Australians Want Immigration Capped

A survey conducted by Galaxy during January, on behalf of the Sunday Mail , indicates clearly that Australians want immigration capped.This follows opposition leader Tony Abbott's Australia day address which raised a tough stance on boat arrivals but suggested he favoured more immigration to boost our population.

Our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has said he wants a "big Australia" so now we have both of our main political parties pushing increased immigration. It is clear that the labor and liberal politicians are fostering the current population explosion using a very narrow viewpoint - more people - more consumers-more economic growth. This is an easy cop-out that will result in short term gain for long term pain.

Neither party has a population policy or a limit on this unprecedented growth - up from the long term traditional level of around the 70,000 to 100,000 level per annum to a tripling of numbers to around the 300,000 level.

We say Melbourne is now under threat from this largely unplanned population explosion and and we agree with demographer Dr. Bob Birrell, Director of Population & Urban Research at Monash University, who has raised the alarm over the unsustainabilty of the current directions and an economy dependent upon building houses.

The nexus between population growth and economic growth will be difficult to break but we will continue our campaign to make this a major issue at the coming federal and state elections with the aim of forcing both main parties to develop a population policy that is acceptable to the Australian community.