Thomas McMahon

Policy guy. Politics, Rugby, Code, Canberra. Views are my own.

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@artofchad @UrbanCourtyard It was ruined by it and all of the other terrible misanthropic nonsense of the NCDC.

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@artofchad @UrbanCourtyard I shouldn’t argue with random people on the internet, but here goes. Griffins vision for Canberra was clearly not for the car centric city that it became. I’m not denying that garden city ideas were influential in what the city turned into, but it was not inspired by this.

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@artofchad @UrbanCourtyard This is nonsense.

[Joseph Noel Walker @JosephNWalker]

Episode 2 of my Immigration Series:

Australian immigration policy is genuinely sui generis. Not even Australians fully appreciate this. A potted history:

- The only country to have run assisted passage at scale -- around 3.5 million people whose fares were subsidised, sometimes fully, in a program that began in the 1830s and ran for around 150 years, ending only in 1981.

- The first country in the world to have a dedicated Department of Immigration (founded 1945).

- Probably the only nation in history to have set an explicit population target after WWII -- 1% growth from migration plus 1% from natural increase.

- The first country in the world to offer adult migrants English-language training (in 1948, still running) and (I'm pretty sure) a telephone interpreting service for migrants (from 1973).

- In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Australia took 60,000 Indochinese refugees -- proportionally more per population than any other country in the world.

- One of the earliest countries in the world to introduce mandatory detention for unlawful non-citizens (1992).

- Per capita, it's been the world's largest receiver of international students for decades.

- The OECD country with the highest share of overseas-born among countries with more than 10 million people -- around 32%, about 8-9x the world average, and projected to climb into the 40s, a level likely not seen in Australia since the 1880s.

I discussed the history of Australia's migration exceptionalism with Mark Cully.

Mark has written the first truly general history of Australian immigration (to be published later this year). He has direct experience, having served as the inaugural Chief Economist of Australia's Department of Immigration.

We discuss the six most decisive decades in Australian migration history, as well as some bigger picture questions:
- has migration actually increased Australians' living standards (Mark believes it probably hasn't)?
- the three potential constraints on our ability to accept migrants, and which has tended to be binding in practice
- what does history teach us about the rise of One Nation?
- and much more.

Watch below, or on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Timestamps:
(0:00:00) – Introduction.
(0:03:21) – Why didn't Australia turn to slavery?
(0:10:17) – The decade that made modern Australia (1850s)
(0:20:51) – What was White Australia really about?
(0:30:23) – The most epic policy experiment in Australian history (the postwar migration program)
(1:01:57) – The 1970s: an underrated decade
(1:07:02) – The drift into a temporary-migrant economy
(1:21:49) – Inside the chief economist's office
(1:28:56) – Culture, social cohesion, and integration
(2:01:17) – Has migration made Australia richer?
(2:06:56) – The main constraint on Australian immigration over the past 200 years
(2:16:11) – What makes Australian immigration exceptional?

[Joseph Noel Walker @JosephNWalker]

New episode!

Learned a lot chatting with Martin Parkinson about the economics of migration policy.

The issue that most people haven't properly understood: Australia has built an economy that requires roughly 2 million more workers than our population of citizens and permanent residents can supply.

We've drifted into a guest-worker system that no government ever proposed.

Is it possible to have an ethical temporary program for unskilled workers where there is no path to permanency? And what does that look like?

We also discuss:
- International student fees now fund close to 50% of the cost of all university research in Australia, which means a cap on student numbers trades off with research, R&D, and ultimately productivity. (Australian R&D spending already sits at 1.7% of GDP versus an OECD average of 2.7%.)
- Australia has 250,000 skilled migrants -- including 50,000 engineers, 20,000 teachers, 16,000 nurses, and 1,300 electricians -- who were admitted because their qualifications were assessed as commensurate with Australian standards, but who cannot work in their fields because of state-government and professional-body licensing barriers.
- The Australian skilled-occupation list is based on a 2001 taxonomy, which is why employers trying to bring in a global procurement manager were forced to map the role to "supermarket manager."
- The Australian points test is "dumb": being 40 years and 1 month old gets you dramatically fewer points than being 39 years and 11 months -- Canada's system steps down gradually, ours falls off a cliff.
- Indonesia's diaspora in Australia is 90,000 people -- the same size as Fiji's, and roughly 0.03% of Indonesia's population -- despite Indonesia being projected to become the world's fourth-largest economy by 2045.
- And much more.

Watch below - or on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Timestamps:
(0:00:00) – Introduction.
(0:02:37) – What surprised Parkinson about Australia's immigration system?
(0:10:20) – How does migration affect Australians' living standards?
(0:16:56) – The political equilibrium
(0:19:23) – What are the objectives of the migration program?
(0:24:01) – The drift into a guest-worker system
(0:41:40) – How leveraged are universities to international students?
(0:47:56) – Should we have an official low-skilled migration program?
(0:51:32) – Using migration to slow population ageing
(0:58:42) – What "skills shortage" actually means
(1:08:17) – Problems with the points test
(1:14:52) – Our Soviet-style occupation list
(1:24:45) – We need to better utilise our skilled migrants
(1:34:39) – What is the biggest problem with Australia's migration system?
(1:42:01) – How can we attract true global talent?
(1:45:58) – Is the migration system robust to AI disruption?
(1:53:38) – What should the upper/lower bound for net migration be?
(1:56:43) – The Indonesian question
(2:06:53) – How much more strategic weight would a bigger population buy us?

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@Mark_Graph @TMFScottP The PBO costed things for us in the two day period between budget and budget reply when I worked in the opposition leader's office...

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@kotecinho a box out the back of a terrace house - who would've thought of that.

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@mayumi_dunedin Looks so good.

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@BMcSport What was the rationale for the starting 9/10, brumbies looked way better the moment the switch happened.

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@Jonathan_Nolan_ @cmkusher Just tell Claude about Matt’s package then it’ll be easy.

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@martyaskew @ChristypDoran Complete and utter nonsense.

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@mountainwesttax Living room and bedrooms, so 4. Then we did ceiling fans in the internal rooms without walls. We're in Canberra, Australia so get pretty hot summers 40c/100f+. Works well. I would love ducted central air conditioning, but wasn't willing to sacrifice for the aesthetics.

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@HuwTindall People come to the brumbies who want successful rugby union careers 🤷‍♂️

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@MattCowgill those new tiny byds are popping up everywhere in Canberra.

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@MattCowgill My wife also thinks she has a claim to inventing the scomo nickname.

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@cmkusher claude code

[Thomas McMahon @thmcmahon]

@stephendziedzic This appears to be the reading list he references at the end https://t.co/aM4ujo03D9

[Stephen Dziedzic @stephendziedzic]

Excoriating, riveting, utterly unflinching speech from Deputy Chief of Army late last year. Warns Army is "polluted" by "managerial and advertising logic and doublespeak" which hints at "something rotten" - a detachment from the nature of war and violence
https://t.co/V4gv197KHv