Following the reslease yesterday of Australia’s Cenus, Bernard Salt – the self proclaimed “unabashed supporter of a bigger Australia” – has penned a triumphant piece hailing the emergence of a ‘Big Australia’ and the so-called enrichment of the major cities. From The Australian:
Australia is like a ship casting aside its moorings and heading into uncharted waters.
Not in a foreboding way, but more in a break-with-the-past kind of way. The nation is bigger courtesy of a Big Australia policy initiated last decade that doubled the immigration intake and set us all on a different course. As a consequence, our biggest cities are growing at breakneck speed, especially Melbourne.
…it could be argued that Sydney and Melbourne are separating themselves from the greater mass of the Australian people. These two leviathan cities are bigger, more Asian-Indian-Arabic, are fundamentally richer and are more aligned to apartmentia, as opposed to suburbia, as a way of life than pretty much any other part of Australia…
It remains to be seen whether these globally connected, liberal-thinking, knowledge-worker cities are acting as forerunners to social and economic change across the balance of the nation…
The Australia of the past is precisely that: a thing of the past. Mum, dad and the kids are now giving way to singles and to couples, including same-sex ones. Suburbia is morphing into a denser, more efficient lifestyle habitat…
The census encourages a once-in-five-years review of where we are as a nation. And in a continent as vast and as sparse as Australia it’s worthwhile to check we’re on the right track. Or that we are all agreed on where we’re headed. The trajectory might change from time to time but at least it’s a trajectory that the Australian people have chosen, have reviewed via the census, and have thereby had a hand in shaping their destiny.
Conveniently, there’s no mention by Salt of the extreme strain the mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy is placing on infrastructure and housing in the major cities, nor the deleterious impact it is having on wages and incumbent residents’ living standards.
Salt also suggests that we Australians have been given a choice on the matter and that “we are all agreed on where we’re headed” and that “it’s a trajectory that the Australian people have chosen”. However, there’s been no consultation with the Australian people to gauge their views on whether they want mass immigration. There’s been no vote. Rather, mass immigration has been shoved down our throats by an unholy alliance between the Coalition, Labor and The Greens, who all refuse to discuss the issue.
The case for a ‘Big Australia’ has never been made, which is why Australia desperately needs to have a national debate about population policy before the situation gets too far out of hand and living standards in the major cities are irreversibly destroyed.
