Jobs and housing are barriers

IMMIGRATION AND POPULATION

I APPLAUD the plan of the Prime Minister to lure skilled migrants to Tasmania ( Mercury, October 6). However, the reality is there are not enough job opportunities for them when they get here. Some have succumbed to jobs so different to the skill that they were approved for, just to survive. Some have depleted the funds they brought with them because of not being able to find work. Accommodation is also an issue. It is very difficult as it is for locals to find affordable accommodation; it is more difficult for the overseas migrants to compete with the locals. Some of them end up in backpacker or shared accommodation.

I deal with a number of migrants who have taken advantage of the open-door policy of the Tasmanian Government to lure them with a promise of state sponsorship. So many are disappointed because of lack of work and affordable accommodation. I suggest the State Government needs to look at its migration policy closely, taking into account employment and affordable accommodation. culture or the primacy of religion over civil law, but on western principles of democracy, separation of church and state, rule of law, equality of the sexes, freedom of speech and religious and human rights. Uncomfortable as it is for some to acknowledge, in outer Melbourne and Sydney some former and current refugees and their families refuse to learn English, assimilate and accept the Australian way of life. To deny there are social and political problems as a consequence is foolish and dangerous.

To say that Australia is in many ways a divided society is an understatement. Refugee intake must benefit the wider community and be seen to do so. It happened after World War II and Australia went forward in leaps and bounds. Let us learn from that experience.

Services straining

WHERE is the logic in increasing Tasmania’s population when basic government services are already straining? How will adding more people solve worsening traffic congestion, failing infrastructure and public services and deteriorating housing affordability? It won’t. You don’t solve a problem of excessive demand by increasing demand even further. Why does Will Hodgman want a significant increase of skilled migrants? With Tasmania’s high unemployment there is no shortage of skills. Readily available desperate and cheap foreign labour is undermining the need to seek local workers. The flawed plan is a desperate smokescreen to distract us from the major issue: that Australia’s immigration program is too large. A new way to have your say Keep it up Will, some don’t like what you are doing but who cares, keep pushing forward with our great state’s economy. You HAVE made Tasmania a better place to live since your leadership. We are enjoying it. We must lower permanent immigration from a record high of over 200,000 a year back to the long-term average of 70,000. Refugees would still sit within this at the current level of about 14,000 to 20,000. Our arid, fragile continent now has a population of a bloated 25 million – decades ahead of predictions. Dick Smith and the Sustainable Australia Party will secure an Australia that is better, not bigger.

Stabilise numbers

SCOTT Morrison has mooted a change to immigration policy whereby fly-in migrants will live outside the major cities for a period to help alleviate problems caused by rapid population growth (mainly as a result of immigration rates) in particular in Sydney and Melbourne. Will Hodgman has welcomed the idea of immigration targets or quotas for Tasmania as long as it is “sustainable” given the State Government’s goal of increasing Tasmanias population to 650,000.

No doubt the Property Council, Housing Industry Australia and Master Builders Association would be supportive as unprecedented population increase would create demand for housing and could be justification for more planning reform, ie fast-track planning to allow rezoning for urban development. Instead of trying to stabilise Australia’s population the Federal Government is going for a bandaid solution that will benefit developers but has adverse impacts for the environment and the amenity of residents. There needs to be plebiscite on population policy.

Utzon’s billboard

THE NSW Liberals tried to stop the Sydney Opera House and when that was unsuccessful they thwarted the full realisation of Utzon’s vision. Now the Prime Minister tells us it is a billboard. That sums up the Government’s depth of cultural appreciation. Our own State Government has shown it has far more respect for gambling that any form of art.

Crass advertising

THE Sydney Opera House belongs to all of us, not just NSW. To use it as a billboard to advertise a horse race is crass.

Relevant at last

WE’VE been waiting a long time for the Greens to say something relevant, and finally Cassy O’Connor in Tasmania points out the obvious problems of China’s influence in small island countries, and Australia for that matter, in the Pacific. What happens?

Thank you

THANKS to the young man who assisted me when an elderly man was unconscious outside Northgate entrance late on Sunday afternoon. Shame on the six taxi drivers who sat in their cabs ignoring the man’s collapse and my efforts to help him by myself, despite my arm in a sling.