Mike's Minute: You won't believe it - the union is right

Buckle up, it looks like I might agree with a trade union. 

CTU policy director Craig Renney is worried about the same thing I am, and I think he is right to be worried. 

What he is worried about is the possibility that we will become a net exporter of population. 

Oh the irony that as an exporting nation, one of the growth industries is people. 

If you have followed the migration story these past few years a couple of large, and some would argue alarming, things have happened: 

1) A huge number of people arrived. 

2) A huge number of people have left. 

Things are sort of starting to settle. The arrival numbers are tailing off. 

But the departure numbers, although not breaking records the way they were, are still large. 

The key part of that numeric equation is we are at a tipping point. It is more than possible that if the arrival numbers drop just a bit more, but the departure bit doesn’t stop, we will have more people leaving than arriving. 

We will be a net exporter of people. 

The really scary thing about that is the one in, one out idea isn't in and of itself a good thing if the “out” is a brain surgeon and the “in” is an uber driver. 

The overall picture, i.e. a shrinking population, is a disaster as well because for every person who thought too many arrived and they had no houses etc, having a shrinking population is as bad, if not worse. 

Reputationally it's catastrophic. We are the country no one wants to live in. That's not normally a portrait of a robust, successful, prosperous nation, is it? 

What it says is those looking to move here don’t fancy it. They pick somewhere else. 

In the meantime, those already here look to leave for brighter, more appealing pastures. 

We are the ugly girl in the corner of the school dance. 

It’s a reminder, as if we needed it, that this country has a series of problems of size and severity that we have not faced in many a long decade. 

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