Once of the first things Julia Gillard did after she slit Kevin Rudd's throat to become Prime Minister was to publicly repudiate Rudd's "Big Australia" policy.
In short, Rudd wanted to flood Australia with hundreds of thousands of migrants every year all in the name of "growth". Actually, Rudd never really explained why Australia needed to so dramatically expand its population through mass immigration. I assume it had something to do with big business' insatiable demand for cheap labour and more consumers. No doubt Sinophile Rudd's own desire to see Australia become more Asian in terms of its ethnic makeup (most immigrants to Australia now come from Asia) played a major part in his support for open borders and a larger Australian population.
In any case, the Australian people weren't so keen on the idea of being inundated by millions of Third World immigrants. Labor was able to get away with its immigration free-for-all for a while but eventually public discontent became impossible to ignore. Hoping to nip this growing public backlash over immigration numbers in the bud, Labor dumped the "Big Australia" policy when it dumped Rudd.
Or so we were led to believe.
Despite Gillard's
public assertion that "Australia should not hurtle down the track towards a big population," the "Big Australia" policy lives on, albeit quietly.
In fact, Julia Gillard's undeclared mass immigration programme is pushing us toward an even Bigger Australia than the 36 million advocated by Rudd.
As Peter Wilkinson from
The Independent Australian has
noted, Treasury has factored in a population growth rate of 1.5 percent per annum for at least the next three years.
"... according to the Treasury assumptions behind the plan to get the budget back in surplus in 2012/13, she is planning over the next three years to increase population by 1.5% pa, greater than the 1.2% pa which leads to a forecast 36 million by 2030 in the Intergenerational Report."
One wonders how Gillard and Labor hope to get away with such mendacity. Who knows? Maybe they hope Australians just won't notice the millions of Third World immigrants flooding into the country and overwhelming our cities.