Three quarters (74%) of Australian voters think that the country does not need more people and over half (54%) want a reduction in immigration. These findings are reported in Australian voters’ views on immigration policy (http://tapri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/TAPRI-survey-19-Oct-2017-final-3.pdf ), a national survey conducted in August 2017 by two demographers, Dr. Katharine Betts (Swinburne University of Technology) and Dr. Bob Birrell (The Australian Population Research Institute http://tapri.org.au/?m=201710).
Up to 70% of Australian voters believe that population growth puts “a lot of pressure” on access to schools and hospitals, public transport and roads, affordable housing and jobs, and the environment. The immigration-driven component of population growth is also on the nose in Australia because of the “increasingly obvious impact of population growth on their quality of life and the rapid change in Australia’s ethnic and religious make-up”, write the authors. Around half of Australian voters, for example, support a partial ban on Muslim immigration to Australia, with only one in four opposed, whilst 55% of Australian voters believe that “Australia is in danger of losing its culture and identity” and 52% believe that “Australia has changed in recent times beyond recognition – it sometimes feels like a foreign country”.
Immigration dissent is widespread across all socio-economic population strata (age, sex, occupation, etc.) but whilst economic deprivation is not a pre-requisite for anti-immigration sentiment, a clear risk factor for Diversityitis is being both young and ‘educated’ – millennial degree-holders, intensively-marinated in post-Marxist “identity politics” romancing ‘The Other’ on campus, are the most welcoming of immigration.
When it comes to social pathologies, both population growth and its immigration-driven component are the two Great Unmentionables amongst Australian political, media, cultural and academic elites - “Australia’s elites have consistently ignored voter concerns on these issues”, say the authors. This is politically derelict - in the decade to 2016, over 60% of Australia’s total population growth was from immigration (amongst the highest in the developed world). Objective inquiry into social reality has been sacrificed on the altar of political correctness, facilitating the profit-makers in their quest to sell ever more stuff to ever more people, employing ever-cheaper migrant labour.
“Leadership on these issues won’t come from the Australian left”, say the authors – “it is only among some sections of the trade union movement that there is any push-back against the globalist migration agenda”, whilst the main focus of the Labor and Greens parties is “competition for the minority of voters who are supporters of high migration and cultural diversity”. Elite disdain for the demos is most acute in the Greens. This party just doesn’t get it about immigration. The Trumpish One Nation party, however, does get it right about immigration.