To the Hon Andrew Giles MP

Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs

Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600

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Dear Minister,

Last year, Australia took in 737,000 migrants. In net terms, we added 525,000 new migrants to our population in just 12 months.

This is the largest intake Australia has ever seen, and is one of the largest per capita migrant intakes in the world. Our population grew by 2.4 per cent, and 1 in 36 people in Australia today arrived last year.

These are astronomical numbers, yet nobody asked for them. 70 per cent of Australians want lower migration, including a majority of Labor voters. You ignored every single one of them.

The effects of this policy – combined with decades of large migrant intake numbers – are now being felt everywhere across Australia. Speaking for my friends, family members and colleagues: our wages are flat, our rents have gone up, our dreams of buying homes and raising a family are becoming more distant.

The data backs this up: wages are at 2009 levels, rents are up 20 per cent, house prices have grown 40-50 per cent in 10 years, and birthrates have fallen.

But we’re still the lucky ones. Others have been completely pushed out of the market. Homelessness has gone up 50 per cent in one year. Tents now fill up parks and crowd under bridges. Thanks to you, your party, and a succession of other governments, the lucky country is now the country of the working poor. We once had the highest living standards in the world.

Your party committed to solving the cost of living crisis, yet it worsened it. Immigration is putting upward pressure on housing, and in turn, worsening the cost of living. More inflation means more rate rises. Immigration isn’t good for the economy, it’s making us poorer.

You have since committed to lowering the immigration intake. But that will only happen after the election. Who can trust you? Your party leader himself said that Australia ‘can’t rely on overseas workers’ – he then lifted migration to record highs. The damage is done, the lucky country is now lucky enough if they have a roof over their head. You’ve broken your duty to Australians, you’ve disgraced a once proud party.

The only people who have ever asked for more migrants have been big business and the radical left. Yours was once the party of the working class. The people who built Australia. Now it’s the party for the people flying first class.

I urge you, for the sake of struggling Australians, to let housing supply catch up, to give infrastructure a breather, to give workers a much-needed pay rise, to let young people buy a home and start a family.

Pause immigration. Now.

Jordan Knight, Migration Watch Australia migrationwatchau@gmail.com

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