sending their teams.

Australia have gone much further than most countries though, as you would expect from a country never shy to bask in the cheap glory of virtue signalling; the team made a video condemning Qatar.

Some commentators have described this as “powerful”. Obviously, it’s not as powerful as staying home and sitting the competition out, but we are sure the next batch of Bangladeshis to be worked to death this month appreciate the thought.

Although it’s fair to accuse the Australian wendyballers of not really caring enough about dead Asians or jailed homosexuals to skip a World Cup, they at least can’t be called hypocrites; it looks like Football Australia haven’t yet got round to filing a statement declaring their supply chain is free of slavery issues. (To see quite how pointless the register is anyway, read our previous post about it).

Interestingly, the domestic football code, Australians Rules Football, has filed one. It’s obviously a lot easier to be sure you’re clean if you don’t get to play overseas.

FIFA is headquartered in Switzerland. My preferred search engine isn’t showing a Swiss government modern slavery register. Hands up who isn’t surprised.

Bill’s Opinion

Remember all those players kneeling on the ground in countries around the world after the death of Saint George Floyd? That was because something something black lives.

What colour are Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Nepali and Indian construction workers after a 12 hour shift in 50 degree heat?

We don’t take directions from the moral compass of soccer players for a very good reason. They are happy to spend a hashtag here and half an hour to make a video there, but missing out on a pay day is a cost they aren’t prepared to pay.

Oh, and ironically, Football Australia has a policy and protocol about playing in extreme heat. Shame it doesn’t apply to the building of the stadia the team plays in.

How many shoes will drop?

Billy/ / China Flu, Economics, General, Too much government, Whither Democracy, Whither Government?

Let’s count them, shall we?

Transitory inflation.

Not so much.

Vaccines stop the spread?

Not so much.

Scientific evidence supported the lockdown approach.

Not so much.

The human lives saved were worth the cost of lockdown.

Not so much.

Shutting down schools and teaching online is a good substitute for classroom learning.

Not so much.

Bill’s Opinion

What are the next shoes to drop, do we think?

How about:

There were no existing therapeutic treatments we could have used.

The vaccines are perfectly safe, especially for your children.

Lockdown legislation was legal/constitutional.

You could have just thrown a big party

Billy/ / Climate Bollocks, Economics, General, Incentives Matter

William of Ockham’s Law of Single Issue Activism; if the main goals of the lobbyists or charity are achieved, the infrastructure will not be disbanded but will be redirected, usually to a corrupted facsimile of the original purpose.

The spark for the idea for this theory is a vague memory of hearing the history of the charities set up to eradicate smallpox. The memory hasn’t stood up to the test of Google but my recollection was, once the goal of eradication had been achieved, several charities continued but engaged in fraudulent activities.

We have a perfect present day example with the organisation, Stonewall:

Originally founded after the Stonewall riots in New York to fight for decriminalisation of homosexuality and equal rights for that demographic, the campaign is arguably the most successful single issue civil rights movement ever. Homosexuals have exactly the same rights as heterosexuals and are excluded from no profession. They can marry and are able to adopt children. Well, everywhere except certain countries, but Stonewall doesn’t seem too interested in taking that fight on.

If one could go back in time and tell the founders of their success, a big cheer and massive closing down party would seem the most likely response.

But the 2022 version of Stonewall is instead operating a shakedown scheme, “advising” organisations on how to use pronouns at £2,000 a time. Rather like, “that’s a nice company you’ve got there, would be a shame if someone started accusing it of bigotry and hate”.

A similar model was successfully used by Rev. Al Sharpton long after the USA Civil Rights organisations achieved their key stated goals.

The Suffragette movement and first wave feminism were similarly very successful in achieving their goals of votes for woman and equal access to the professions.

It’s been over two generations since women were required to obtain their father or husband’s permission to take out a mortgage, for example. As for equal access to the professions; most people reading this will currently have a female boss further up in the hierarchy, several dozen if you work for Wokepac (absolutely none of whom got there through just redefining the noun, “manager”. No, not at all).

But just like our other corrupted campaigns above, feminism has been warped into a poor facsimile of its original purpose. Today, feminism looks more like a desire to copy all aspects of being male, with little discussion about the negative consequences.

Women are told the lie they can have a career and delay finding a life partner and childbirth. Or that hook up culture is equally fine for both males and females.

The cold reality of our inability to dramatically extend the female fertility window or the asymmetrical biological and emotional consequences of hooking up as if they were male are not mentioned so much, however. You go, girl!

Antifa is another case study that springs to mind. When was the last time you met an actual Fascist who wasn’t Premier of the Australian state of Victoria, or Prime Minister of New Zealand or Canada?

Our final example is the environmental lobby. Those old enough to remember the campaign to remove CFCs from aerosols and fridges to reduce the hole in the ozone layer might wonder what happened. Tick, successful.

Remember the campaign to reduce acid rain? Tick, successful.

What do you think happened to all those employees of the not for profit organisations and non governmental organisations built to achieve these two goals? What about the thousands of people working on the fundraising campaigns?

Do you think they looked at the ever-improving data and decided it was a job well done, called a few venues and chucked a massive party?

Or, do you think they segued in to a new campaign, resulting in autistic teenage Swedes lecturing us about computer models that have yet to reverse predict the observed temperature at any point in their use, while your fuel and heating bill is rising daily.

Bill’s Opinion

The key to being a good party guest is knowing when it’s time to go home.

1st world lethargy

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, Climate Bollocks, Economics, General, Incentives Matter, Too much government, Whither Government?

Lethargy (noun)
A lack of energy or vigor; sluggishness.
A lack of interest or enthusiasm; apathy.

Seems apt for a first world country facing power cuts.

This, in a county with 2 million tonnes of uranium sitting under the soil. Or about 3.000 years’ worth of energy at today’s rate of annual demand.

But here we are, facing the risk of power cuts in a country claiming to be close to the peak of technological development and collective intelligence.

Surely there’s a typographical error, the sub editor must have missed an auto-correct replacement of “Australia” for “Afghanistan” or “Angola”.

Regular visitors to these infrequently-updated pages (yeah, I know; life has been busy) will know I don’t want or expect much from my governments; secure borders, rule of law, national defence and, if the government feels it must interfere in the provision of the utilities of water and power, keeping the bloody lights on.

If the government can’t even do that, what is the point of having one?

Seriously, if you one day find yourself with the job title of Prime Minister or Premier and the lights go out on your watch, perhaps consider firing every Diversity and Inclusion Officer, cancelling the budget for every Christmas party and closing every department not focused on the aforementioned core business of secure borders, rule of law, national defence and keeping the fucking lights on.

Bill’s Opinion

Australia is likely still 10 years away from breaking ground on its first nuclear power plant. So brace yourself for eye-watering energy bills, wearing a lot of layers in the winter and sitting around in air conditioned shopping malls in the summer.

Jessica Irvine, single mum battler

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, Economics, Gender Politics, General, Legacy Press (c)

Life comes at you fast when you’ve got a brain the size of a planet. Content generator and Mumsnet poster Sydney Morning Herald economics writer, Jess Irvine is dipping a Rubenesque toe into the property market again.

She starts today’s masterclass in gonzo economics writing with a flashback to the halcyon days when she first set out on her real estate journey:

….A few days after my unsuccessful bid, I bit the bullet and inspected a few properties in a suburb one out from my preferred location. I found a unit I liked, of similar size and age to my unsuccessful bid. I made an offer the same day of $870,000. It was accepted. I found my forever home.

“Forever” is doing a lot of work in that paragraph; she bought an entry level tiny apartment 10km from the Sydney CBD, not some grand estate in the Home Counties or a bijou apartment in the Eighth Arrondissement. It shows a lack of life ambition or understanding of the English language if that’s where she thinks she’ll retire.

Flush with the success of that canny investment, she’s quietly abandoned her previous public decision to show everyone how to make a fortune in the stock market, and has now decided to stick with just a single asset class, real estate.

Amongst the Dear Diary teenage girl writing style, she makes a serious point; the financial incentives are weighed against true investment and rewards property speculation.

T’was ever thus in Australia though. The amazing thing is that it’s taken an “economics journalist” 41 years to notice.

What’s more interesting through is how we are quietly informed she’s now a single Mum. This is a bit of a shock, frankly, particularly after all those Instagram posts and column inches dedicated to telling us how awesome she is at life. This one, for example, where she explains she can lose weight because she’s clever and you’re not.

But then there’s this fiction. My bullshit radar is flashing red:

“Fixed income sources”, for example. Most of us would call that line “salary”. It’s uncharacteristic of our Jess to not overshare, what’s being hidden in that number do we think? Cough, child support, cough.

“Mortgage interest” suggests a little less financial canniness too. So, she’s renting from the bank, in effect. Interesting that the “mortgage principle” line item is classed as “savings” and counts to her smug 31% of income saved each month.

Someone less kind than me might suggest the “food” line item seems a little short too. Good to see she’s teetotal though.

Bill’s Opinion

Don’t take financial or life advice from someone who pays union fees, has a love/hate relationship with their weight and has been rejected by every single man in the Greater Sydney area.

Harsh? Maybe.

True? Of course it is, that’s just unconscious knowledge.

Because

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, China Flu, Corporate Welfare, Economics, General, Incentives Matter, The end is nigh, The everything bubble, Too much government, Whither Democracy, Whither Government?

Because of a few songs wherein I spoke of their mystery, women have been exceptionally kind to my old age. Leonard Cohen.

That quote has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this post, I just like it and it commences with “because”.

Conspiracy theorists always look for the “because”. It’s human nature to try to make sense of situations, particularly if they are causing you pain, suffering and anxiety.

It’s a fool’s errand though. The chances of someone affected by an externality to correctly guess the sequence of events leading to it are extremely unlikely.

What probably matters more is correctly observing all the pertinent facts about the present and drawing reasonable conclusions about how they might change in the future.

Some observable facts, then.

Using public health as the justification, despite 18 months of data showing it was, at a population level, a mid-severity flu and is now (with vaccines, regardless of what you may think about their safety), a very mild flu, the following changes have occurred:

  • International and domestic border closures,
  • Legislation and heavy-handed policing restricting freedom of movement, freedom of trade, freedom of association,
  • Curfews and military presence in suburban areas,
  • Legislation mandating quarantine of healthy individuals on the suspicion of infection,
  • Legislation mandating vaccinations for certain professions,
  • Closures of schools, replaced by very sub-optimal online lessons,
  • Vaccination of children against a virus that poses little threat to them,
  • Restriction of travel on several major airlines to those with proof of vaccination,
  • International airfares, for those allowed to travel, outside the budget of most people,
  • Unprecedented (there’s a word for our time!) government borrowing and economic stimulus, in the form of direct payments to business and individuals. In many cases, the government cheque is greater than the wage it replaced,
  • In those countries that have lifted some of the legislated restrictions above, the powers to re-impose them have been retained (the UK, for example).

That’s Australia today.

How might these situations change, do we think?

Borders will reopen and flights resume, but not for the plebeians for a very long time. The competition in international air travel drove prices down to a level where a middle class family could leave Australia once every second or third year. That’s not going to happen again for perhaps a decade. You’ll need a vaccination passport too.

Legislation restricting freedom of movement, trade and association will remain on the books, the powers to arbitrarily invoke the laws will be retained and used based on “cases” or new variants. Look at the decades old laws against terrorism for precedent.

Governments will not be tempted in the slightest to turn off the stimulus fire hoses. The creative destruction of free markets will be seen as a sign of policy failure. Universal Basic Income by another name will be here to stay.

Schools will re-open and close again several times based on “cases”. Masks for school kids, perhaps mandatory vaccinations too. Teachers’ unions will make demands for “safety” usually resulting in pay rises. The quality of the outcomes for pupils will be a distant footnote printed in tiny font.

Court cases will be brought by employees fired over vaccinations. They might win, they might not.

Bill’s Opinion

Don’t look for the because. You’ll drive yourself mad.

On the news every night, some idiot financial journalist will tell you “markets rose 17 points today because of new employment data”, or “fell because of new inflation data”.

Unprovable. All we can prove is markets rose or fell.

Similarly, we can’t be certain about the because of the situation we are living in now.

We can make reasonable extrapolations such as those I’ve offered above, though.

What to do then?

Here’s some suggestions:

  • Find a doctor who will give you a vaccine exemption. It might be accepted by employers, airlines, restaurants and governments for a while,
  • If you are eligible for a passport from another country, apply. Having options is wise. Ask any American male with a Canadian passport during the Vietnam draft era.
  • Consider alternative education models for your children. Take control of their curriculum and hire tutors. If you stay within the current system, focus them on what matters only. STEM.
  • Spread your assets across jurisdictions. Be nimble.
  • Perhaps move away from major population centres, if these are where all the police and army presence is focused.
  • Learn to sail. If you one day find it necessary to steal a yacht from the harbour and sail away, having the skills learned in the Day Skipper qualification would be important.

It’s all a bit tin foil hat, isn’t it?

But then, imagine a conversation between your 2019 self and your present day self.

Of course, once we’ve moved to Central Bank Digital Currencies, there will be nowhere left to hide anyway.

So enjoy your current freedoms.

Deck ‘em, McManus

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, Economics, General, Incentives Matter

One of the more high profile union leaders in Australia was somewhat vexed by the recent agreement between the UK and Australia, suggesting it will increase competition for jobs to the detriment of the locals:

It’s unusual for the unions or indeed anyone on the left to say the quiet part about immigration out aloud.

She’s right, of course. It’s not a difficult mental exercise to realise immigration would have a negative impact on employment prospects for the exisiting population and their ability to negotiate wage increases.

But it’s an interesting ideological contortion for someone on the more left of politics to attempt. It’s the side of politics most associated with the open (or at least more open) borders position, and yet here’s McManus pointing out immigration isn’t all upside for existing residents.

She’s not alone in being an immigration sceptic on the left, either. This opinion piece by Kristina Keneally from early on in the pandemic makes a similar point, which McManus also endorsed on social media when published.

So what’s going on? Is it cognitive dissonance or simply the often knee jerk reaction of one team opposing whatever it is the other team say and do? Perhaps there’s a third explanation.

I’ve recently been rereading Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. My first reading was a decade ago and, although I took some interesting insights from it, my reading was more of a skim than in depth. I stuck at it this time and have been rewarded with some absolute gems, of which this is one:

Bill’s Opinion

Perhaps Sally and Kristina’s disdain for immigration is driven by concern for Australian workers.

Given that the Australian minimum wage is the second highest in the world, just behind Monaco, and Australians can access comparatively generous unemployment benefits, free medical treatment and subsidised child care, why wouldn’t a socialist want to share this wealth with others?

Because, as Hayek points out, they’ve thought it through to its logical conclusion and realised it is diametrically opposed to their agenda.

Jenna Hates….. buying leaving drinks

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, China Flu, Corporate Welfare, Economics, General, Incentives Matter, Jenna hates...

And her exit party might not be far away as the long term career prospects for a lecturer in Humanities in an Australian university can’t be particularly secure.

Today’s whine is on the subject of the financial viability of the university sector, after a year of massively reduced revenue.

In a moment of exquisite irony and demonstrating a profound lack of introspection, Janna Hates discusses critical thinking and freedom of speech. Obviously, she then follows that up by not addressing any of the huge pachyderm-shaped objects in the refectory.

Please bear in mind Jenna teaches journalism, and then wonder about the quality standards we will be subjected to from her students.

The university system in this country is dying. The government used the pandemic to destroy the places for critical conversations; and university management mostly rolled over.

The second sentence both presumes motives, mind reading in other words, and demonstrates a keen grasp of irony when suggesting the Australian academe isn’t an ideological echo chamber.

Mass redundancies, both voluntary and forced across the sector, have left big gaps in teaching staff. In some places that led to decisions to close down subjects, courses, departments. Right now, nearly every university is considering merging faculties.

Which departments are merging, do we think? Physics with Mathematics? Medicine with Engineering? Or maybe Gender Studies with Sociology? Go on, have a guess.

She continues with a complaint over the availability of the government furlough scheme to private but not public universities. Prima facie, that sounds quite damning. Of course, the critical thinkers amongst us might wish to investigate further.

It turns out, some private universities qualified for the furlough schemes due to having a lower turnover and assistance was made available to all universities based on a per capita payment for domestic students.

What two hypotheses might we consider based on those facts?

How about, (1) for reasons unknown, publicly funded universities are significantly larger in financial turnover than private universities and (2) they’d all be a lot better off right now if they didn’t rely heavily on overseas students.

Or, to put it another way, Jenna Hates is complaining because your taxes aren’t being used to bail out the educational infrastructure for overseas students.

Let’s go full reductio ad absurdum; Jenna Hates wants the income tax paid by an Australian worker stacking supermarket shelves on the night shift to be used to subsidise the immigration scam education of Chinese kids with rich parents.

The rest of the article follows the usual modus operandi, wandering all over the place accusing “the government” of being negligent at best but most likely mendacious. Don’t waste your time on it unless you’ve really got nothing better to do. Maybe page to the bottom to spot where she can’t resist having a dig at a man who has been accused without proof, by a dead person, of rape and, because of this, should resign.

Let’s return to the original problem. Australian universities are haemorrhaging cash and are having to cut costs to survive.

That’s interesting, isn’t it. Because, as far as one can tell, Australian high schools are still pumping out kids with all the correct qualifications to go on to higher education. The student loan industry is still active and the economy is going gangbusters.

So why the big problems?

Well…

617,000 overseas students? What’s that as a percentage of all university students in a normal year? About 44%.

How does that compare with another English-speaking country? The UK usually takes about half a million overseas students, or about 20% of the total.

There isn’t a pandemic every year, of course, but even so, a sector which is ostensibly designed to educate a country’s population yet relies on the revenue generated from almost one overseas students for every domestic student was perhaps always built on risky business model.

It’s even worse than that; fees paid by overseas students are often as much as double those paid by domestic students. The first class passengers are subsidising the economy class travellers.

Or, more accurately, they’re not this year. Hence the subject of Jenna Hates’ current cause célèbre.

Bill’s Opinion

I’m really sorry anyone lost their job as a result of the governmental response to the virus. However, the reality is some sectors of the economy were already unsustainable before the pandemic.

An education sector which had grown to provide as many places to people from countries with recognised high quality universities as it does for its domestic customers was one such sector.

If it wasn’t the 2020 pandemic that caught it napping, it would have been the next financial crisis or cooling of international diplomacy.

There is another inconvenient fact our Lecturer in Journalism, Jenna Hates, fails to address; the overseas student visa has been primarily a fast track to residency for many students, with the academic achievement being a far distant second.

Perhaps a shrunken university sector might serve the Australian student population better as it would have to focus on the quality of the teaching of “hard” subjects with, y’know, actual careers waiting for them once they’ve graduated?

Think critically about that for a moment, Jenna Hates.