Justin Pyvis
Justin holds a PhD in economics and has 20+ years of policy and investment experience across Australia, NZ, and Hong Kong. These days he’s often found walking cities (jwalk.ing, trying to understand how they work.
Migration fearmongering helps no one
The numbers are in: in 2022-23, Australia’s population grew by 624,100 people, or around 2.4%. That’s a huge figure – a record, in fact – and it was driven by the net addition of 518,090 overseas migrants. As you might expect, the media jumped all over it:
The true costs of JobKeeper
When COVID-19 struck, the Australian government – along with just about every government around the world – unleashed unprecedented support for workers who were at risk of losing their jobs due to the various health-related restrictions on business activity. One of the talismans of the Scott Morrison/Josh Frydenberg government’s response was JobKeeper, a scheme formulated by Treasury’s Jenny Wilkinson, for which she was later awarded a Public Service Medal.
How not to do migration
Australia has a long and successful history of immigration. Migrants contribute economically, help fill labour shortages, improve the country’s demographics and provide important cultural diversity. But as countries like Sweden have learned, migration can also present significant challenges.
Don’t blame immigrants for the housing mess
Whether immigrants fuel inflation is a complicated question, in part because there’s no single, uniform “immigrant”. Immigrants can be students, skilled workers, entire families, refugees, retirees, or backpackers. Their ages also vary, as do their consumption, savings, and working patterns.