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Racist population fears killed by facts

By Malcolm King - posted Friday, 25 January 2013


This article destroys the claim by the anti-population (anti-pops) lobby comprising the Stable Population Party and their rivals, Stop Population Growth Now Party (SPNG), that migration is destroying the Australians way of life through consumption.

In my article Eco-Fascist face of population control I dismissed the anti-pops food shortage fear campaign in Australia, by producing comprehensive data from ABARE and other government sources, on the sheer volume of food Australian farmers and graziers produce every year.

If, in a moment of madness, we decided to drive our exports on to the domestic market, every man, woman and child would be required to eat about $500,000 of meat, grain and vegetables per year, every year.

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I exposed their meta-ideology of rolling psychology, sociology, biology, climate analysis, Marxist economics and half-baked mathematics, into an embarrassing roulade of nonsense. The anti-pops thinking has much in common with the conspiratorial and delusional beliefs of the Heaven’s Gate cult in America before their mass suicide.

The anti-pops have been relentless campaigners against migrants and Australia’s humanitarian aid programs. Let’s turn our attention to disaggregating migrant numbers in our population and their transitory nature.

First of all we need to understand the difference between people who come to Australia on Temporary visas and those who come on Permanent visas. I have chosen 2009-10 as it was around the mean of migrants to enter Australia on both visa types.

Keep this ABS definition of Number of Migrants (NOM) in mind.

“NOM is the addition (or loss) to the resident population arising from the difference between those leaving Australia and those arriving, either permanently or on a long-term basis (in the county 12 months or more over a 16 month period). This includes long-term temporary entrants such as overseas students, New Zealand citizens, and Australian permanent residents or citizens returning home.” (Italics are mine).

Components of NOM

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Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics and Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

The NOM is fluid. Waves of people come in and waves of people leave. It is not simply an endless addition of wave upon wave of people.

Below is the breakdown of NOM by major groupings.

NOM by major groupings and visa (Australia 2009-10)

ABS 3412.0 - Migration, Australia, 2010-11

 

NOM arrival

%

NOM departure

%

NOM

%

Temp visas

211,258

48.3

104,951

43.4

106,507

54.3

VET

25,710

5.9

9,880

4.1

15,830

8.1

Higher ed

56,494

12.9

24,205

10.0

32,289

16.5

Student other

25,039

5.7

8,268

3.4

16,771

8.6

Business long stay (457 visa)

26,225

6.0

14,599

6.0

11,626

5.9

Visitor

40,319

9.2

16,241

6.7

24,078

12.3

Working holiday

33,031

7.5

15,034

6.2

17,997

9.2

Other temp visas

4640

1.1

16,724

6.9

-12,084

-6.2

Perm visas

84,014

19.2

6,388

2.6

77,626

39.6

Family

34,592

7.9

2,531

1.0

32,061

16.4

Skill

39,564

9.0

3,779

1.6

35,785

18.3

Special & humanitarian

9,858

2.3

78

-

9,780

5.0

NZ citizens

39,586

9.0

18,432

7.6

21,154

10.8

Australians citizens

79,042

18.0

83,339

34.5

-4297

-2.2

Other

23,828

5.4

28,762

11.9

-7934

-2.5

Total

437,928

100.0

241,872

100.0

196,056

100.0

Temporary visa holders – 106,507 people

These people are visitors. They have no Australian citizenship rights and they must return to their countries before their visas expire. They include international students, businessmen and women on 457 visas and long-term holidaymakers (see table above).

In 2009-10 there were 106,507 (in red) of them. They washed in like a tide and they washed out again. They comprised 54.3 per cent of all people who set foot in Australia (not including boat people, who from 2008-2010, numbered 4500) in that year.

Back in 2007–08, about 40 per cent of those who held visas in the temporary skilled migration category - mainly overseas students and some subclass 457 visa holders - were granted permanent residency. Those days are gone.

Now about 18 per cent are granted permanent migration status and in most cases, it is where they have worked long term for an employer. Be mindful, these people are not citizens or permanent residents. Yet the anti-pops use their number, with Hansonite vitriol, to accuse them of eating us out of house and home, when in fact, their home is overseas. They are visitors.

Permanent visa holders (Family, Skills and Humanitarian) - 77,626 people (in red)

What riles the anti-pops are the Permanent visa holders. These people are eating our food, driving cars on our roads, buying our apartments, using energy and dare I say it, having children. The anti-pops loath them because they are families (some are part of the reunion program), people with special skills such as engineers (see skills list) and those who have applied for asylum.

But there is a major problem here for the anti-pops. In the net of NOM arrivals, there were 79,042 Aussies and 39,564 Kiwis counted in the arrivals total (in blue in the table). Why? Australian’s don’t need a visa to return to their country and New Zealander’s enjoy free movement between our two nations under the Trans Tasman Travel Arrangement.

If you remove the Aussies and Kiwis from the net total of Permanent visa holders, the numbers of foreigners allegedly invading our borders and raiding our fridges, buying our products and creating jobs, sinks to 84,014 souls and then drops further to 77,636 when we deduct those who leave.

Of all the migrants (arrivals minus departures) about 118,000 are Aussies returning home for Mum’s cooking and Kiwis learning to surf at Bondi. Also keep in mind that a further 33,031 are visitors on a working holiday who love our koalas and who want you to take their photograph. Please help them with their backpacks and show them places to spend their money, preferably your shop.

By disaggregating NOM statistics we can see that the notion of a foreign invasion is wrong. Migration is a fairly complex process and can be used by divisive and ideologically driven elements to set Australian against Australian - but not anymore.

The anti-pops demonise temporary, permanent, returning Australians, New Zealand and long term working holiday makers as food eating, water drinking and energy consuming ‘Mongol hoards’. Yet these people bring skills, money and intellectual capital into the country. Why demonise them? Because the anti-pops are innumerate racists.

Housing

About the time of the release of the 2011 Census, there was great lamentation amongst the anti-pops that these ravenous migrants would boost average household sizes faster than we could build houses for them. If that was true, average household sizes should explode.

Yet the 2011 Census found that the average household size remained steady at 2.6 persons per dwelling - the same average as what was back in 2006 and in 2001. ‘Hang on’, I hear you say. ‘If Australia’s population is exploding, shouldn’t the number of persons per dwelling be climbing?’ Absolutely. It is a direct indicator of population. We all need somewhere to live.

Why is it so? One reason is the death rate. Death and serious illness in old age turns over property. Most people these days die of old age 70+ or of illnesses associated with age. The property goes to the children or it is placed on the market. In 2011, 146,932 people died. The great majority of these were elderly. So even though the property market is tight, there are still new properties coming on to the market. Over the next 30 years you can expect much more of that.

There was a rise in couple families without children (+20.3 per cent between 2001 and 2011), one-parent families (+16.8 per cent between 2001 and 2011) and lone person households (+16.9 per cent between 2001 and 2011) grew at a faster pace than a couple with children households (+8.7 per cent between 2001 and 2011). No sign here of a population explosion. The population problem is in Africa, a fact the anti-pops conveniently ignore.

Australia's population hit nearly 22.5 million at the end of last year but the growth rate was significantly lower than originally predicted by the ABS. There were nearly 300,000 fewer people living in Australia at the end of last financial year than preliminary estimates made by the Bureau. The 1.3 per cent anomaly was due to the Bureau predicting that more overseas visitors to Australia were coming here to live rather than to visit.

Predicting population growth is not an exact science because we use estimates and projections. It allows for people with little knowledge of population or Australia’s political or industrial economy, to make mischief in the media and hope that no one will call their bluff. Their bluff has been called now and they have been found wanting.

Conclusion

The anti-pops see the world through the single lens of a specific ideology. For example, Frederick Taylor’s scientific management theory provided an ideology based on the metaphor of the machine where humanity was sacrificed for efficiency. The metaphor the anti-pops use is the earth as an organism. We are all organisms existing in a defined space - units of consumption rather than self-determining, conscious and intelligent beings, each with a unique character.

Much of the anti-pops organism thinking can be found in the social-philosophy of the 19th century. It is a bastard version of Social Darwinism, which holds up the mirror to human life and states that all we see reflects the laws of nature. In effect, natural law is invoked to legitimise the organisation of society on their terms.

Basically, when the economy is growing, more people will arrive. Conversely when the economy slows or contracts, less people arrive. The anti-pops want to kill the economy by depriving Australia of skilled labour. For them, all foreigners are a threat - they will take our jobs and undercut wages.

Yet this excuse was used against the Chinese in the gold field in the 19th century, the Italians, Greeks, Baltic people and women after World War Two, the Vietnamese and Cambodians in the 1970s and 1980s and more recently Iraqi and Afghan peoples, yet Australia has a thriving multicultural society. Lets give the anti-pops attitude a name – racist. A vote for them is a vote for the far right and the whacko social engineering found in science fiction.

Far from Australia being inundated with people, what we have, and what the Western world is experiencing, is mass movement by new arrivals as well as interstate and intrastate migration to the capital cities. The ability of our state governments, especially in Sydney, to provide adequate infrastructure for these people is another matter entirely.

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About the Author

Malcolm King is a journalist and professional writer. He was an associate director at DEEWR Labour Market Strategy in Canberra and the senior communications strategist at Carnegie Mellon University in Adelaide. He runs a writing business called Republic.

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