Entrepreneur Dick Smith has issued a dire warning to Anthony Albanese about record-high immigration levels in a public letter.
‘Prime Minister and Premiers, What’s your population plan?,’ Mr Smith wrote in a newspaper ad published in The Daily Telegraph on Monday.
‘Our original Australians lived here for 60,000 years with a population of never more than 1million. The First Nations people clearly knew there was a limit to growth in this finite land.
‘Prime Minister and Premiers, do you too believe there is a limit growth?’
Australia’s immigration levels have been soaring at record-high levels above 500,000 during a rental and housing affordability crisis – but economic activity is still at very weak levels.
Labor’s May Budget promised that net overseas migration would slow to 260,000 in 2024-25, but in the year to September, 449,060 foreigners came to Australia to live.
Mr Smith argued that every Australian family effectively has a population plan, as they thoughtfully choose to have only as many children as they can provide with a good life, even though they could potentially have many more throughout their lifetime.
‘How many people can Australia give a good life to? What do you think? 30million? 100million? A billion?,’ Mr Smith asked.
Entrepreneur Dick Smith has issued a dire warning to Anthony Albanese about record-high immigration levels
‘Where is the extra fresh water, food and power to come from?’
Mr Smith said neither the government nor the opposition had any plan to control Australia’s population growth, and warned something needed to be done before it was too late.
‘Up until John Howard’s time, we had an approximate immigration of about 70,000 net a year for many decades, and that gave us a wonderful Australia where we could cope [and] housing was affordable,’ he explained.
‘That was the optimum number, about 70,000 a year, which is what I support. Now, it’s around 300,000 a year, or (in the 2022-2023 financial) year, it was 500,000.’
A record 518,000 people moved to Australia in the 2022-23 financial year – putting net overseas migration at levels more than double the 200,000 level of the mining boom in 2007.
Until the late 1990s, annual net overseas migration levels had not soared into the six figure range and average-income workers could afford a house in Sydney – something that is impossible now on a single income.
Australia’s intake of skill migrants and international students almost tripled under Mr Howard’s watch, with both Labor and Coalition governments since the 2000s ramping up population growth.
Despite his enormous wealth, the millionaire admits he worries for the future of his nine grandchildren in the face of record immigration in Australia.
The entrepreneur published an ad in The Daily Telegraph warning about the consequences of high immigration
Australia’s immigration levels have been soaring at record-high levels above 500,000 during a rental and housing affordability crisis (pictured are Sydney pedestrians)
‘For the interests of our children and grandchildren, we should have a population plan. It’s a dry, arid country and yes, I have no doubt we can squeeze 100 million in here, but there will be a lot of really poor people,’ Mr Smith said.
‘They’ll be crammed like termites and battery hens into high rises. We’re already building our first high rise schools so they won’t even have a school yard to play in.
‘So with a country that’s got so much open space, we will end up with termite mounds and it will be a huge leap backwards because of our own stupidity.’
Australia has been in a per capita recession since early 2023 where output for every Australian has been going backwards.
Despite the population influx, the economy is growing at the slowest annual pace since the 1991 recession.
The 1 per cent expansion in gross domestic product is also half the population growth pace of 2.3 per cent.
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