Who is supporting high immigration levels?

Illustration: Michael Leunig
Good on the Liberals’ lord mayor Robert Doyle for taking on Labor’s federal MP Kelvin Thomson in a ”Big Population” debate on Monday night. And good on Thomson for gingering up his party on the social, economic and environmental costs of Australia’s vastly increased and internationally atypical level of immigration. Judging by the overwhelming support in the audience for Thomson’s case, one wonders where support for high immigration lies.
Doyle’s claim to growth by immigration as unstoppable, as something to be ”managed”, is belied by its active promotion at state and federal levels, softened by such weasel words as ”provisioning for projected population growth”. The funding of political campaigns by property interests at state and local level was identified as underpinning the policy. Doyle’s defence that developer funding of his and other city council campaigns is publicly declared is blunted by the fact that it isn’t revealed until after the election.
A call for a referendum on immigration levels was enthusiastically received.