Where is the magic invisible market fairy when you need her?
She pops up in the modelling for the proposed company tax cut, guaranteeing everyone who wants a job will get one, but she flies off in a huff at the first sign of a bunch of refugees.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says unemployment will rise if Australia boosts its intake of refugees.
There is "no question" that these refugees would take jobs from Australians, even though many of the job-stealers would be innumerate and illiterate even in their native language, he told Sky News on Wednesday.
But perhaps Mr Dutton should have taken a leaf out of the book of economists modelling the company tax cut proposed by his colleague, Treasurer Scott Morrison, in the budget two weeks earlier.
The cut, according to modelling published by Treasury, would lift business investment, which would in turn make workers more efficient.
And, with the help of some convenient - although rather questionable - assumptions about how the economy functions, the model predicts workers will be rewarded for their increased productivity with higher wages.
The higher wages will attract more people - stay-at-home parents, retired people, students - into the labour market, increasing the number of people wanting work.
But they won't push the jobless rate up, like Mr Dutton's job-pinching migrants will.
That's because there will be more jobs.
But, you ask, why will more jobs miraculously appear when dinky-di Aussies flood into the labour market, but not when migrants come job-hunting?
Blame that fickle magic market fairy.
In the company tax model she waves her magic wand, casting a spell in the form of a convenient assumption that "all markets clear".
That's what economists say when they're too embarrassed to say "we're assuming, for no apparent reason, that we'll always have full employment".
Her magic spell guarantees that when the number of people looking for a job rises, so too does the number of jobs.
And by the exact same number.
But when the supply of labour is increased by migrants fleeing persecution or just looking for a better life, it's a totally different matter in the jobs market.
The magic market fairy hightails it right outta there.
Perhaps she just doesn't like foreigners.
