Everyone now understands that growing the economy only by increasing the number of people, while people feel worse off, is a recipe for unhappiness and dissent.
Aggregate growth is a statistic, but individual decline is a vote.
The third newcomer, One Nation, is an anti-immigration party harvesting unhappiness and dissent. The other two have put on some anti-immigration clothes and have got on the grievance catwalk as well.
The starting number for the fashion parade is 300,000, about the current level of net overseas migration. We learnt on Thursday that population growth in the year to March was 392,700, of which 292,100 were migrants.
ABS data shows that over the past four years population growth has averaged 400,000 a year or 1,100 a day. The result is a noticeable crowding of the cities and a 23.5 per cent increase the national median house price.
Population growth has produced average annual GDP growth since 2010 of 2.4 per cent, while GDP per capita has grown 0.5 per cent and real disposable income just 0.1 per cent and has often been negative, according to the ABC data.
In a media release to go with his National Press Club speech on Thursday, delayed six weeks while he negotiated with agriculture and education ministers over the impact the changes would have on their constituents, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the plans were "designed to deliver the Net Overseas Migration forecasts in the budget of 245,000 in this financial year and 225,000 in 2027/28".