In recent years, Sudanese nationals have become the largest beneficiaries of Australia’s offshore humanitarian programme which grants permanent visas under the ‘refugee’ and ‘special humanitarian programme’ (SHP) categories. Since 2002-2003, a total of 19,401 visas were granted to Sudanese refugees and an estimated 24,000 people of Sudanese origin now live in Australia. With growing community concern about the behaviour of the refugees, Federal Cabinet will soon consider a proposal from Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews to reduce the intake from Horn of Africa nations. Australia’s humanitarian program has allowed thousands of Sudanese refugees to come to Australia in recent years. But there are growing doubts about the wisdom of the decision, especially with the rise of gangs of Sudanese youths and drunk drivers. A Sunday Herald Sun survey of 400 cases at magistrates’ courts across Melbourne found that disproportional part of offenders came from the Horn of Africa and the Middle East — many of them refugees — about 20 times the representative proportion of the population.
A high-profile court case this week highlighted the crime spree of a Sudanese man, Hakeem Hakeem, 21, who raped two teenage girls and an elderly women in a drunken, drug-fuelled episode. The biggest problem in Melbourne at the moment are the gang wars between Sudanese and Vietnamese immigrants. Sudanese elders blamed failures in Australian welfare and education systems for crimes in the community. The major cause of crime and restlessness in the community was disadvantage, said Mr Jago A****jak, elder of Melbourne’s 7000-strong Sudanese community. Large families did not receive adequate housing, with several children sharing small rooms. Children struggled at school because they only had nine months to learn English before being put in classes based on their age, rather than ability. Parents had to settle for lower-paid jobs, Mr A****jak said.
The overall level of immigration has grown substantially during the last decade. Net overseas migration increased from 30,000 in 1993 to 118,000 in 2003-04. DIAC states that the migration program for 2004-05 has 120,000 places available for migrants. In April 13, 2005, Australia announced that it will take an extra 20,000 skilled migrants in 2005-06 to help meet labour force needs. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said that between 130,000 and 140,000 non-humanitarian migrants would be taken in 2006. Some in Australia have expressed concern that skilled Asian migration is being used as a solution to the current shortage of skilled labour in Australia, as opposed to training Australian workers.
AUSTRALIA is facing its worst drought in 1000 years, state and federal leaders have been told. A working group of state and federal public servants will report back by December 15 on the plans to secure water supplies during the 2007-08 water year, which commences on June 1 next year. “Every four days a farmer in Australia is committing suicide,†said one farmer. “I haven’t contemplated that myself, but it destroys my soul.†The UK-based Optimum Population Trust supports the view that Australia, as the driest inhabited continent, is overpopulated, and believes that to maintain the current standard of living in Australia, the optimum population is 10 million (rather than the present 20.86 million), or 21 million with a reduced standard of living.
Australia will have to open its doors to potentially tens of thousands of unskilled migrants to save its smaller Pacific island neighbours from economic ruin, a report commissioned by the Federal Government has found in January 2006. “The Government should consider developing a Pacific unskilled migration window to facilitate migration, especially from Melanesia,†the report says. With about half the Solomons’ population of 525,000 aged under 18, the waste of young lives is - and will remain - one of the country’s most urgent problems. Facing similar youth bulges in their populations, and a paucity of jobs, South Pacific leaders - notably Papua New Guinea’s Michael Somare and Fiji’s Laisenia Qarase - have been lobbying Australia and New Zealand to open up their labor markets. Free-market hardliners argue that by admitting South Pacific workers, Australia would take the pressure off Pacific leaders to reform their economies and improve their governance. Certainly, Australia’s development (and security) ideal must be to help create stable and self-sustaining neighbors.
According to a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the capital of Papua New Guinea has beaten all-comers - again - to take a title that no city on earth would covet. With poverty, crime, poor healthcare and a rampant gang culture, Port Moresby consistently scores highest in the unit’s “hardship†table, meaning it is regarded as the worst place to live among 130 world capitals. Gangs of unemployed young men, known locally as rascals, roam the streets engaging in muggings and gang rape. Newspapers in the South Pacific have been full of accounts of gang rapes of white women in Port Moresby. Tales of their exploits are legion; from bank robberies with M-16 machine guns, to car holdups by mobs armed with machetes. Rape cases are even worse: in one reported incident last year, an injured nurse was dragged away from a car crash to be gang-raped.
“I had trouble buying the idea that, in the 21st century, there were still nomadic hunter-gatherers out there using stone tools and rubbing sticks together to start a fire. But there are.†“There are a handful of places in Papua that are untouched — still Stone Age tribes, still cannibals,†said Michael Behar. In 18 Jan 2007, FUNAI reported that it had confirmed the presence of 67 different uncontacted tribes in Brazil, up from 40 in 2005. With this addition Brazil has now overtaken the island of New Guinea as the country having the largest number of uncontacted tribes. However, large swathes of New Guinea are yet to be explored by scientists and anthropologists and most of the occurences there are not confirmed, due to a lack of safety. The province of Irian Jaya or West Papua in the island of New Guinea is home to an estimated 44 uncontacted tribal groups.
The 2001 Census estimated that by 2050, 68 per cent of all New Zealand children will be non-European, mostly Maori, Pacific and Asian ancestry.
New Zealand’s Maori, Asian and Pacific populations are projected to grow faster than the European population, according to updated 2001-base national ethnic population projections released by Statistics New Zealand. The growth of the Maori and Pacific populations is largely driven by births, which can be attributed to three main factors. Firstly, Maori and Pacific women have higher fertility rates.
During 2000—2002, the Maori and Pacific total fertility rates were 2.6 and 2.9 births per woman, respectively. By comparison, the European and Asian levels were 1.8 and 1.7 births per woman, respectively. Secondly, about one-quarter of Maori births are to non-Mäori women where the father is Maori. A similar proportion applies to Pacific births. Thirdly, the Mäori and Pacific populations have a much younger age structure which provides a built-in momentum for future growth.
The projections indicate that because of different population growth rates, the proportion of New Zealand’s population that identifies with a European ethnicity will drop from 79 percent in 2001 to 70 percent in 2021.
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