Recently, Kelvin Thomson MP, federal member for Wills, made a speech in parliament about population growth which sent shock waves around the country. So PLANNING BACKLASH and BRAG met with him l to discuss this matter as we were concerned about the following immigration figures :-
You may be surprised to learn that our immigration figures for 2008/2009 were :-
· Permanent migrant intake 171318
· from New Zealand 47780
· refugees 13500
232598 (an increase of 12.8% )
· temporary migrants * 657124 *
Total 889722
( * temporary migrants comprise the so called “skilled workers” brought in by employers, overseas students and long stay migrants with work permit visas – many who have rights to apply for permanent residency).
All of these newcomers require to be housed and many want to live in Melbourne, currently around 2000 arrive here each week.
The Victorian Government says that this growth in population requires us to adopt a different lifestyle by accepting the densification of our city. This is what is driving the proliferation of planning edicts coming out of the Department of Planning. What they don’t say is that Premier Brumby and his cabinet are encouraging migrants to come to Melbourne and actively advertise overseas for migrants to come to Melbourne.
Refer to http://liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au ( particularly the section on Visas & Immigrating)
We understand that the Department of Immigration has outsourced the issuing of visas to agents, including universities and (some very doubtful) education providers and also to employers bringing in “skilled” workers. The Department has lost control over immigration including who and how many are allowed into this country.
The recent increase in media coverage on this issue and comments in the media from our community expressing concerns with the population growth points up that this is now a hot political issue.
It is time that both the Federal and State Governments develop a population policy that is acceptable to the people of Australia.
We support the attached 14 point plan from Kelvin Thomson especially the curtailing of immigration back to around the 70,000 mark p.a. as applied during the 1990’s.
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