Immigration to Australia even higher than thought

What a puzzle! Australia has a much larger immigrant population (proportionately) than the UK or the USA but Australia at the same time has much less ethnic tension. It's only a puzzle to people with politically correct blinkers on. Australia has long had high rates of immigration but until recently almost all immigrants came from Europe and East Asia -- people who in general fit in well and peaceably with Australian life. It's not the numbers of people coming from elsewhere that is important but where they come from. Africans and Muslims from the Middle East have recently started arriving in numbers and they are already beginning to shatter Australia's ethnic calm. Many of the "refugees" recently admitted are both Muslim AND African. Heaven help us!

AUSTRALIA is undergoing an unparalleled movement of people and ethnic change through "hidden immigration", but lacks a comprehensive policy to deal with it, according to an eminent demographer. Monash University professor Andrew Markus said raw immigration numbers masked the magnitude of a demographic revolution that had produced a population where one in four residents was born overseas. At 24 per cent, the overseas-born proportion of the population is twice that of the US at 12 per cent, and three times that of England and Wales at 8 per cent, where racial tensions have flared again. "Opinion polls in England in July 2007 and March 2008 indicated that immigration and race issues are the main concern of electors," Professor Markus said.

He said that while Australians had been tolerant and migrants committed to their new home, strong political leadership was required to convince the nation of the benefits to all of high immigration to avoid a backlash. Professor Markus presented his analysis at this week's Australian Davos Connection Future Summit. "The elements of a policy to promote social cohesion within communities characterised by diversity of language and culture are well known - and difficult to implement," he said. "At present, Australia lacks full clarity of vision, coherence and consistency - while the largest movement of people in the country's history is under way."

Speaking to The Australian yesterday, Professor Markus said that although many Australians regarded the rate of immigration as high, they probably had little idea that the transformation was far bigger than they imagined. The usually quoted "headline" number of permanent arrivals - people successfully applying each year for permanent residency from overseas - rose 67 per cent between 1999 and last year, from 84,000 to 140,000. But Professor Markus said this figure failed to include on-shore "conversions" from foreigners on student or temporary work visas to permanent residence. That number rose from 15,000 in 1999 to 52,000 last year. Taking those figures into account, the annual increase in new permanent residents nearly doubled over the past nine years, from 99,000 to 192,000.

The number of permanent departures - Australians leaving the country without any immediate intention of return -- doubled from 35,000 in 1999 to 72,000 last year. Many of those departing were taking highly sought skills to more highly paid jobs overseas, Professor Markus said.

Added to an ageing population, future economic growth would require filling Australia's skills shortage largely from overseas. But the result would accelerate the pace of ethnic change, and because immigration had been skewed towards "magnet" destinations, in some areas the transition would be extraordinary, he said. "With the uneven distribution of the overseas born, this translates to 34.5 per cent of Sydney's population, 31 per cent of Melbourne's, and over 70 per cent in some urban localities," Professor Markus said.

He proposed several measures towards a national policy to make immigration work. These included challenging disadvantage in education and employment, tackling institutional discrimination, and a "consistent set of policies to be implemented at the community level to promote inter-cultural understanding, bridge building and participation".

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Australia's new Centre-Left government promises massive increase in immigration

This is just the usual Leftist urge to tear up a status quo which is too peaceful and harmonious for them

IMMIGRATION Minister Chris Evans wants a major overhaul of the migrant program to boost numbers, promote unskilled [Can he be serious? There are plenty og unemployed unskilled people in Australia already] as well as skilled applicants and gear Australia to the new global competition for workers.

Predicting a "great national debate over the next few years", Senator Evans said he planned to bring a series of cabinet submissions to reform a "model that is out of date" and too unresponsive to employer needs. He said the debate about temporary migration was over; the coming debate would be about semi-skilled and unskilled migrants to meet labour shortages.

Next month, cabinet is expected to approve a pilot program for a guest worker scheme from the South Pacific. Senator Evans called this a "stalking horse" for the larger debate on unskilled migration. His comments came after the Rudd Government's first budget, delivered on Tuesday, lifted permanent and temporary migration for 2008-09 to nearly 300,000 in the biggest annual increase since the program's inception by the Chifley government in the 1940s.

The skilled component of the permanent intake is running at 70 per cent, probably the highest ever. "My general view is that we are increasingly facing a labour shortage, not just a skills shortage," Senator Evans told The Weekend Australian. "The demands of business are hitting us in the face. What I'm thinking about is a fairly serious overhaul of the migration system and trying to design a visa and migration system that meets the realities of the 21st century and the internationalisation of the labour market. "There is a lack of responsiveness to employer needs. What's not widely understood is that there is a global competition for labour. The workforce is more contract based. BHP (Billiton) brings an engineer here from South America for two years and he'll be in Africa two years later. It's the nature of his work."

Asked about the hefty increase in the intake announced on budget night, Senator Evans said: "It was certainly driven by the economics. "No doubt Wayne Swan had his eye on wage inflation pressure and Treasury advice about that. But fundamentally it's a response to the huge demand for labour." Senator Evans said the Government's first response to shortages was more education and training but "the reality is that there are demands now that won't be met by that agenda". This was true in the short-term and long-term.

He said he had two aims - to make the program more responsive to industry and to restore its integrity, notably the457 temporary visas, to eliminate exploitation and any undermining of Australian conditions. This was critical because there was urgent pressure on the 457 program for a shift down the skill scale from professionals such as doctors and engineers to tradesmen and IT workers. "The demand is often for truck drivers, store managers, below tradesman-level jobs in the mining industry," Senator Evans said. "More broadly we have an ageing population. My inclination is not to do reviews, but get on with it. As a cabinet, we are engaged with this issue. "I think Australians are prepared to accept strong migration provided they think we need the skills and contributions that people bring."

He foreshadowed a relaxation of the former government's rigid rules about migrants' ability to speak English. Some of its measures were "pretty clunky and actually stopped business operating".

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Your regulators will protect you -- in their usual somnolent fashion

One of the NSW's busiest skin care specialists has been accused of running a bizarre surgery for seven years in which patients were relentlessly pursued, verbally abused, threatened with AVOs and told never to come back. Dr David Lindsay froze off more than 250 sun spots from one patient in a single session, cut a lesion from a patient's leg without anaesthetic and treated another patient for a year without telling him he had skin cancer on his cheek, it is alleged.

Ten years after he first came to their attention, the Health Care Complaints Commission has asked the Medical Tribunal to strike Dr Lindsay off the medical register "to protect the public." The commission alleges Dr Lindsay, 42, suffers from a paranoid personality disorder. His behaviour could be triggered by minor comments, including a patient saying they had been kept waiting for a long time, said Ms Christine Adamson, counsel for the HCCC.

She said it was made difficult for patients to complain because his mother Tallulah Glynne worked as his receptionist at the Mid City Skin Cancer Centre in George St, Sydney. In one outburst, Dr Lindsay allegedly told a patient she had a suspicious mole on her body but he wouldn't tell her where "feigning that he had forgotten where it was". "I don't want to see you anyway, get out," he allegedly told another patient who said she had to leave after waiting 30 minutes.

Two patients had private prosecutions brought against them under the Inclosed Land Protection Act after they complained. One patient who commented to the receptionist that the doctor lacked personal skills was abused because of nationality and "told to return to England".

In a 57-page complaint, the HCCC claims he is guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct, improper or unethical conduct and that he threatened and intimidated patients and other doctors who complained. In 2004, he left a message on the answering machine of Judge Ken Taylor, then an acting HCCC commissioner, saying the judge was incompetent and the HCCC corrupt.

The complaints involve 25 patients and three doctors and begin in January 2002. He was first reported to the Medical Board in 1998 when the anaesthetist suggested he see a psychiatrist. The doctor, who has been suspended pending the outcome of the decision, denies he suffers a personality disorder. In a failed application to have one of the tribunal members dismissed due to his perceived links to one of the patients, Dr Lindsay said he was the "most investigated doctor" in both Australia and the US. "I'm not a bad person. I'm as good as I can be. I don't have a personality problem," he said.

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Newspapers that give a fair representation to conservative viewpoints can still sell

The Australian has defied an international trend of falling newspaper circulation, reporting strong sales growth of 3.9 per cent in the year to March. The latest Audit Bureau of Circulation figures show the weekday editions of Australia's national newspaper selling 134,000 copies, while sales of The Weekend Australian rose 2per cent in the year to March to 305,000. Readership of both editions rose strongly in the same period, with The Australian attracting 35,000 more readers, a rise of 8per cent to 472,000, and readership of The Weekend Australian up 4.1 per cent to 847,000.

The circulation of state-based broadsheets - The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald - fell or were stagnant, despite marketing campaigns involving papers being given away. Sales of The Australian Financial Review increased 2.3 per cent in the year to March, but the business tabloid still lagged far behind The Australian, selling just 88,488 copies a day. Sales of The Australian Financial Review's weekend edition jumped 11.6 per cent, to 102,114, but the figure was skewed by the publication of two bumper editions in the period - which aggregate sales from a number of editions - compared with one for the same period last year. Readership of The Australian Financial Review fell 2.3 per cent in the period, with the weekend edition down 10.2 per cent to 150,000 - less than one fifth of The Weekend Australian's readership.

The Australian's sales growth was in stark contrast to overseas trends, especially in the US, where newspapers have reported large circulation declines. However, total Australian capital city newspaper sales fell 1.01 per cent to 217,041,396.

In Victoria, The Age's weekday sales dropped 0.5 per cent to 201,500 while sales for the weekday Herald Sun fell 1.6 per cent to 516,500. Weekday sales of The Sydney Morning Herald were unchanged at 212,500 but sales of The Daily Telegraph fell 1.6 per cent to 366,000.

In Perth, the circulation gap between The Sunday Times and the Saturday edition of the troubled West Australian was halved to an unprecedented 14,000 copies, with the latter down 5.4 per cent, to 348,153, compared with 334,200 for The Times.

The Australian's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell said: "The paper thanks its readers for the very strong growth in circulation and readership. Unlike many of our broadsheet rivals, we are actually enjoying increased circulation sales revenue because we are not giving our papers away, but selling them."

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