In last week’s column I showed that 59 per cent of GPs (General Practitioners or Family Doctors) in Australia were foreign born nationals at the 2021 Census and argued cutting the migration intake was likely to create more problems than it solves.

When I shared the column on my socials, very predictably, a lot of criticism came my way. These criticisms tended to be very vague – and that’s a problem. Details matter.  

So, what exactly is your concern when you hear about high migration figures?

You must be very precise in naming your concerns because otherwise they can’t possibly be addressed. Most often I hear vague statements like “we have too many migrants – just read the room, everyone thinks that”.  

Personally, I am deeply sceptical towards any argument that bases its validity on the fact that an (apparent) majority of people feels or thinks a certain way.  

I was born into a Germany that still grappled deeply with the question of how the majority of Germans allowed the atrocities of the Second World War to occur (the number of people actively resisting the Nazis was very small).

This question shaped the way that history was taught to me in school, the type of books about the period that I read and the type of public speeches I was exposed to in my formative years.

The majority opinion can be spectacularly wrong when it doesn’t actively concern itself with the details of the topic in question. 

Therefore I distrust anyone who isn’t precise in their criticism of migration. I distrust leaders who doesn’t spell out in which way their proposed solution (in our current case, a massively reduced migration intake) would improve a specific outcome.

The vagueness is usually by design because details kill outrage. Let me explain. 

Advertisers in the 1990s were certain that nothing sold better than sex. Sexy young women in bikinis were used to glue your eyeballs to the TV screen or print ad. 

Today, as most content is consumed via social media, we learned that ‘sex sells’ was amateur hour. Outrage engages us much more than sex or boring facts.  

To maximise attention, or to grab the most souls, you must therefore constantly create a sense of outrage.

To keep outrage alive, you mustn’t be slowed down by a detailed discussion. Details add complexity and complexity makes short outrageous claims look ridiculous.  

In the outrage culture, people that could force you into talking about details are your enemy.

The press is particularly bad as even a moderately skilled journalist can poke holes into your vague and shallow argument.

Complain about the press, exclude certain press outlets from your news conferences, buy media outlets yourself, maybe even defund existing publications.

This is great stuff when you want to keep the outrage alive and avoid factual scrutiny. It’s the populists playbook around the world. 

Now back to the vague criticism of our high migration regime in Australia: “we have too many migrants – just read the room, everyone thinks that. We obviously have too many migrants now.” 

What exactly are you criticising when you claim we have too many migrants? What’s your concern? Be as precise as you can. 

• Are you concerned about housing affordability? 

• Are integration and the potential loss of social cohesion your biggest worry? 

• Maybe you are selflessly worried about the brain drain that Australian migration might create in other countries? 

• Negative wage pressures could be another thing you are worried about. 

Whatever your concerns are regarding high migration, you must voice them clearly and precisely.

Some problems you see might be aided through lowering the migration intake, other concerns might be best addressed by another intervention. 

I argued for example in a previous column that shifting our migration system from temporary to permanent migrants would go along way in improving the integration of migrants in society. 

If integration of migrants was your concern, then start thinking deeply about integration might be aided.  

A lot of very reputable research now argues that house prices would only fall by a little bit (if at all) under a low migration regime. 

If house prices or housing availability is your main concern, other policy levers are likely to be more powerful. 

This logic must be applied to each concern you might hold against high migration figures. 

Maybe after all this, you still conclude that Australia should halve the annual migration intake to120,000 net new migrants. 

That’s cool but you must then face the question of what migrants, of which visa classes are to be cut.  

It’s extremely rare that I see someone calling for a smaller migration intake by telling us what visa classes will be cut.  

You can make a fair argument in favour of cutting international student visa. Maybe you think that a university course shouldn’t have more than a third of all students from overseas. 

Such a decline in student numbers might improve educational output in some way. With every intervention you make in a complex system, there are big and unintended consequences. A serious politician spells out these consequences; a charlatan just hopes that you will swallow their half-baked logic without detailed questioning.  

Fewer international students translate to less foreign capital flooding into Australia. A cut of 100,000 international students is a very thinkable scenario but necessitates us to forego about five billion AUD in annual income.

This very basic calculation is based on the average annual international student fees of around $40,000 and a similarly large additional economic contribution through paying rent, eating, and having parents visit. 

The loss is smaller than $8 billion because up to a third of all student fees get serviced through working in Australia during uni. 

We could run through a similar cost-benefit analysis with all other visa classes. The more you look at the detail, the more complex the issue becomes. 

In your line of reasoning, you have now concluded that a cut in migration is desirable and you even came up a rough idea which visa classes should be cut by how much.  

I’d argue that you are still not done. You must also acknowledge the negative consequences that your migration cut brings with it. Fewer taxpayers (50 per cent of the Federal Budget tends to be income tax and migrants are more likely to be taxpayers than Australian-born people) and fewer workers are the two most obvious negative consequences.

An intellectual honest argument presents the likely negative consequences transparently as well.  

A leader who isn’t very detail focussed when talking about migration, is likely not to be able to deal with a very complex system. 

Their simplistic solutions aren’t fit for use in a complex system. The challenges we are facing are all complex and systemic in nature: We don’t face a heating planet because one moron made a wrong call.

We don’t have an outrageously expensive housing market because the dude in charge a few decades ago made a mistake.

We aren’t importing heaps of migrants because one minister was data-illiterate. These are all complex, systemic problems that require complex, systemic solutions.  

An aspiring leader tackling a complex issue with a simplistic solution will create unintended consequences, will create new problems and is likely just a populist who will deliver terribly ineffective policies once in power. 

The big challenges of our times, that includes migration, must be addressed in a smart, interconnected ways.

A dead giveaway that a leader won’t be able to cope with complexity is a lack of interest in the details, is a proclivity for personal attacks, for oversimplification, is the reliance on outrange to bulldoze of factual criticisms. 

A leader talking about migration in simplistic, vague, and imprecise terms isn’t fit to tackle what remains a complex, systemic issue.

Simon Kuestenmacher is a co-founder of The Demographics Group. His columns, media commentary and public speaking focus on current socio-demographic trends and how these impact Australia. His podcast, Demographics Decoded, explores the world through the demographic lens. Follow Simon on Twitter (X), Facebook, or LinkedIn.