ONE issue in particular seems to be the route cause of Australia’s immediate economic failures and from my perspective, nothing is being done in order to eliminate or greatly reduce its effects.

I wrote an opinion piece on this issue published in NOTA on 14 September last year titled ‘Size Matters’, pointing out that my preference was for a small national population against the Government’s preference for creating a big Australia.

In economic terms our Government believes that a larger population will result in a more prosperous Australia.

However, they blindly fail to understand that this theory hasn’t worked in the past.

What it does do is provide them with a one sentence response to their economic dilemmas.

The government doesn’t seem to understand the need for additional housing or health services, and the social security cost of bringing in more migrants.

It reminds me of a well-known play on words: ‘No matter how much you push the envelope, it will still be stationery.’

The Government’s immigration policy was originally set in line with economists’ designs that we could accept an annual inflow of 190,000 new settlers plus provide education for short term uni students.

In the first year that blew out to nearly 400,000 new entrants but later escalated to over half a million new mouths to feed.

Figures reported earlier this month predict we will welcome 650,000 immigrants this year.

So, who is to blame for this blow-out?

Has the Government whispered to immigration authorities that it is open season and all who apply will be accepted?

Or, is our public service just rubber stamping all applications to enter Australia without any authority checking up on what is actually happening?

It is well known that over 200 serious criminals have been locked up and now released into society due to this open-door immigration policy which remains unchecked and obviously unsupervised.

Noted economist Saul Eslake spoke brilliantly on the ABC TV telecast of Press Club recently.

He explained that not only have immigration numbers virtually trebled on what we can economically accept, but the problem is being worsened because we are not selecting the new migrants that our economy really needs to fill the workforce deficiencies we are experiencing.

We are short of tradies to build new housing.

So why aren’t we selecting building industry skilled personnel as immigrants?

We are short of nursing and teaching graduates, so why aren’t we granting preference to those qualified individuals for new and permanent migration to Australia?

By John BLACKBOURN