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IMMIGRATION

Past its USE BY DATE for Australia!


1) The environment - natural, rural and urban
2) The economy
3) Defence
4) Humanitarianism
5) Health
6) Education
7) Culture


1. THE ENVIRONMENT

The Australian Conservation Foundation has stated that "Even the present population is rapidly degrading the environment and is therefore not sustainable in the long run"

Only 10% of our total land area is suitable for agriculture.
In agricultural terms, Australia is only about the size of France, but with soils that are much less fertile. If we had the population of France (50 million) we would have to import food.
66% of Australia's cropland has already been degraded by erosion, compaction, acidification and rising salt levels.
Soil degradation is a continuing process due to our overuse of the land.
Thus, with soil erosion, salinity problems from irrigation and tree removal, acidification and encroaching urbanisation, the agriculturally suitable land area and its fertility may actually decline.

1) One-half of the nation's top soil has been lost by erosion and continuing unsustainable agriculture.
2) Our greatest river system, the Murray/Darling, is being turned into a polluted drain with salts from adjacent irrigation areas.
3) Wet lands, rivers and seas are being polluted and destroyed.
It is essential that we see that the rapid environmental destruction of our urban and rural environments is a consequence of the pressure of our rapidly increasing population

URBAN ENVIRONMENT

Most migrants come to the major cities. This is already seriously lowering the quality of life in our cities as their pollution and congestion increases with the cities' sprawling size and high density living. The pressures on water supply and the increasing demands for transport, roads, sewage disposal, and energy supply will be extreme and expensive as our cities grow up and out.
Real estate prices are held high, pricing young people out of the home market. Our political leaders are already telling us we must accept urban consolidation (crowding), a lower standard of housing, and the Australian mother must accept the problems of raising children in a high density pressure cooker environment.
The use of our recreational environment will become increasingly difficult with increasing travel time needed to reach the country or beach, and with shortages of space at these venues.
We have no confidence that so-called "better planning" can ease the strains which an increasing population will inevitably put on our natural environment and urban infrastructure.
We cannot solve the world's population problem (there are an extra 95 million people born into the world every year!) but we can escalate the damage being done in Australia with no global benefit.

2. THE ECONOMY

Australia's exports are: 44% agriculture and forestry 44% mining 12% other
Our resources are only plentiful in relation to the present population. Like all industrial countries we are wasteful users of non-renewable resources such as oil, coal and minerals. This use will increase with an increasing population, leaving us with less oil, coal and minerals to export. Unless a large oil find occurs soon, we will be dependent upon importing oil, at great expense, for our expanding population.
There are limits to the volume that we can profitably sell in current world markets, and also to the length of time that these resources themselves will last. With soil degradation and erosion, our agricultural resources must diminish and, in fact, the additional millions of migrants will consume much of what otherwise would have been exported. This ultimately results in less export income.
Our increasing population has little effect on manufactured exports but does increase imports, consequently making us poorer as a nation.

INFRASTRUCTURE.

Most immigrants to Australia will live in the major cities. They will generate extra economic activity there, especially in the construction of housing, roads, etc., but the capital channeled into these activities could be more productively employed in increasing investment in equipment, machinery, training and jobs for the present Australian workforce
Australia's population has grown rapidly since World War II and the nation has had to invest in providing basic services for more and more people, rather than better services, education and technical equipment for a stable population. Currently we are not even adequately maintaining existing services. It is because of the lack of capital investment in technological equipment that labour productivity in Australia has grown at a lower rate than in Sweden, Germany and Japan - not because of what the immigration advocates say - that the Australian workers are lazy.
; We are confidently told of the economic benefits of immigration. This is untrue and indeed the opposite applies. The larger the population, the lower shall be our standard of living.
; We should be self-reliant. Immigration reduces our capacity to be self-reliant, by adding pressure on natural resources and scarce investment capital which must increasingly come from international sources, hence escalating already dangerously high levels of foreign ownership, control and manipulation of Australia, its people and government. We need to consolidate our skills and our investment capacity and not disperse our limited resources in servicing needless growth.
After 40 years of mass migration, we are currently in a bigger mess than ever. If mass migration can work miracles - where are they?

THE ECONOMIC COST OF IMMIGRATION

Immigration costs us money. The ongoing costs of supporting our immigration programme in terms of housing, health services, waste disposal, education, welfare payments, unemployment benefits, and the necessity to continually expand the infrastructure to support growing cities, is an enormous financial burden on the existing community. Our research puts the cost of the immigration programme at $15 billion annually.
Business Review Weekly, in October 1989, reported the Westpac bank as finding that our immigration programme actually adds approximately $9 billion per year to our foreign debt.
In Australia a city the size of Geelong or Hobart, or one and a half Townsvilles, or two-thirds of a Canberra, must be built every year, with all the infrastructure to accommodate just one year's migrant intake. Governments are cutting their budgets already for these infrastructure services, finding the burden of ever-escalating costs too high.
To maintain our standard of living with the projected doubling of our population, we will need to have double the number of houses, schools, universities, hospitals, shops, factories, power plants, waste disposal systems, dams, sewage disposal mechanisms, and transport systems. In other words, re-build Australia within 40 years! Add to this the cost of social services: pensions, unemployment benefits, medical services, legal aid, child endowment, education expenses, and transport concessions.
To finance such a project will require immense capital borrowings, which we shall bequeath to our children in the form of a national debt that they shall never overcome.

3. DEFENCE

The belief that a large population was necessary for defence drove Australia's immigration programme after World War II.
Times have changed. Today's defence needs require a sophisticated military infrastructure and a strong economy. We need a professional, well-trained, mobile, technologically advanced force with access to sophisticated weapon systems.
Beyond this, we need a united purpose and sense of community to oppose an enemy. A rapid migrant intake could well diminish these qualities, introducing divided loyalties and undermining a central commitment to Australia. The 1987 Government Policy information paper "The Defence of Australia" states: "No population increase is necessary for defence and the dangers of a nuclear war or terrorism are not averted by an increased population."
Clearly our defence needs are unrelated to population increase through immigration.

4. HUMANITARIANISM

Large scale immigration into Australia of refugees has almost no effect on the migrant's country of origin which, instead, would welcome significant, practical, and increased aid from Australia. We seem to have confused overseas aid with immigration, and in doing so, are helping a very fortunate few at the expense of the many.
There are seventeen million refugees in the world today and our refugee programme can only be a token gesture; and indeed, we may find that we are actually encouraging the creation of a new class of illegal migrants: the so-called "economic refugee".
The problems and costs of an individual case (such as those propagandised favorably by the media) can easily be spread over the community; but there are presently three million people wishing to migrate to Australia: the impossibility of an emotional "open door" policy is obvious.
Family reunions are a currently a farce; any such reunions must be confined to spouses, parents, children, and genuinely dependent family members (following proper consideration). There is no logical or moral case for preferentially allowing independent adult relations of migrants to immigrate here on the grounds that they already have a relative here. This institutionalised nepotism is unwarranted and has resulted in the ever escalating chain migration of the family reunion programme.
No government which takes educated, skilled, or monied migrants from poor third-world countries should preach against us on humanitarian grounds, as the results of taking the best trained and educated people is disastrous to such countries.

5. HEALTH

There are many diseases being introduced into Australia: T.B., leprosy, and parasitic diseases; but these are controllable, treatable, and not of long term significance.
Hepatitis B, however, is a severe new disease being brought into Australia from Asia and, unlike the common Hepatitis A, results in chronic illness, chronic carrier status, and large numbers of deaths.
Hepatitis B is endemic in Africa and Asia. Over one billion people have been infected. This results in two million deaths per year and a carrier population of 200 million people, i.e. one person in six. Carriers, though being healthy themselves, are always infectious.
The mode of transmission of Hepatitis B is similar to that of AIDS, but is one hundred times more infectious, and spreads in a non-sexual fashion within families, between children in situations where oral spread is likely, and to non-immune individuals in close contact with large carrier populations.
Ten years ago, Hepatitis B was a very rare disease in Australia, but it is now estimated that 20 000 cases occur in Australia every year.
Acute deaths per year are less than 1 % of the total number of cases, probably 20 to 100 deaths per year, but later deaths occurring over the next 40 years are in the order of 500, i.e. 520 deaths will result from the 20 000 cases of Hepatitis B which have occurred this year.
The costs, beyond those of vaccination, of this growing epidemic are estimated in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
The Australian Government knowingly, willingly, and without concern for the non-immune Australian population, has brought Asian migrants into Australia of whom approximately 1 in 6 is a carrier of a very severe and frequently fatal disease. Apparently, the Government's immigration programme is of more importance to our politicians than the lives and actual deaths of Australian citizens.

6. EDUCATION

1. Non-English speaking students necessarily slows teaching, leading to educational problems.
In primary and secondary schools, education is difficult for teachers and pupils when students do not have command of the English language and this places stresses, within a classroom situation, on all students.
2. Overseas students are now migrants in-transit and should not have preference over local students.
Current immigration policies have rapidly increased the numbers of overseas-born students while the number of places available in training institutions have not been increased at the same rate.
Also, there are 28 000 full fee paying students in Australia; these fees are supposed to be used to create better and more facilities in the training institutions but in practice this appears not to be so. The money is being used in part to fund the daily running of the institution. These students are now encouraged to stay, or return to Australia, at the completion of their courses. In effect, this is giving away places to overseas students at the expense of our own youth.
3. Importing highly skilled migrants lessens the need to train our own students.
By importing highly skilled migrants, the need to train our own is reduced. The recent glut of overseas doctors underlies the Government plan close to close medical schools in Australia and reduce medical school intakes by 15%. We must become and remain self-sufficient.

7. CULTURE
Our unique character further evolved through the people who developed our agriculturally based economy - the drover, the shearer, the itinerant worker, and especially our pioneer women. Our Diggers marched off to fight in two World Wars, we struggled through the Depression, and created an open democratic society; a society, although imperfect, free from the tyranny of government, censorship of the media, and with great freedom and consequent responsibility given to the individual.

AUSTRALIA FIRST

Our culture is rooted in our history. Australia led the way with the secret ballot; the 8 hour day; votes for women; invalid, widow, and old age pensions; strong trade unions; the arbitration system and the basic wage. Our culture embodies the values of egalitarianism and mateship. It rejects excessive authority and believes in a "fair go", admiration for the battler, and a belief in the individual.

ONE CULTURE OR MULTICULTURALISM? Today our Government is telling us that this nation is to have a new culture: institutionalised multiculturalism. This is a result of the mass importation of the world's cultures which are no longer encouraged to join the mainstream of Australian culture.
Multiculturalism always produces a situation where group "rights" will conflict with individual rights. Multiculturalism makes us a nation of all nations, rather than providing us with a sense of community.
Clearly, multiculturalism has violently failed wherever in the world it has been tried: the USSR, Ireland, Lebanon, Fiji, Uganda, Singapore, Israel, U.K, India, Spain, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, and the U.S.A.
Very few Australians support the idea of deliberate multiculturalism. The survey done by the Office of Multicultural Affairs in 1988 showed that neither the Australian mainstream, nor migrants, want this policy, but their wishes have been ignored by those political parties who are caught up in a never-ending cycle of grabbing for the "ethnic vote".
One hundred years ago our forebears resisted the concept that Australia was only a colony of England. Now the cultural cringe has re-surfaced with the cry "Australia is a part of Asia". Australia is no more a part of Asia than Africa is a part of Europe. Historically, geographically, and culturally we are unique.
Our culture and its values need support. Destroy a culture and you destroy a people. This is well known to Australians who have seen the near destruction of Aboriginal culture. We cannot undo history, but we can learn from it.

IN SUMMARY

We have a clear choice of:

Accepting increasing immigration with the consequent exploitation of this land and a falling standard of living and quality of life, living in crowded, polluted, high density cities, with over-taxed recreational areas and inter-communal tensions. The economic consequences of increasing foreign debt, foreign ownership and undesirable, unsustainable economic expansion which will destroy any chance of maintaining the best features of Australian life as we know it. And, as migrant numbers increase, there will be an escalating push for an ever higher migrant intake which eventually will be unstoppable.
OR
Stopping mass immigration and attempting to live in harmony with our fragile environment, creating an economically and environmentally sound, self-reliant and self-sustaining community, maintaining our of quality life, and handing to the next generation a country to be cherished, enjoyed, and free from the problems of over-population.

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