The great immigration conspiracy of silence has descended upon Dick Smith with Domainfax implicitly positioning him with US neo-Nazis:
“The Labor Party’s beholden to what they call their ‘ethnic vote’. They’re deluded. They think the ethnic people who are here want unlimited immigration – they don’t. They don’t want to turn Sydney into Shanghai.
“The Liberals are scared of offending the business community, who just want endless growth in population so you have endless growth in profit and endless greed.”
Online reaction to the ad, which Smith says crashed his website this morning, included both support and backlash, with some commenters labelling it “racist”.
Smith denies the ad will scapegoat migrants or contribute to the current climate of politicised violence, such as the fatalities at a far-right rally in the US this weekend.
“No, the opposite will happen. It will bring the discussion into the open,” he says.
“[The ad] has nothing to do with racism, but that word is always used to stop any discussion.”
Smith is due to take the campaign to Canberra on Wednesday to further discuss the issue with politicians.
“So far I’ve only got a meeting with Pauline Hanson, none of the other politicians will meet with me,” he says.
Are you serious, Domainfax? It’s you that’s linking race and immigration for the inglorious purposes of boosting housing listings, not Dick Smith.
The Herald Sun gives him a better run:
“Our growth-addicted economic system will see our children living in a world of 11 billion people, consuming and polluting more than our finite planet can withstand,” the ad says. “It’s a path to either more and more inequality, or famine, disaster, war and collapse. Are we that stupid?”
Since the early 2000s, Australia’s annual net migration intake has tripled from its long-term average to 210,000 people. Mr Smith wants immigration to return to a more sustainable 70,000 a year, a call echoed by a growing number of commentators.
“It’s still very generous, but it means we would stabilise the population under 30 million people,” Mr Smith told news.com.au. “I have absolutely no doubt we’re going down the same track as America, which has over 30 million people on a minimum wage of $7.10 per hour, less than half ours. The prime reason is too many people trying to share the finite.”
Australia’s population has surged 21.5 per cent since 2003, compared with the OECD average of 8.5 per cent, but Australia’s GDP per capita change has just barely outpaced the OECD — 16 per cent versus 15 per cent.
Mr Smith said it would only get “worse and worse”.
“Our growth rate will take us to 101 million people by the end of this century when our grandkids will be alive,” he said. “That’s possible but with a very large number of poor people, and they will revolt, they’ll bring out the pitchforks and revolt.
“I was in Siberia, I travelled to where the Tsar’s children were gunned down. We’re going to repeat the stupidity of previous generations.”
He slammed the common argument that high immigration was needed to replace an ageing population. “It’s ridiculous, it’s a Ponzi scheme,” he said.
“If you bring in more people now, they get older and the problem is worse. You can’t solve an ageing problem by bringing more immigration, it puts it off but gives the impression the government is doing well. The working people are worse off.”
Mr Smith is spending $1 million of his own money to air the commercial, which will launch at a media conference at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney on Tuesday.
He said he was inspired by a recent Oxfam report which found the wealthiest 1 per cent of Australians own more than the bottom 70 per cent — or 17 million people — and by comments from former Reserve Bank governor Bernie Fraser that the wealth gap was approaching a “danger point”.
“We need to have a population policy, and eight out of 10 Australians agree with me,” he said. “Everyone stops me in the street and says, ‘Dick, you’re so right.’ Every Australian family has a strict population policy, they don’t have 20 children, they have the number they can give a good life to.
“But our politicians are letting us down by spruiking endless growth, which is really endless greed, more people have less.”
Mr Smith said both sides of politics were to blame, with the Labor Party “frightened of their ethnic vote”, and the “wealthy lobbyists” pushing for ever-increasing immigration.
“It’s more customers to buy our goods, it keeps wages down, it’s the greedy 1 per cent who will get more and more wealthy as they completely destroy our country,” he said.
To coincide with the TV ad, Mr Smith has launched a “Fair Go Manifesto”, which calls for higher taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations — 45 per cent for companies compared with 30 per cent, and 65 per cent for individuals compared with 49 per cent.
The manifesto also calls for inheritance taxes for the wealthiest 1 per cent, and the removal of capital gains tax concessions and negative gearing for property investors to improve housing affordability.
Ignore him at your peril, pollies.
