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http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...000117,00.html
LIFE in cities like Melbourne is getting more complicated.
Train commuters complain more than ever about crowded carriages.
Suburban roads are increasingly clogged with traffic as neighbourhood gives way to high-density housing.
The cost of housing is making ownership unreachable for would-be first-home buyers.
Water, or lack of it, is on everyone's lips.
Yet a major contributing factor for all of this is rarely mentioned, let alone properly discussed.
This is high immigration, which is currently at levels not seen since the boom intakes of the late 1960s.
More than 160,000 people will settle in Australia during 2007-08 under the official migration program. But the real figure is higher when the permanent residency visas for foreign students and others already here is taken into account.
Recent figures show that Victoria's population grew by 74,000 over the past year, with immigration accounting for 57 per cent of the increase.
Several hundred migrants are streaming into Melbourne each week, adding pressure to infrastructure, services and the demand for water.
A major international pro-migration conference, Metropolis, starts in Melbourne today.
Annual immigration is almost double what it was when the Howard Government came to office more than a decade ago.
This has happened relatively quietly although the Government has been under fire for its tough stance on asylum seekers who arrive illegally.
And Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews continues to cop flak for linking a freeze on refugee numbers from Africa to problems in integrating Sudanese arrivals.
But the Government has presided over a huge increase in total immigration that contradicts any perception that the Coalition is anti-migrant.
This was no accident. The Howard Government's first immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, set out to overhaul a migration program that he believed had become unpopular under Labor's Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.
Ruddock switched the focus to skilled migrants and away from family reunion, which was widely seen as being rorted.
The Government also moved to neutralise the issue of multiculturalism, which was seen as divisive under Labor's policy and which played a big part in the rise of Pauline Hanson.
The rise in migration has accompanied the economic boom and big business, eager for more consumers and workers, has pressured the Government to keep raising the intake.
But public support for high migration is in danger of faltering over issues such as urban congestion and community security.
So far, most of the debate has been among special interest groups on the internet.
Anti-immigration activists such as Denis McCormack, once an adviser to former Labor MP Graeme Campbell, is pushing for voters to write "reduce immigration" on their ballot papers at the coming federal election.
Writing online, David Shearman, emeritus professor of medicine at Adelaide University and honorary secretary of the group Doctors for the Environment Australia, has attacked skilled migration.
"We support necessary immigration of refugees, but not immigration that purloins skilled workers from developing countries", he says.
"No one likes to talk about it, in fact it's off the agenda, but population is the final common denominator of climate change."
Monash University demographer Dr Bob Birrell has written extensively on how migration-led population growth threatens Melbourne's "liveability".
Former Labor environment minister Barry Cohen questioned why the debate over climate change did not make the link "between the apocalyptic scenario painted by eminent scientists and the demand for a greatly expanded population".
Cohen says there is a nervousness that any call for a slowdown in population growth "will be interpreted as racism".
Prime Minister John Howard, who initially cut the migrant intake after winning office in 1996, has become an advocate of high immigration and said he would maintain current levels.
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd said the Government had the numbers right and he would continue the policy if elected PM.
Immigration may not be a major issue at this election, however, concerns over climate change, water supply and urban congestion will play out in various ways.
Political parties have a responsibility to explain how the increasing population will affect their daily lives now and well into the future.
JOHN MASANAUSKAS is a staff writer who specialises in immigration issues
LIFE in cities like Melbourne is getting more complicated.
Train commuters complain more than ever about crowded carriages.
Suburban roads are increasingly clogged with traffic as neighbourhood gives way to high-density housing.
The cost of housing is making ownership unreachable for would-be first-home buyers.
Water, or lack of it, is on everyone's lips.
Yet a major contributing factor for all of this is rarely mentioned, let alone properly discussed.
This is high immigration, which is currently at levels not seen since the boom intakes of the late 1960s.
More than 160,000 people will settle in Australia during 2007-08 under the official migration program. But the real figure is higher when the permanent residency visas for foreign students and others already here is taken into account.
Recent figures show that Victoria's population grew by 74,000 over the past year, with immigration accounting for 57 per cent of the increase.
Several hundred migrants are streaming into Melbourne each week, adding pressure to infrastructure, services and the demand for water.
A major international pro-migration conference, Metropolis, starts in Melbourne today.
Annual immigration is almost double what it was when the Howard Government came to office more than a decade ago.
This has happened relatively quietly although the Government has been under fire for its tough stance on asylum seekers who arrive illegally.
And Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews continues to cop flak for linking a freeze on refugee numbers from Africa to problems in integrating Sudanese arrivals.
But the Government has presided over a huge increase in total immigration that contradicts any perception that the Coalition is anti-migrant.
This was no accident. The Howard Government's first immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, set out to overhaul a migration program that he believed had become unpopular under Labor's Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.
Ruddock switched the focus to skilled migrants and away from family reunion, which was widely seen as being rorted.
The Government also moved to neutralise the issue of multiculturalism, which was seen as divisive under Labor's policy and which played a big part in the rise of Pauline Hanson.
The rise in migration has accompanied the economic boom and big business, eager for more consumers and workers, has pressured the Government to keep raising the intake.
But public support for high migration is in danger of faltering over issues such as urban congestion and community security.
So far, most of the debate has been among special interest groups on the internet.
Anti-immigration activists such as Denis McCormack, once an adviser to former Labor MP Graeme Campbell, is pushing for voters to write "reduce immigration" on their ballot papers at the coming federal election.
Writing online, David Shearman, emeritus professor of medicine at Adelaide University and honorary secretary of the group Doctors for the Environment Australia, has attacked skilled migration.
"We support necessary immigration of refugees, but not immigration that purloins skilled workers from developing countries", he says.
"No one likes to talk about it, in fact it's off the agenda, but population is the final common denominator of climate change."
Monash University demographer Dr Bob Birrell has written extensively on how migration-led population growth threatens Melbourne's "liveability".
Former Labor environment minister Barry Cohen questioned why the debate over climate change did not make the link "between the apocalyptic scenario painted by eminent scientists and the demand for a greatly expanded population".
Cohen says there is a nervousness that any call for a slowdown in population growth "will be interpreted as racism".
Prime Minister John Howard, who initially cut the migrant intake after winning office in 1996, has become an advocate of high immigration and said he would maintain current levels.
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd said the Government had the numbers right and he would continue the policy if elected PM.
Immigration may not be a major issue at this election, however, concerns over climate change, water supply and urban congestion will play out in various ways.
Political parties have a responsibility to explain how the increasing population will affect their daily lives now and well into the future.
JOHN MASANAUSKAS is a staff writer who specialises in immigration issues
Иногда полезно и такое почитать, но мы все-таки съездим сначала сами посмотрим..
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