Once again, the ABC’s Alan Kohler has emerged as a sensible voice on what mass immigration is doing to the housing market.

His recent video outlines the pressure new arrivals have put on housing as well as the labyrinth system of bridging visas that has led to pressure on services.

He points out there are around 2.9 million temporary residents in Australia right now. 10 per cent of the population. Some are tourists, of course, but the rest are competing with you for housing, they’re on the roads, they’re using health and education services, and they’re getting jobs.

Kohler reveals 400,000 of those people are in Australia on bridging visas. These are visas that let people stay in Australia to live and work or get an education while they await a permanent visa.

Kohler even exposes an organised scam that took place a few years ago where Malaysian and Chinese workers exploited the asylum system to get themselves into Australia permanently.

This, by the way, puts the lie to certain Liberal Senators and others who continue to bleat about not calling it “mass immigration”. Sure, as an isolated island nation, our immigration picture is not the same as Europe or North America, but that’s irrelevant.

If thousands are scamming the system to gain permanent residency and hundreds of thousands more are here waiting for permanency, you have mass immigration and you should pause it so the system can catch up.

It is also evidence of a system that is endlessly accommodating to migrants while imposing the burden on the Australian people. We should not be surprised if people from overseas exploit Australia’s generous and welcoming instinct, that generosity and welcoming instinct will be withdrawn.

The video also features Abul Rizvi, a former immigration official who speaks openly about the problems in the immigration system, while also seemingly of the belief that under no circumstances should you ever do anything to fix it.

He tells Kohler no major party seems to have any plan to deal with the immigration mess, but when ADVANCE suggested we pause it for a time so the system can catch up, he flatly rejected the idea, saying it would be illegal.

Well, good news Abul, we have a Parliament that can make and change laws!

And we can vote out the politicians who won’t do what we want.

Crucially, if the Covid experience taught us anything, it’s that governments really can just do things at the flick of a switch if they want to.

If you can completely close the borders for a flu, you can put a pause on new migrants for a while so young Aussies can find a place to live and work.

Our immigration system is not an act of God. It’s a system that we built and we can change it if we want so it works in the interests of Australians first.

So who will put Australia first and pause immigration?