Media Release

KAP Leader and Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has called Australia’s population policy “absolutely disastrous” ahead of projections the nation’s population will hit 25 million people tonight and reports reveal there’s been a surge in migration numbers.

Mr Katter said, “We’re not anti-migration as long as there’s integration and job creation but numbers do need to be scaled back.”

“The Governments, ALP and LNP, cannot congratulate themselves on increasing our population because they are doing it at the cost of the destruction of Australia as an Australian nation.”

“The universities prostitute themselves out as visas shops and a back doorway to get into Australia. The section 457s as every employee in this country knows are a magnificent device to undermine our pay and conditions.”

Mr Katter reckons political commentator George Megalogenis is “spot on” with his prediction that the milestone resident will be a young, female Chinese student or worker. The two biggest migrant groups in Australia are Chinese and Indians. It’s reported that since 2005, there’s been more migrants than babies and net overseas migration accounted for 62 per cent of our population growth.
Mr Katter said that around 640 000 people come into Australia on what are considered to be long term visas of 4-8 years but pointed out that post Tiananmen Square when Bob Hawke granted over 100 000 Chinese students Australian citizenship more than half were visa overstays.

Mr Katter said, “It would be most disingenuous to seriously believe that the 640 000 are going to go back to their homelands. Why leave a country where every person is entitled to welfare payments, hospitals and schools? They’d be returning to a country where their average incomes are below $5000.
“Australia has a magnificent record when it come to integration - the Chinese diggers on the gold fields, the Afghan camel drivers (founders of Australia’s transportation), the Snowy workers; but we have no hope of integrating and digesting 640 000 people who are being pumped into the ghettos of Sydney and Melbourne.

“Bring people in, in small numbers and we can digest them into country areas but they’re being pumped into Sydney ghettos and in fact many of these people are demanding that Australians fit in with them rather than the other way around.”

As Australia’s population rapidly rises, Mr Katter holds grave concerns about the ever-increasing cost-of-living pressures, especially on families.
“Australia’s population policy is absolutely disastrous. The price of a house is extremely high, there are virtually no tax deductions for dependent children, nor help grants to enable people financially so they can afford children.
“The ‘DINKS’ as they’re called – double income, no kids - enjoy a disposable income after tax of over $50 000 each. If accommodation is taken out, the ‘DINKS’ are still on over $40,000 each, whilst a family with three kids on one income are on $6000 a year each. It certainly would be a challenge to raise a child on only $6000 a year.
“The solution of course is to treat the full cost of raising a child as a tax deduction, as we did after the War under the banner of ‘Populate or Perish’.
“To say that a stay-at-home Mum or Dad of three kids is not a full-time employee is simply a lie. It’s a full-time employee that also has to be paid out of the wage-earning spouse’s wage, after tax is paid. The levying of a 10% charge on all imports would enable the stay-at-home spouse’s wage (with three kids) to be a tax deduction.

“I think that we’ve got to give young people a fair go, particularly young women genetically programed from the dawn of time to motherhood. The great freedom of modern society enables them to pursue a job and a career as well but the realities of childcare costs and the brutal unfairness of the tax system that puts the same tax regime upon a parent supporting four dependents and serving their country in continuing the population level of the nation. They get punitively taxed while we ‘DINKS’ (I am now one that my children have grown up) get the biggest of golden handshakes from the taxman.”
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