Australians satisfaction with immigration could be
linked to economic stability.
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Australians’ attitudes towards immigration are changing, according to Swinburne sociologist associate professor Katharine Betts.

In an article published on 13 October in the People and Place journal, Betts describes how Australians’ dissatisfaction with immigration is growing, with many people believing our rates of immigration should be reduced.

She has based her conclusions on data from the Australian Election Studies 1987 to 2007 and the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2003 to 2007.

According to the report, immigration was deeply unpopular in the early 1990s: “In 1990 the economy was in recession; not only was the GDP shrinking, unemployment was high and bank interest rates on housing loans had reached 17 per cent…in such a setting some voters could have believed that immigration was bringing in competitors for scarce jobs.”

However voters’ concerns about immigration were muted over the following decade, largely due to the improved state of the economy, low levels of unemployment and the Howard Government’s management of the immigration program. According to Betts’ report, concern about the ageing population may have also played a part.

“An additional factor was anxiety about the ageing of the population…this too may have softened attitudes to immigration. By the late 1990s opposition (to immigration) had fallen substantially,” says the report.

However between 2004 and 2007, Australians’ attitudes turned again. The proportion of voters who want to reduce our intake of immigrants rose from 34 per cent in 2004 to 46 per cent late last year.

From a conventional economic perspective these years were rosy, so it is unusual to see support for immigration decline so steeply in such circumstances. According to Betts’ report: “One possibility is that the immediate negative consequences of rapid population growth became evident to more people: rising house prices and rents, pressure to increase residential densities in previously low-density suburbs, increased congestion on the roads, pressure on hospitals and health services and overcrowding on public transport.”

These changes were felt most 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.”