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The Forum > Article Comments > Australia and Canada: what cost cultural diversity? > Comments

Australia and Canada: what cost cultural diversity? : Comments

By Tim Murray, published 16/9/2008

Both Canada and Australia are increasing migration, but at what cost to their respective ecosystems?

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daggett

When the ABS and Immigration Department make forecasts about population growth, they make various assumptions (high, medium and low) about Australia's
(a) future fertility
(b) life expectancy and
(c) net overseas migration.

Under one set of assumptions, ABS projects Australia's population to grow to between 24.9 million and 33.4 million in 2051, but under their medium (Series B) assumptions, Australia's population would virtually stabilise around 28.2 million from mid century. (http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/15population.htm)

I can't agree with the doomsayers that this range of growth is unsustainable.

ABS stats seem to you "to be inconsistent with other sources". That's because you are relying on second-hand accounts and/or misreading ABS data. One mistake you're making is conflating immigration data with natural growth data and consistently omitting permanent departures from net immigration outcomes and projections. You are also including all temporary arrivals.

It's not enough for you to say that you understand the concept of emigration. You actually have to factor it in to your accounting.

It's facile in the extreme to assert that the goal of "multiculturalism" is to transform Australia into "a representative sample of the cultures of the earth". This is a distortion of all reasonable meanings of "multiculturalism". The only evidence of the existence of the so-called "plan" is one superficial article written ages ago by an opponent. Look for his evidence. You won't find it because there is no such plan.

And at any rate whether we adopt a policy of 'multiculturalism' or 'assimilation', it makes no difference to population growth
Posted by Spikey, Sunday, 21 September 2008 6:09:06 PM
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Spikey wrote,

"It's not enough for you to say that you understand the concept of emigration. You actually have to factor it in to your accounting."

Once more: the figure I cited of 331,900 was the ABS increase in Estimate Residential Population in the 12 months to December 2007.

Are you trying to tell me that figure does NOT take into emigration?

If you are here to inform us and not just obfuscate the issue by misusing statistics then, perhaps you could show me where I am wrong.

Now it may well prove that some of those 331,900 may not be permanent, but I think it would be prudent to assume that they will become permanent until we see evidence to the contrary for anyone to bank on it. I refer anyone interested to the excellent Background documentary of 17 August on overseas students called "Paying to be Permanent" at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2008/2332972.htm

Whilst Spikey glibly assures us that further increases in population to between 24.9 million and 33.4 million (if we can have any confidence in such projections anyway) is of no great consequence, I am not convinced. We als have to remeber that the 1,000,000+ Australian expatriates have an automatic right to return should the rest of the world go pear-shape, so it would be interesting to know if any of the ABS projections factor in that possibility.

If we consider the congestion of the cities, the fact that a secure home of one's own, particularly with a yard is an impossible pipe dream for most Australians, etc, etc, etc, then I would argue the existing population growth has already been a social, political, economic and environmental catastrophe for our existing population.

Spikey needs to explain how he feels so assured that any additional increase in our population won't make that situation worse, especially at a time when our major river system may be about to die, the price of petroleum is gong inexorably up and climate change threatens to desertify much of this country.

(I may not be around for a few days.)
Posted by daggett, Tuesday, 23 September 2008 10:59:08 AM
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daggett

(Spikey here - and I was still a woman when I last checked.)

You ask, "If you are here to inform us and not just obfuscate the issue by misusing statistics then, perhaps you could show me where I am wrong."

The simplest mistake is that you are confusing the increase in Australia's permanent population and what the ABS calls increase in Estimated Residential Population.

Secondly, you are making unjustified use of assumed figures for people on visas becoming permanent settlers ("until we see evidence to the contrary," you say).

Thirdly, you accept ABS data when it suits you and reject it when it doesn't. For example, you attribute to me 'glib assurances' that further increases in population will fall in the range between 24.9 million and 33.4 million when they are ABS and Immigration Department projections, not mine.

Fourthly, you assume without seeing the evidence that a significant proportion of Australian expatriates will return. But in 2001, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade estimated the number of Australian citizens living PERMANENTLY or on a long-term basis number around 860 000, along with an additional 265 000 ‘visiting citizens’ or persons overseas on a shorter-term basis. Since the 1990s, there has been an upsurge in the permanent and long-term emigration of Australian-born. In recent years, numbers of Australians emigrating to Asia have increased by more than 50%.
http://ceda.com.au/public/publications/info_paper/ip_80.html

As for your claim that "a secure home of one's own...is an impossible pipe dream for most Australians, etc, etc, etc, then I would argue the existing population growth has already been a social, political, economic and environmental catastrophe for our existing population."

ABS data does show a fall in rates of home ownership among Australians aged less than 35 years, but it's not "catastrophic". But there is debate as to whether this fall is due to changing affordability (Yates 1999, 2002) or to delays in family formation among young Australians (Mudd et al. 2001). Immigration is not the over-riding factor.
http://lifecourse.anu.edu.au/publications/Workshop2_papers/Baxter&McDonald_W2.pdf
Posted by Spikey, Tuesday, 23 September 2008 1:25:12 PM
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Spikey wrote "ABS data does show a fall in rates of home ownership among Australians aged less than 35 years, but it's not "catastrophic". But there is debate as to whether this fall is due to changing affordability (Yates 1999, 2002) or to delays in family formation among young Australians (Mudd et al. 2001). Immigration is not the over-riding factor."

You have not acknowledged my points that show that immigration whether inter-state or international is the principle driver of housing hyper-inflation in this country athttp://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7894#123390 http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7894#123369 and http://candobetter.org/node/610 ("Brisbane's housing unaffordability crisis spun by ABC to promote property lobby interests") so why should I waste further time trying to argue this point?

(Also others, interested in the evidence might also find of interest "Property analysts again confirm immigration used to inflate housing prices" at http://candobetter.org/node/710 "Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community" at http://candobetter.org/node/360)

If you don't consider housing unaffordability to be catastrophic, then talk to some of the homeless that I have in the recent past I have reluctantly agreed to share my house with, or those others whose requests I have refused. Talk to my ex-neighbour whose life was made miserable for six months two years back by real estate agents showing off her house to prospective buyers and who then had her rent jacked up and had to move out. Talk to another friend who has lived for years in a Kombi (the regular repair bills for which almost cripple her finances.) because she can't afford to rent.

You clearly have no idea how housing unaffordability affects the lives of ordinary Australians or, if you do, you just don't care.

I consider nearly of the rest of your previous post to be obfuscation. Most people with a grip on what is happening in this country recognise that the immigration rate is far too high however we might pontificate about what the precise figures are.
Posted by daggett, Tuesday, 23 September 2008 2:10:54 PM
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daggert

No need for you to tell me about homelessness. I belong to a group with a very significant rate of homelessness (former inmates of institutions) and work with them on a regular basis. Their homelessness has nothing to do with immigration. It's there whether immigration rates are high or low. I have just finished yet another detailed submission to the Victorian Government on the issue.

So get off your righteous high horse. I wasn't saying that the fall in home ownership was not a big problem. (I can match your tragic stories with lots of my own, but what does that prove?) It's been a problem for many years and may be getting worse - and for a whole variety of reasons. Your use of the word 'catastrophe' which is both inaccurate and unhelpful. Unless we accurately diagnose the problem, we flounder in finding workable solutions

You have no credible evidence that demonstrate "that immigration whether inter-state or international is the principle driver of housing hyper-inflation in this country". No amount of repetition of low-level rhetoric will substitute for hard evidence. So if that's the best you can, yes then we are both wasting the other's time.

So you finally get to your real agenda: "Most people with a grip on what is happening in this country recognise that the immigration rate is far too high however we might pontificate about what the precise figures are."

Now what sort of grip would that be?
Posted by Spikey, Tuesday, 23 September 2008 4:46:14 PM
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Where I work in psychiatry we discharge patients to the beach, to caravan parks, onto peoples' couches, back to the streets. Things have got much much worse due to the diaspora from the inner city of people capitalising on their houses and moving further out. International immigration and interstate immigration add to this. Developer lobbyists like KPMG "demographer", Bernard Salt in 'The Big Shift' get up and lecture on how great it is that immigration is driving prices up. They think they are clever. I would be ashamed. This demand is driving up land-prices for housing and it is encouraged by State Governments for stamp duty and developers and banks for the interest they get from loans. The situation has greatly worsened since the data that Spikey cites and no-one in the industry or government bothers to deny the immigration factor anymore. As for the ABS stats: you need to coordinate land and housing prices with annual immigration stats at State level, to get the population movements. Census stats don't pick them up. (Discussed in Productivity Commission Housing Affordability Enquiry.) The internet opened up the Australian property market to international buyers and investors and diverse new bedfellows moved in to take advantage of this, including the newly privatised immigration agents, the universities touting for foreign students (and investing in university housing), the developers seeking buyers for the suburbs they build daily, the solicitors looking for conveyancing fees, the Foreign Investment Review Board (check their website) touting Oz property... we live in an immigration driven real-estate economy. That is not to say that divorce and family fragmentation don't play their part as well. Foreign Merger and Acquisitions laws have been watered down yearly since the Frazer government. Even deinstitutionalisation was largely a convenient ideology to cover the sell-off of those magnificent public hospital estates. Libs and Labor in Hansard admit the population problem at https://candobetter.org/node/663. The Victorian Government's shameful enmeshment with property speculation and immigration driven land-price inflation is revealed in Melbourne 2030: Life in a destruction zone: https://candobetter.org/node/628
Posted by Kanga, Tuesday, 23 September 2008 11:02:23 PM
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