Comments in todays press by former immigration minister Ruddock again raises the question of our immigration levels. See link.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/former-immigration-minister-philip-ruddock-says-declining-job-market-should-see-cut-to-migrant-intake/story-fni0fit3-1227305475595

It appears that our current net intake is above 200,000, which in my opinion is far too high. We are funding this intake and have to provide the housing, jobs and infrastructure so it is time to reconsider.

Australia cannot solve the worlds population problems and with the debt we have it is now that we should favor the citizens that elected the politicians, not bestow goodwill on foreigners who have not contributed to our economy.

But who asked you to fund them, Banjo, or to provide for them?

Let those who want to come, come.
Let those who want to leave, leave.

Don't help them, don't hamper them, don't try to solve the world's problems, don't stop it from solving them itself.

Yuyutsu - 50,000 plus came under the watch of Dillard and Dudd, I would prefer not to have to support them but by paying taxes I am forced to.

Quote "don't hamper them" Absolutely idiotic, if the Liberals had not stopped them we would have tens of thousands more by now.

I think it may be time to read your comments first before hitting post.

Some Australian capital cities are now the most expensive to live in the world, more people will mean more expensive as infrastructure tries to catch up to the new arrivals.

Lets not forget the fresh water problem, we are having to install expensive desalination plants in or near most major cities.

Yuyutsu, you may have some loopy idea that there is no genuine reason for any government to make laws or determine what happens within it's borders but the rest of us in the real world don't share your confidence we can leave the borders wide open and everything will magically work out.

Dear Philip,

The model you are relating to is the current model, where immigrants receive welfare, housing and other kinds of support. In the model I am presenting you don't even need to provide them with fresh water - how they are able to eat and drink would become their private issue, then not as many would want to come, unless they have money and/or Australian supporters (other than the tax-payer).

Dear Hippie,

The only legitimate reason allowing a government to determine who may enter, is to protect its citizens from harm. This includes ascertaining their character (that they are not criminals) and their health (that they do not carry dangerous contagious diseases).

Oh yes Banjo, I agree we should cut down on immigration.
We should stop all those who are already Australian citizens from bringing in their relatives until the really needy refugees in all the refugee camps around the world have been housed.

We should start with war torn African countries who have thousands of starving refugees that need a safe place to live shall we?

Susie,
You said. "Oh yes Banjo, I agree we should cut down on immigration"

I certainly agree and drastically too. Don't you think that 'net zero' would be a good objective. Just think that all the saved money could go toward paying off the huge debt the previous government left us with. We never do get figures on how much the current immigration levels cost us, in fact we are never asked what we think the immigration levels should be.

It has been known for years that the beneficaries of immigration are developers, big business and the immigrants themselves. Still the first two aforementioned contribute greatly to the coffers of the major parties so I suppose they should get consideration. To hell with the rest of the citizenry.

Charming , Banjo. What if it was Australians who were in a bad way and the rest of the world felt like you do?
We are citizens of the world too Banjo.

Never mind the money wasted by the previous Government, what about the millions wasted by the present Government, housing refugees and asylum seekers on someone else's Island and paying them truckloads for the privilege?

We should just bite the bullet, allow all those people to live in the community, and at least some of them could work for their keep, and we wouldn't be paying millions on the mental and physical problems caused by being in long term detention.

As Abbott and his crowd of merry men have "stopped the boats" we shouldn't have any need for expensive Island detention centres etc....

Banjo, why do assign such a high priority to paying off thhe government debt? Doing so means the government will have to take more money out of the economy than it puts in, which st this stage of the economic cycle will result in higher unemployment even with no immigration at all.

Oh comon Susie, get off your ideological high horse and face reality.

Of the 200,000 entrants only 18000 are genuine refugees who endured any hardship, the rest are coming here for their own benefit. In fact the muslim element see themselves as pioneers for Islam. Immigrants do not come with a grand idea of building Australia. They benefit from our generosity. Aside from the welfare given to the 18000 refugees, we provide the housing and infrastructure to accommodate the migrants. Each plane load means less jobs, house prices rise, it takes longer to get to work, queues are longer and costs rise. Giving makes one feel good when you can afford it. The Middle East has stuffed their own place up, despite swimming in oil.

All other countries look after their own first and it is now time our politicians did the same and stopped being so generous with our money.

The only migrants that should be allowed are those with the skills we need so we can get some benefit from allowing them to be part of our community. Even then we should be training our own.

Our forebears built this country, it did not happen by accident, it was hard work and we should not just give it away to anyone that wants to come

"The only legitimate reason allowing a government to determine who may enter, is to protect its citizens from harm. This includes ascertaining their character (that they are not criminals) and their health (that they do not carry dangerous contagious diseases)."

I would add, ascertaining their political ideology, followers of the Koran and its prophet would be barred.

Dear Is Mise,

<<I would add, ascertaining their political ideology, followers of the Koran and its prophet would be barred.>>

Perhaps so, but one cannot simultaneously follow both the Koran and its prophet, reason being that Muhammad the Prophet, peace be upon him, did not write the Koran, nor would he ever endorsed the crap that was written there, at least 150 years after his death.

Yes, it is legitimate to bar people of a violent ideology who intend to enforce their ways over the population, but the mentioned prophet was not like that, nor should we fall into this trap of agreeing with the said ideology as if he was.

It's quite simple,

if you have nothing to offer we don't want you.

If you don't wish to assimilate, we don't want you.

If you can't accept our ways, or wish to change our ways, we don't want you.

If you wish to have children we won't support them if you don't support them.

If you want free medical, you can only draw what you have paid in Medicare for the first five years of being here and you must have medical insurance.

The reality is that thanks in large to the previous Rudd government, we are now depriving our own residents, many being tax payers, of resources so we simply can no longer support passengers.

Finally, if you have some religious or spiritual beliefs, leave them behind because we don't support radicalism or any religion/faith that supports extremists such as the Muslim faith.

Imitating to the likes of Australia should be a privilege not a given right.

Whatever you do, don't bother to use facts Philip S.

>>Lets not forget the fresh water problem, we are having to install expensive desalination plants in or near most major cities.<<

You are of course referring to these, are you not?

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/desalination-plant-to-remain-in-mothballs-20150204-1364op.html

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/535m-paid-to-keep-desalination-plant-in-state-of-hibernation-20150411-1miuw6.html

You are also conveniently ignoring the facts relating to the impact of immigration policy on our country's prosperity, which has been uniformly positive for the past two hundred years.

But why bother with facts when you have a dog-whistle, eh.

Suze, as sad as it is that so many Aficans are being displaced, the often uncomfortable reality is, they can't help themselves because despite there being little chance of housing, feeding and caring for their offspring, they simply won't stop breeding.

As our global population surges toward 9 billion, someone at some stage must decide to remove aid from those who won't help themselves and I know that's a terrible thing to say but the truth can't always be nice.

Butch,
Yes even if we tripled out population it would not assist the world population.

Iran and Thailand have demonstrated that birthrates can be significantly lowered by government sponsored family planning and the provision of the means to do so. Both these countries lowered their birthrates from 6 per woman to less than 2 per woman. Just google family planning in Iran and Thailand for full story.

This is what the UN should be promoting and funding on a massive scale. Especially in the countries prone to famine.

rehctub, when people can't be confident their children will survive to produce grandchildren, they tend to have much bigger families to increase the chance that some of them will. It may sound cruel but humans probably couldn't've survived this long if it wasn't true.

I guess all thinking people know that those who have no argument to use often start talking about others dog-whistle.

I saw some figures recently that showed that all immigration since WW11 has been uniformly positive for the immigrants, just a negative for the existing population.

Banjo, your about 30 years too late with this suggestion, but it is worth shouting from the roof tops every day, until heard & acted upon

Suse, can you share three positive contributions the Muslim immigrants have made to Australian society. Personally I'm not aware of any and if it takes researching the internet to find something, it must not be that significant.

But given you know more about these things, it will be interesting to see what you have to offer.

I just Googled 'Muslim contributions to Australia'and came across this post by Foxy in June 2010 (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3716) which lists four contributions:

"Here are some contributions of Australian Muslims
that I've come across:

1) Socio-Economic contribution to the Halal
Meat Industry, contributing around $5.0 billion
to the Australian economy and employing around
30,000 people.

2) Success of Muslim players in sports,
such as the AFL in Victoria.

3) Active involvement of Muslim women in the
police force, such as Victoria.

4) Donations to various charities, such as
$50,000 by the Muslim Community to the
Leukaemia Foundation in Queensland.

Australian Muslims have made a significant
contribution to Australian society over
the past 150 years."

Really, that's it for the past 150 years? Come on Foxy, surely you cannot be honestly impressed with those examples.

Going by the above list I'm not convinced #'s 1, 2, and 3 are any more than being employed. #4 - $50,000 donated from 250,000 Muslims (at the time) isn't astonishing, is it? I wonder how that figure compared to Muslim donations to build local Mosques over the same period?

When I think 'significant contribution' I think of discovering a new medical break through; inventing something that benefits society; performing an act of extraordinary heroism or bravery; great novelists, scientists, mathematicians, astronomers, etc.

What contribution has anyone from the Muslim community produced that Australia would be worse off if it hadn't occurred?

Hasbeen,
Yeah, I know, Ludwig and me have been shouting it here for 10 or more years.

The main problem is that the major parties are in the pockets of big business and we all know that 'He who pays the piper calls the tune'

I did have hopes that the present mob would drop multiculturalism but that doesn't seem likely now.

Banjo,

Add to that the marginal seats where the ethnic tail swings the Party dog.

The problem is that way back from Whitlam's day, government has had the long-suffering Aussie taxpayer funding the ethnic lobbyists, lobbyists who also have a direct line to the ministers of the day.

That is precisely what went wrong in Rotherham and other centres in the UK, where the Labour Party in particular was swayed by multiculturalism and its 'Progressive' political correctness.

<Rotherham abuse scandal: Ed Miliband 'deeply sorry'

Ed Miliband said the Labour Party had to "learn the lessons" from Rotherham

Labour leader Ed Miliband has said his party "let people down in Rotherham" over the child sexual abuse scandal.
Speaking on the BBC's Sunday Politics programme in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, Mr Miliband said he was "deeply sorry" for what had happened.
A report published in August on child sexual exploitation in the town found at least 1,400 children were abused in Rotherham from 1997-2013.
Labour were in charge of the council throughout the period.
The report by Professor Alexis Jay found children as young as 11 were raped by multiple perpetrators, abducted, trafficked to other cities in England, beaten and intimidated, mainly by men of Pakistani heritage.
Earlier this month, a report by Louise Casey, the director-general for troubled families, said the authority was still "in denial" about the child abuse scandal and was "not fit for purpose".>
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-31479039

The problem isn't immigration per se, although in both the UK and Australia the electorate are strongly against the huge numbers involved. The problems are poor screening especially where large numbers are being taken (practically all of the time), corruption and importing toxic political systems, values and traditions from certain known origins.

Talking about the influence of political correctness and ethnic lobbyists on ministers and political parties, precisely when will Australia's minister for immigration deliver that URGENT report and remedies for the known problems in immigration in Australia? What is preventing it (as if the public is unaware)?

Practices and cultures which are offensive or incompatible are one issue, such as many Islamic ideas about women, violence, animal slaughter, Sharia and so on.
Perhaps they could be absorbed over time or their minds changed through assimilation, but that would depend on a very low rate of immigration and deliberate policies to this end.
I'd like to open a can of worms and say that there are also innate genetic differences, particularly with Africans at the furthest extreme. Their testosterone levels are higher, which may be part of the reason why they are more prone to violence everywhere they are in the world. Their IQ's are also lower, this is usually censored but it is true and although there are all kinds of excuses trying to explain it away, the fact remains nowhere in the world no matter how much money was thrown at it was the gap ever bridged. No amount or kind of education or help that has ever been tried has been able to change this.

OTB,
If our net immigration is over 200,000 it is indeed a problem. We simply cannot absorb that many and provide jobs and housing/services for them all. Especially when we owe so much. Despite some who maintain that the amount we owe is not high, my life experience has been that loans have to be paid back on maturity and in the meantime interest has to be paid. Funny thing about money lenders, they seem to want their interest each quarter and the principle repaid at maturity.

Oh sure, it feels good to be generous and give away our land and our prosperity to those coming from foreign lands but I submit we are not any longer in a position to do so. What about the needs of our own citizens, for example how many are homeless and/or job less and require help. We have not come within a bulls roar of providing all the required infrastructure.

I think that we should be looking to importing only those that can be paying more than their way in a very short time.

By the way, it was Hawke PM that negotiated an agreement with the Libs that neither major party would debate immigration matters. That is why the issues are not debated, even at elections.

If you want to debate other immigration related matters such as cultural incompatablity by all means do so, but it is a different subject to immigration levels

since the lebanese civil war in 1983 there was a tremdous amount of muslims and Christian lebnsase .the ones that value society with hate are the ones we don't keep and the ones want drug dealing and spread there hate need to be thrown out of the country .even Asian theat intfiltrate business and there hate for society Australia is good society we need to make trillion not hate .I find here there cultural divide due to hate .my self a car buff and social wi see a lot arabics dealing drugs and saying that Australia are rubbish .this is not acceptable

Banjo is correct. There are two issues: sheer numbers and culturally incompatible migrants, a problem that is made far worse by very large numbers, because otherwise people tend to assimilate or get disgusted enough to go home.

Philip S is right about the desalination plants. We have been having a string of relatively wet years, but long droughts are far from unknown in Australia's history. Just imagine a long, severe drought, double the population, and no desalination plants. I well remember those white government cars during the last long drought, as they cruised the neighborhood trying to catch someone washing his car or hosing her garden on the wrong day. Incidentally, desalinated water is 4 to 6 times as expensive as dam water. Pericles and his friends get the benefit of the bigger population, but the extra cost of the water is shared with everyone else.

Nor does high immigration mean prosperity, although this may have been true in the early 20th century. A number of reports from around the world have found that the per capita economic benefit is very small and goes almost entirely to the migrants themselves. See, for example, our own 2006 Productivity Commission Report on Immigration (p. 154 and the graphs on p. 147 and p. 155), which you can download here

http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/migration-population/report

Big Business and the politicians want mass migration because the bigger total GDP gives them more to skim and because the distributional effects siphon a larger proportion of the nation's wealth up to them. They don't care about the environment or extinctions due to loss of habitat when too much of it is appropriated for human use, and they are insulated by their wealth from most of the quality of life problems, such as unaffordable housing or congestion, that their policies are creating for other people.

Banjo, "If our net immigration is over 200,000 it is indeed a problem"

There is no disagreement with that.

As in the UK, there is clear public opposition to the large numbers. Rudd was to find that out when he spruiked his 'Big Australia' and endless diversity. That opposition has been in existence for years, but both sides of politics have not heeded public opinion and nor has either side given the electorate the opportunity to vote on it.

The 200,000 figure is close t correct. The net annual immigration figures for the past three years is 190,000/annum not including Kiwis.

As a productive law abiding employer Kiwi, I hope you guys don't want to throw us out.

https://www.immi.gov.au/media/statistics/statistical-info/visa-grants/migrant.htm

OTB,
The public wont get any chance to voice an opinion on immigration levels while ever LNP and ALP have this agreement to 'not discuss' immigration issues.

CH,
Personally, I would be looking at reducing the number of non productive and cultural incompatable persons we allow to come in every year. i.e. Those that have shown us they will not/cannot integrate and hold our laws and society in contempt.

Only after that phase is achieved would kiwis need be concerned.

Banjo,
It doesn't even need to be that intellectual, if an immigrant is a degenerate gambler, a drunk/drug addict, a prostitute or sexual deviant or a habitual user of brothels they need to go first, the wacky Imams and such like we can live with.
I'm more bothered by the fact that there are now over 20 Chinese brothels within a four block area in my suburb than the two mosques and the Islamic centre. Radical Muslims don't usually deal methamphetamine an solicit for prostitution by grabbing passersby by the arm outside their "massage therapy" shops.

In all the discussion about immigration, isn't the real problem about world population increases. Not to sound bad yet realistic, woman in poor countries need to have many children to support them in their old age. As long as we are talking about immigration restrictions without world population controls, such discussions are shallow. population increases are an economic market forces ideology. increasing populations creates residential and commercial building employment. what may be the problem is old religious, economic and social ideology based around available food resources, often solved with invented wars when ideologies become out of balance.

Immigration got us this,

"The video also contained a chilling message for its Australian audience, although it's likely it was recorded prior to the weekend's counter terror raids.

"I also send a message to my brothers, my beloved brothers in Islam in Australia," Prakash said.

"Now is the time to rise, now is the time to wake up...you must start attacking before they attack you."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-22/is-recruiter-linked-to-anzac-terror-plot-urges-attacks/6412792

Abbott is negotiating in Turkey to get our citizens, like this lovable chap, back to Australia; one wonders why.

There's not much that you can do against being stabbed, body armour is not an option for Australia's law-abiding citizens.

Is Mise,
Immigration also gave us Dr Tareq Kamleh.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/australian-doctor-tareq-kamleh-appears-in-islamic-state-propaganda-video-20150425-1mt603.html
So we until recently a member of an organisation which has declared war upon Australia was working in the WA health system, presumably in pediatrics? Tony Abbott and Bill shorten are asking us to trust Muslims simply because it's "racist" not to and asking us to believe that Islamic State is not legitimate, for flip's sake this man is a doctor and he has faith in the caliphate. What can liberal democracy possibly offer the majority of low IQ Muslim immigrants and their children if it can't keep a high IQ pediatrician?

I think the borders should be opened. Control should always be there, but open borders are a yes for me.

Dear Luca,

I agree, the borders to the continent of Australia should be open, but not the borders to Australian society and the benefits which accrue from it, including welfare, health services, housing and legal rights. Also, cities should be able to close their gates to immigrants if the population of that city so chooses.