Tucker Carlson's warning to Australia about high immigration: 'You're not encouraged to say anything about this'
US political commentator Tucker Carlson has accused Australians of 'stealing the future' of young Aussies by failing to clamp down on immigration.
In the recently resurfaced clip, the former Fox News host and right-wing pundit said the country's high migrant intake was pricing young Australians out of the housing market.
'No country can sustain that level of immigration without falling apart. Period. Especially not a country of 26 million,' he said.
'You're not encouraged to say anything about this or you're a bad person because you're offering a better life to people and how dare you not do that.
'What's never noted is that you are stealing the future of your children when you do that in a bunch of different ways. For one, the most obvious, your kids can't afford houses.'
Labor promised to ease immigration before the last election but in the year to March, 437,440 migrants came to Australia on a permanent and long-term basis.
This was significantly higher than Treasury's March Budget forecast of 335,000 for 2024-25, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics data casting doubt on Labor's promise to reduce it to 260,000 during the upcoming financial year.
Deputy director of the Institute of Public Affairs Daniel Wild said Australia had been inundated with unplanned mass migration which he sees as the 'number one driver' of short term housing unaffordability.
'We know about 80 per cent of Australia's population growth has come from migration as opposed to local net population growth so, clearly, it's the number one demand driver of housing,' he said.
'The best thing the government can do is dramatically reduce the intake of migration. It's a lever the government has available to it that it can change right now.'
Mr Wild said the government failed to approve sufficient housing for the net overseas arrivals he calculated reached 1.1million people over the previous term of government.
He said Australia has the highest share of non-native born people of any comparable nation - a situation he said had taken an obvious economic and cultural strain.
'I think most migrants come here and want to assimilate to Australian culture but there's also a sizeable minority who do not.
'I think we're much more divided than we ever have been, certainly since World War Two, as a nation and we have much less common cultural values.'
Economist Leith Van Onselen said high immigration, including a large number of students on bridging visas hoping to stay longer in Australia, had created longer-term political advantages for one side of politics.
Australian house prices have increased from roughly three to four times the average income to eight or nine times the amount in the past 25 years
The largest source of permanent migrants to Australia in 2023-24 was India, followed by China, the Philippines and Nepal.
He argued that the growing Indian community in Australia is a boost for Anthony Albanese.
'There was a post-2022 election survey done by Carnegie and Dowman, and that showed that 58 per cent of the Indian community voted for Labor versus 34 per cent for the Coalition,' Mr van Onselen said.
'And the Indian community is now our largest immigration source.
'It seems that that community votes overwhelmingly for Labor.'
After this month's election, social media was flooded with videos of Indian students and migration agents 'celebrating wildly Labor's election victory, because they know that the Albanese government's a bit of a soft touch on immigration'.
'And obviously with Labor being re-elected, it lessens the chance of immigration cuts, it means more international students. So that community was obviously celebrating,' Mr van Onselen said.
'Labor is incentivised to maintain a high immigration policy because it's effectively importing future voters.'
But deputy chief economist at AMP Diana Mousina said while migration levels are high by historic standards, the longer view would suggest the country was making up for border closures during the Covid-19 lockdown period.
'After the pandemic, part of that [increase] was catch up. So we had very low numbers of negative immigration during two years.
'We have been running quite elevated levels of migration since then. They are expected to slow, but they are elevated.'
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