Sustainable Australia Party NSW Senate candidate, William Bourke, has penned a great piece calling on politicians and the media to stop conflating the issue of immigration with boat people and asylum seekers, given the overwhelming majority of new arrivals are economic migrants arriving here by plane:
Given the hyperbole around boats and asylum seekers, voters could be forgiven for thinking that all immigrants are refugees. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Australia’s current annual permanent immigration program of about 200,000 people dwarfs our humanitarian intake of about 14,000 refugees.
Sadly, given that all our current and recent immigration ministers seem to talk about is refugees, any talk of “immigration” is assumed to mean refugees. Such confusion is an indictment on our politicians – and the reporting media.
Public education on the bigger immigration issue is critical because it is an issue that affects everything – our economy, our environment and our quality of life. Due largely to immigration, Australia is now on track to double its population by 2050 to more than 40 million people, despite little real discussion and certainly no mandate for this dramatic change.
We are all feeling the population pressures on our roads and public transport, and in our hospitals and schools. Our housing is unaffordable, and young Australians are struggling to find secure jobs. Then there’s the all-important environmental impact, including the destruction of animal habitats and rising greenhouse gas emissions…
Our growing infrastructure and environmental issues do, however, have a lot to do with the tripling of our annual permanent immigration program from the long-term 20th century average of about 70,000 a year.
We need to openly and maturely discuss this main immigration issue…
We can then have a mature debate about population, and whether it’s best to lower immigration back to the long-term average of 70,000 per year – without any reduction in refugee numbers.
Finally a politician willing to acknowledge the giant elephant in the election campaign. The Sustainable Australia Party certainly has my Senate vote.
It was the sleight of hand of John Howard that originally mislead the Australian people on immigration. While Howard talked tough on the arrivals of boat people, he opened the backdoor to economic migrants arriving here by plane, leading to a giant surge in the levels of immigration and population growth to well above the long-term average:
How do I know this? Well John Howard admitted this obfuscation in a Radio National interview in 2014:
“Every country does have the right to decide the composition, the manner, and the timing of the flow of people. And that’s something the Australian people support…
One of the reasons why it is so important to maintain that policy is that the more people think our borders are being controlled, the more supportive they are in the long-term of higher levels of immigration.
Australia needs a high level of immigration. I’m a high immigration man. I practiced that in Government. And one of the ways that you maintain public support for that is to communicate to the Australian people a capacity to control our borders and decide who and what people and when they come to this country”
Correct me if I am wrong, but when did John Howard ever articulate to the Australian people that the Government was going to dramatically expand the nation’s immigration intake?
From my recollection of events, Australia’s immigration intake was increased by stealth first under the Howard Government, then continued by the Rudd/Gillard Governments, and now under the Abbott/Turnbull Governments. There was never any community consultation on the issue or any national discussion.
John Howard’s claim that Australia needs a high level of immigration is also spurious and has been debunked dozens of times on this site. Nor does it align with the Productivity Commission’s previous findings that immigration is neither beneficial for the economy or living standards, or that immigration can alleviate the impacts of an ageing population.
One only needs to examine the national accounts to see how high immigration has distorted the economic landscape. While headline GDP growth across Australia has held-up reasonably well over the past decade, thanks to high immigration, per capita real GDP has trended down so sharply that is has fallen to levels not seen since the early-1980s recession:
Basically, the national economic pie has growth via immigration (more inputs equals more outputs), but everyone’s share of that pie is getting smaller. Some outcome!
And anyone that lives in Sydney and Melbourne – where most migrants have flowed (see next chart) – would have experienced the massive rises in congestion, declining housing affordability, and overall lower livability since Australia’s immigration rate was ratcheted upwards.
Moreover, it is not like Australia is becoming more productive with all of these extra migrants. Productivity growth has been falling for a decade. And the trade deficits in the migrant hotspots of Sydney and Melbourne have blown-out to eye-watering levels:
Essentially, as people have flooded into Sydney and Melbourne – with the lion’s share of new arrivals working in non-productive “bullshit” services jobs – exports have stagnated and the trade balance has deteriorate sharply as more and more services workers purchase imports, like cars and TVs, without earning the nation export income.
It would be nice if politicians examined the facts, and gauged the community’s views, before pursuing the current high population (immigration) growth strategy. This way, Australia might not have been left with an “infrastructure emergency”, housing affordability problems on a grand scale, and falling livability.
Australia needs a frank and honest national conversation about population policy. Not the current ‘smoke and mirrors’ approach that conflates immigration with refugees.
