EDITORIAL: Cost of living drives alarm over immigration

Australia has long been the world’s most successful multicultural nation.

It’s a title of which we are rightly proud.

We are, after all, a nation of migrants. Twenty-nine per cent of Australians were born overseas and half of us have at least one parent born overseas.

Over time, the countries these new Australians were coming from have changed. Once, migration was concentrated from Europe and the UK. Now, new Australians are more likely to be recent arrivals from India, China or the Philippines.

That hasn’t dented our enthusiasm for multiculturalism. For the most part, we welcomed these new arrivals with open arms.

But the success of our multiculturalism has been dependent on one key factor: all those boundless plains we have to share.

Now they’re running out.

And as they reach their limit so does our hospitality.

According to the results of the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute’s 2024 Mapping Social Cohesion report, 49 per cent of us believe Australia is taking in too many immigrants.

That’s a significant increase on the 33 per cent of respondents who thought we should cut our intake the previous year.

The shift in attitude is driven by the belief — borne out in the data — that we simply have no more room to spare.

According to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, net permanent and long-term arrivals from January to September 2024 were 391,850. That’s the highest figure for that period to date, and raises questions about the Government’s ability to cut immigration intake to 260,000 this financial year.

Unfortunately, our housing supply hasn’t kept pace, leading to a massive surge in rent and house prices, putting enormous strain on household finances. All those extra people without a corresponding increase in services means that’s it’s also harder to get an appointment to see the doctor or dentist, and is partly responsible for persistent inflation.

The temptation for those on the Left, including the Government, will be to write off this discontent as linked to racism or xenophobia. It’s not.

It’s purely economics.

A strong majority of Australians strongly support non-discriminatory immigration policies. Eighty-five per cent say multiculturalism is a good thing for Australia and 82 per cent say immigrants are generally good for the economy.

We don’t want to stop people from certain countries coming in, or to slam the gates shut altogether.

And we don’t want a divisive, US-style fight about foreigners coming to take our jobs and eat our cats and dogs.

We just want an end to the perceived free-for-all.

We want a prosperous, multicultural Australia with room for everyone to grow.