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The Australian government’s latest Intergenerational Report is being used by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg as an excuse to ramp-up immigration in 2022.

The report promotes a massive lift in net overseas migration (NOM) to nearly 330,000 migrants per year.

This is over 122,000 above pre-Covid levels (year ending Dec 2019, NOM was 210,700).

The reason given by Treasury is that population growth slowed due to Covid-19.

But a 57% increase in NOM above pre-Covid 19 levels is not proportionate. It’s excessive.

Treasury’s model used to calculate fiscal impacts from migration deliberately ignores costs imposed on state and local government budgets from providing the many goods and services required to sustain bigger populations.

As economist Leigh Van Onselen at Macrobusiness argues, “Australians recognise that the mass immigration program of 2005 to 2020 was managed appallingly and crush loaded everything in sight, resulting in widespread infrastructure bottlenecks across Australia’s major cities and reduced liveability”.