Australian immigration causing social schism

Despite all the dire trumped-up predictions that the Garden City’s population would be hollowed out by the earthquakes, it is reaffirming to see that the Christchurch metropolitan residential head count has finally ticked over the 400,000 mark this year.

I’ve been in Australia for the past few weeks and it continues to stagger me how many people still assume that the city’s population has been in a state of permanent free-fall, since 2011.

Last week, Australia reached a heady milestone with the national population hitting 25 million. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has been in full defence mode, after projecting a decade ago that the 25m milestone wouldn’t be reached until 2051.

That’s been smashed by 33 years, on the back of rampant immigration, chiefly fuelled by the foreign student industry, which has contributed to Australia experiencing one of the fastest population growth rates in the Western world.

Like New Zealand, their learning institutions are hooked on foreign student fee revenue like crack addicts. In the past 10 years, Australia has added another Hobart every year, with annual net migration averaging 210,000. But with New Zealand’s annual net migration still tracking well above 60,000, our per capita net migration intake dramatically outstrips Australia’s, given their population is five times the size of ours.

The trans-Tasman parallels on the downsides of high immigration are ever-present. Like Auckland, Sydney and Melbourne are paying the price for grievously failing to build infrastructure at a rate that keeps pace with the surging population increase.

In the past year, 90 per cent of migrants settled in Sydney and Melbourne, clogging their schools and hospitals, driving up housing rents and as most Kiwi holiday-makers now notice, grid-locking the roads.

And just like New Zealand, as much as high immigration artificially boosts economic growth, per capita net incomes haven’t increased, with stagnant wage growth being a common denominator.

It is destined to be a critical issue in next year’s general election, with the Turnbull Government already moving to stem the flow.

Just as New Zealand is tightening the work entitlements for student visa-holders, Australia is limiting the pathways to permanent residency. And both countries are singing from the same song sheet about trying to direct migrants to settle in the regions – not the big cities.

But what has really perturbed me about the Australian situation is the growing evidence of social fragmentation, where religious and ethnic enclaves are taking deep root in suburbia, riding roughshod over all the Pollyanna rhetoric about assimilation.

A topical case in point is in Melbourne, where Taylors Hill is bedevilled by marauding gangs of lawless and violent Sudanese youth.

On Wednesday night, dozens of them hurled rocks at police cars and the Victorian State Police urged terrified residents to lock their doors as the cops struggled through the night to gain control of the riot.

These Sudanese gangs have unleashed a glorified crime-wave on Melbourne, becoming a semi-permanent fixture in the newspaper headlines. They represent the shortcomings of an immigration system that fails to identify and block applicants who aren’t strong prospects for integration.

As much of Western Europe bans the public wearing of face coverings, Boris Johnson has caused a storm by satirically deriding the place of a burqa in British society, describing those who wear niqabs or burqas as ‘‘looking like letterboxes’’.

It was deliberately provocative, but he’s right. How is this closed form of attire compatible with an open society and Western ideals?

In all my conversations with moderate Muslim women in Turkey, Malaysia and Jordan, they were unanimous that face coverings, like the niqab and burqa, are fundamentalist instruments of oppression used to subjugate women.

They all opted to wear a hijab, a headscarf, which is far more appropriate to Western society.

Last week, Parliament unanimously passed a new law pertaining to forced marriages of under 18 year olds, which now require consent from a Family Court judge. The need for this law change offers an insight into some of the perverse cultural practices that should be left at the door, but are not, when some migrants come to New Zealand. Ditto, for female genital mutilation.

I’m pleased that Christchurch has become a more cosmopolitan society, post-quake, with a steadily growing population. But I’m also relieved that we’ve dodged the unseemly stampede blighting the likes of Auckland and Melbourne.

Some city leaders advocate a super-sized Christchurch that shoots for 1m residents. Really? An annual, sustainable 2 per cent uptick in population will do just fine.

But no matter the numbers, successful immigration policy must be underpinned by the pursuit, embrace and defence of social cohesion. An emphasis on nationhood and meaningful integration in the Kiwi way of life is the social glue all migrants should be expected to embrace.

The transTasman parallels on the downsides of immigration are everpresent.