THE FOLLOWING ARE SOME RE-WORKED ARTICLES FROM OUR AUTUMN ISSUE (100)
RACE AND IMMIGRATION
When discussing Australia’s immigration program most people try to ignore the racial implications but in fact this is one of the more serious aspects of the program. For much of the 20th century we had a White Australia Policy and non-Europeans were not welcome although a tiny number were allowed into this country. In 1965 Australia signed a United Nations treaty on the elimination of racial discrimination and from 1966 we began allowing more non-whites to migrate here. By the time Gough Whitlam was elected in 1972 about 10,000 non-whites were included in our migration program and Whitlam announced the end of White Australia although in fact he actually reduced the number of immigrants. (1) Gradually however the proportion of non-Europeans increased and by the mid-1980s the number from Asia and the Middle-East outnumbered those from Europe. It’s hard to imagine a more profound attack on the nature of Australian culture and society than the racial changes made over the last 50 years with large parts of our cities, especially Sydney and Melbourne, looking as though they suffered some kind of ethnic cleansing as Asian and Middle Easterners moved in and white Australians moved out. Apart from the obvious changes what else happened?
Living standards have risen in absolute terms but not as fast as many other countries and relative to many of them we have fallen behind. (2) Just 50 years ago Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore were considered third world economies but now their living standards have risen to the level of the better off Western nations and have overtaken some of them. With the exception of Singapore these countries do not take in many migrants and their population growth, unlike their economic growth has been slow and Japan’s population has been falling for at least a decade. Singapore’s ethnic Chinese majority, about three-quarters of their population are noted for low birth rates and that country does take in a relatively high number of migrants but makes sure enough of them are ethnic Chinese so that they remain a dominant majority.
Meanwhile in Australia our white majority will probably be a minority by the middle of this century and living standards are stagnating. In the bad old days of the 1950s and 60s our economy grew at an average of 4.6% a year which was more than twice the rate of population growth (an average of 2.1% a year). We have never had an extended period of such growth since. (3) This doesn’t say much for the growing number of free trade agreements we have entered into either.
Crime has also been a problem. Australia’s homicide rate fell to 0.8 per 100,000 of population in 1941 but tended to rise afterwards. It tended to bounce around at a rate of 1.5 or 1.6 for years but then rose to 2.4 per 100,000 in 1988 – the highest since national homicide records started being kept in 1915. (4)
Prison statistics also reflect a rise in crime. In the mid-1970s our imprisonment rate was about 91 per 100,000 of population but this then began to rise and is now over 200 per 100,000. (5) Despite there being a big proportion of Aboriginals in our prisons and this boosting the rate of imprisonment for the Australia born there are still a number of migrant nationalities who have a higher rate of imprisonment than Australians. At one stage there were ten such nationalities, all but one of them from non-European nations – in other words people who would not have been in our country if we had kept the White Australia Policy. (6) The Australian Bureau of Statistics who collect this information then decided to only include “selected” migrant groups in the statistics on prisoners but those who had a higher incarceration rate than the Australia born tended to inevitably be from non-white countries. Migrant prisoners are also more likely to be in jail for homicide than are Australian prisoners and the big drop in immigration associated with the Covid crisis also saw a drop in homicides. (7)
While the drop in homicides seems to have occurred over much of Australia it was noticeable that those areas of our big cities with high concentrations of non-European migrants still tend to have higher murder rates. In New South Wales there were only 51 murders in 2021 compared to 69 the previous year, a drop of 26.1%. The rate per 100,000 of population fell from 0.8 to 0.6 but in the “multicultural” local government of Cumberland in western Sydney, the rate stayed at 1.6 for 2020 and 2021. The Blacktown area, which has suffered a flood of immigrants over recent years, did see a slight drop from 1.6 to 1.00 which is higher than the state average, while the Sydney City area saw an increase of 1.2 to 1.6 per 100,000. (8)
Census figures from 2016 show that migrants from Asia generally have higher unemployment rates than the Australia born, those from the Middle East do even worse and black Africans worse again. (9)
While crime went up the average IQ in Australia has tended to go down. We attract migrants from high IQ places like Hong Kong and low IQ places like sub-Saharan nations, but it is those from the lower IQ nations who have the most children. High IQ countries tend to have low fertility rates and this means that in years to come we will have trouble getting a lot of migrants from those countries but will get more from the low IQ nations hence making our migrant intake, and the country, darker and duller. (10)
The flood of non-white migrants into Australia has been accompanied by an increase in social problems and slower economic growth. The government will no doubt return to high immigration again and these problems will get worse.
Notes:
(1) Gwenda Tavan describes the changes in immigration in “The Long Slow Death of White Australia”, Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2005
(2) The CIA World Factbook states Australia had a real GDP per capita of $48,700 in 2020 which rates us as having the 30th highest standard of living in the World. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/australia/#economy
(3) In the period 1945/6 to 1973/4 Australia’s real GDP grew by an average of 4.8% a year, population grew by an average of 2.2% and real GDP per capita grew by an average 2.5% per year. The unemployment rate was 1.8% in 1950 but tended to be lower for most of the decade rising to 3.2% in 1962, but then falling and being under 2% for the period 1964 to 1974. Rodney Maddock and Ian W. McLean, “The Australian Economy in the Long Run”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987
Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Measuring Australia’s Progress - 1370 -2002”
(4) The homicide rate was 0.8 per 100,000 of population in1941 and ranged from 0.9 to 1.5 up until the 1970s. In the 1970s it ranged from 1.5 to 2.0. In 1985 and 1986 it reached 2.0 and rose to 2.4 per 100,000 in 1988. By 2013 the homicide rate fell to 1.00 per 100,000. Andrew Leigh, “The Second Convict Age: Explaining the Return of Mass Imprisonment in Australia”, Parliament of Australia, Discussion Paper No. 2020-01, March 2020, The Australian National University, Acton, ACT 0200, https://rse.anu.edu.au/CEH
(5) The incarceration rate was only 70.7 per 100,000 of population in 1941 and in 1977 rose to only 90.8. By 2017 it was 215.8 per 100,000 and in 2018 reached 221.2. Leigh, ibid
(6) Australian Bureau of Statistics, 4517 – Prisoners in Australia – 2012
(7) Australian Bureau of Statistics, 4517 – Prisoners in Australia – 2021
(8) NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research figures show that homicides in that state fell by 26.1% between 2020 and 2021
(9) Australian Bureau of Statistics, www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quikstat
(10) Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, “Intelligence”, Ulster Institute for Social Research, `London 2014; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 33010DO006 Births, Australia, 2018, Table 6.1, Country of birth of mother-2018
FOREIGN DEBT
Both in dollars terms and as a proportion of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Australia’s foreign debt has increased considerably since the mid-1980s. In 1983-84 net foreign debt amounted to $32,492 million or 15.2% of GDP. In 2000-01 debt reached $295,880 million and 41.9% of GDP. By 2013-14 foreign debt went to $865,462 million or 54.6% of GDP. In the meantime interest on net foreign debt went from $3,412 million in 1983-84 to $23,307 million in 2013-14.
(Source: Australia’s Foreign Debt: a quick guide – Parliament of Australia https://www.aph.gov.au?About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Department... Downloaded 6 April 2022)
More recent figures show a further increase in net foreign debt. The following figures for net foreign debt are from the Australian Bureau of Statistics website. We worked out the figures for the increase each year and the amount as a percentage from the previous year.
Year ended Net Foreign Debt in Billions Yearly Increase Percentage increase
December 2017 $ 1,062.5 billion
December 2018 $ 1,141.6 billion $ 79.1 billion 7.44%
December 2019 $ 1,141.8 billion $ 45.2 billion 3.96%
December 2020 $ 1,193.6 billion $ 6.8 billion 0.57%
December 2021 $ 1,204.9 billion $ 11.3 billion 0.95%
Australia’s population grew by an average of 1.57% a year in the years 2015 to 2019 and our economic growth over this period averaged 2.44% a year. In 2020, the advent of Covid 19 saw a drop in population growth with the economy shrinking that year. In 2021 our population grew by only 0.5% but the economy grew by 4.2%, substantially better than in the five years 2015 to 2019. Our foreign debt increased but at a much smaller rate than in the preceding years. It appears then that our economy can grow without a flood of migrants and much of the economic growth that had been attributed to immigration was actually due to massively high, and increasing, foreign debt.
(Sources: Australian Bureau of statistics website. Focus Economics, ABC Online News)
ABORIGINAL ISSUES
In the Northern Territory, police officer Zachary Rolfe has been found not guilty over the fatal shooting of Aboriginal man Kumanjayi Walker in 2019. Walker, 19, died during an attempted arrest in the community of Yuendumu 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs and had stabbed Constable Rolfe with scissors. (1)
The decision was controversial and an Indigenous campaign has called for a ban on all-white juries in cases where a police officer is being tried over the death of an Indigenous person. (2)
While the trial was in progress it appears another Aboriginal man aged 19 was shot six times in Palmerston by the Northern Territory police. This led to claims of systematic racism. (3)
Police in Western Australia have begun a large-scale response to escalating rates of crime among youth in the Kimberley. Youth crime has risen 54% in the Kimberley with 526 burglaries last year alone, five officers being injured, 11 police vehicles damaged and three local police stations rammed in recent months by youths in stolen vehicles. The torching of stolen cars has become a near-daily occurrence in Broome. (3)
Also in Western Australia, police have mounted Operation Regional Shield to protect 578 at-risk children across the Kimberley. 24 officers were deployed and 111 charges have been laid. Police have found children as young as six wandering the streets at four o’clock in the morning and some had not been fed for days. Children as old as ten years have been found not registered at any school. So far there has been a fall in crime with a reduction of 40% in crimes like car theft and burglaries in Broome and Derby. (4)
Things have not been going so well in the Northern Territory community of Wadeye. In April a young man, 18, was charged with manslaughter following the death of a 32-year-old man. (5)
The problems continued in Wadeye with houses burnt down, residents displaced and without food. People were walking round the main street with crossbows. The community has a population of 3,000 and suffers serious overcrowding with up to 15 people sharing the one house. (6)
Statistics on incarceration show that in the December quarter of 2021 the imprisonment rate fell both compared to the previous quarter and the December quarter of 2020. All states and the Australian Capital Territory saw a fall in prisoner numbers in the last quarter of 2021 but the Northern Territory saw an increase of 1%. The imprisonment rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders fell in all states except Tasmania where it was stable. Indigenous imprisonment rates did rise 1% in both the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. (7)
Figures on homicide indicate that Indigenous people are more likely to be involved in these crimes, both as victims and as offenders. Indigenous people are more likely to kill non-Indigenous than the other way round. Statistics from the Australian Institute of Criminology for the period 1 July 1989 to 30 June 2012 show that of 6,744 homicide incidents, 1,096 involved at least one Indigenous person. Of 7,217 victims, 951 or 13% were Indigenous and of 7,599 identified offenders 1,234 or 16% were indigenous, even though they make up only 3% of the population. During this period:
765 or 11% of homicide incidents involved an Indigenous offender and Indigenous victim 230 incidents, 3% involved an Indigenous offender and a non-Indigenous victim
101 incidents or 2% involved a non-Indigenous offender and an Indigenous victim
4,522 incidents, 67% involved a non-Indigenous offender and a non-Indigenous victim
1,126 or 17% are Unknown/not stated/missing. (8)
There have been calls for more funding for Indigenous health even though the federal, state and territory governments, and the private sector, spend an average of $2560 more per year on the health of Indigenous than they spend on non-Indigenous Australians. This works out at an average $9925 for each Indigenous compared to $7365 for each non-Indigenous Australian. However the prevalence of disease amongst the Indigenous is 2.023 times that for the non-Indigenous, so it’s claimed 2.023 times more money should be spent on the treating each Indigenous person. This would work out at an additional $5042 per Indigenous person per annum. It’s claimed that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have lives eight to nine years less than the rest of the population and that the children are 55 times more likely to die of rheumatic heart disease than non-Aboriginal children. (9)
Figures on the median age of death for Indigenous Australians are worse than for the non-Indigenous but have been improving in recent years as has the infant mortality rate except for the Northern Territory. By 2020 the mortality rate for Indigenous infants was 5.4 per 1,000 live births compared to 3.2 for non-Indigenous. However in the Northern Territory the Indigenous infant mortality rate for the years 2008-2010 averaged 11.4 but rose to 13.8 in the years 2018-2020. (10)
Birth rates for most of the Australian population has tended to fall as has the number of births. Total fertility rate fell to 1.581 in 2020, but for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women it was 2.247. Among Indigenous teenagers aged from 15-19 years the fertility rate was five and a half times that of the non-Indigenous, and for those aged 20-24 years it was three times that of the non-Indigenous. The difference falls in the 25-29 year age group and from about 30 years the non-Indigenous have a higher fertility. (11)
Figures from Centrelink show that there is a strong monetary incentive for some teenage girls to become young mothers. Those under 18 years of age can get $313.80 a fortnight on Youth Allowance or $367.00 if over 18, and this goes up to $537.40 if living away from home. However if they have a child they get $575 as a New Born Allowance plus a supplementary payment up to $1,725.36 over 13 weeks if eligible. Then they go on to the Parenting Payment of $880.20 a fortnight with further supplements of up to $37 a fortnight. The Family Tax Benefit A they receive for each child can be from $191.24 to $$248.78 a fortnight and if eligible Family Tax Benefit B of $113.54 to $162.54 a fortnight. There are annual supplementary payments that can be over $1,160 a year. In addition there is rent assistance that for a single person ranges for $171.50 to $193.62 a fortnight.
Meanwhile those who do not have children can only get the adult Jobseeker rate once they turn 22 and it is $642.20 a fortnight, which even with rental assistance is considerably less than single mothers receive. (12)
To put it bluntly our dysgenic welfare system is breeding social problems.
Sources:
(1) Jacqueline Breen, Lauren Roberts, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-11/zachary-rolfe-not-guilty-mur...
(2) Jill Rowbotham, “Ban All-White Juries in Indigenous Cases”, The Australian, 30 March 2022
(3) Teela Reid, “Rage and Fear Valid After Verdict”, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 March 2022
(3) Hannah Barry, Sam Tomlin and Eddie Williams, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-16/escalating-crime-crisis-promp...
(4)Jessica Hayes and Vanessa Mills, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-16/police-operation-regional-shi...
(6) Roxanne Fitzgerald, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-22/wadeye-port-keats-northern-territory-fighting
(7) Australian Bureau of Statistics, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/corrective-s… Released 10/03/2022
(8) National Homicide Monitoring Program, PDF /sites/default/files/2020-05/rip37.pdf
(9) Paige Taylor, “Call to Close Gap on Indigenous Health Funding”, The Australian, 10 May 2022
(10) Australian Bureau of Statistics, https://www.abs-gov.au/statistics/people/population/deaths-australia/lat... Reference period 2020
(11) Australian Bureau of Statistics, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/births-australia/2020
(12) Centrelink Website Downloaded June/July 2022