Dissatisfaction with immigration grows
Immigration has increased considerably since the late 1990s and between 2004 and 2007 the proportion of voters who want the intake to be reduced rose from 34 per cent to 46 per cent. While support for a reduction was highest in New South Wales, this support was already high in 2004. In relative terms support for a reduction rose most strongly in Victoria. This may be because, over the four-year period, Melbourne absorbed a greater proportion of Australia’s population growth than any other region. Despite growing electoral disquiet, the new Labor Government is increasing the immigration program to record levels.
"Seeing" Minorities And Perceptions Of Disorder: Explicating The Mediating And Moderating Mechanisms Of Social Cohesion
Research shows that residents report high levels of disorder in places with greater concentrations of minorities even after controlling for objective indicators of crime or disorder. Less understood, however, are the mechanisms that explain this relationship. Drawing on a survey of nearly 10,000 residents nested within 297 neighborhoods across two cities, we use a multiple indicators-multiple causes model to examine the cues that lead individuals to distort the presence of minorities in neighborhoods. We then employ multilevel models to test whether these distortions influence perceptions of disorder. Furthermore, we assess whether living in a socially cohesive neighborhood mediates and/or moderates the relationship between "seeing" minorities and perceiving disorder. We find that when residents overestimate the proportion of minorities living in their neighborhood, perceptions of disorder are heightened. Yet social cohesion moderates and partially mediates this relationship: Residents living in socially cohesive neighborhoods not only report less disorder than those living in less cohesive communities, but also they "see" fewer minorities when compared with residents living in less socially cohesive neighborhoods. These results suggest that social cohesion is an important mechanism for explaining how residents internalize the presence of minorities in their neighborhoods and how this then leads to perceived neighborhood disorder.
People Policy: Australia's Population Choices
Cooks, a researcher and writer on environmental issues, believes that there are too many people in Australia, and that Australia's population growth can be stabilized in a generation or so by reducing net migration into the country to a few tens of thousands per annum. He supports his environmental,