increased inward migration to well over 300,000. A significant cause was the scam of education schemes that were really back-door visa programs, with dodgy private providers and some respectable institutions recruiting students with the implied promise of a short-cut to residency or even citizenship.

The current government has clamped down on those arrangements but the annual net migration is still about 250,000 a year. The balance of our immigration has also changed, historically by far the largest group of migrants were from the UK and Ireland but last year for the first time more migrants were of Chinese background than British. Overall more migrants now come from the Asian region and Africa than from Europe and North America, so migrants are more visible on the streets, on public transportyounger than Canada, Cuba, Hong Kong and Singapore.

About 19% of Australians are over 60, the average for Europe is 22%, for western Europe it’s 24%, Sweden 25%, Germany and Italy 26%, Japan nearly 30% compared with our 19%. At the other end of the age scale 19% of Australians are under 15, the same percentage as those over 60, that compares with an average of 16.6% for the developed world as a whole and 15% for Europe. In other words, in Western Europe there are many more people over 60 than under 15, in Japan there are more than twice as many, but in Australia there are as many under 15 as over 60. For at least a decade the numbers entering the workforce will be similar to