High immigration fuels record population growth

From The Australian:

AUSTRALIA is experiencing a population boom not seen since the 1960s - but it is not a baby boom. High levels of immigration are fuelling record high population growth.

Australia's headcount increased by almost 400,000 last year to 21.5 million, fresh data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows.

More than half of the new arrivals, or just over 230,000 people, were immigrants.

The rest were babies born in Australia.

The Federal Government this week moved to cut back immigration, reducing the skilled migrant intake by 14 per cent in response to the economic crisis.

The rate at which the population is growing has surged 50 per cent over the last five years. It is now growing at just under 2 per cent a year.

"The last time Australia experienced higher growth rates was in the 50s and 60s as a result of post-war migration and high birth rates," the ABS said in a statement.

Western Australia and Queensland attracted the most new people in the year to September 2008 but Tasmania was spurned.

For people moving within Australia, Queensland was the mecca, while people from NSW appeared keen to leave their state.

Immigration and population growth is up, GDP per capita is down. Good work, Chris Evans and Kevin Rudd!

Columnist Andrew Bolt comments on the immigration-fuelled population explosion:

Can we build a new Adelaide every three years?

Andrew Bolt – Thursday, March 19, 09 (09:02 am)

We’re adding more than the population of Adelaide every three years:

Australia’s headcount increased by almost 400,000 last year to 21.5 million, fresh data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows.

More than half of the new arrivals, or just over 230,000 people, were immigrants… The Federal Government this week moved to cut back immigration, reducing the skilled migrant intake by 14 per cent in response to the economic crisis.

Cut back, but only to levels that are still a record. I’m also surprised that the intake last year was way over the targets set by Government. More when I find out why.

But here are the bottom lines:

1. Why are we importing so many people when we’re running out of jobs?

2. Why are we importing so many people, when our governments have lost the will to provide the people here already with enough power, water, land, freeways and public transport?

3. How many more people until we’re too crowded?

4. Exactly how many people does the Rudd Government think is enough?

UPDATE

Pro-immigration Michael Pascoe congratulate Immigration Minister Chris Evans for some typical Rudd-type spin - of saying one thing, but doing another:

Yes, Mr Evans did announce a reduction of 18,500 in the skilled permanent migrant category, “slashing’’ the intake by nearly 14% to 115,000.

The Minister might not have mentioned that that still means a 12% increase on the previous year’s skilled permanent migrant intake - and that it represents a bare 5% impact on total migration this year, that’s running close to 350,000 people. Maybe make that 332,000 now - still a record high.

UPDATE 2

The reason the actual immigration intake is so much higher than the official government target is that “net overseas migration”, as measured by the ABS, is any person coming in or out of Australia “long term” - with “long term” defined as a minimum of one year. So this would include students, people moving countries to work or temporarily live, and temporary workers on 457 visas.