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Canberra Today 15°/18° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Letters / Refugee intakes a long-term drain

MORE bleeding heart rubbish re Australia’s refugee responsibilities  from columnist Michael Moore (CN, June 2).

quillThe world would be better placed using its political resources to stabilise rogue nations so minorities were not persecuted thus creating refugee populations.

The longtitudinal studies of Bob Birrell confirm the unemployment rates for some refugee cohorts after five years in Australia are well over 90 per cent. The annual refugee intakes are a long-term drain on the income support system, housing, education and health services.

The US has, what, 15 times the Australian population but takes just 2.5 times the number of refugees that Australia is taking this year. Per head of population, Australia does more for refugees than almost ALL the countries in this world.

Australia can no longer afford the largess the bleeding hearts want to commit to the refugee resettlement in Australia. We face 1.4 million in danger of homelessness in the next five years, we have 87 per cent of those over 70 living on an age pension alone and below the poverty line, we have massive unemployment when 40 per cent of jobs are anticipated to disappear due to the digital dislocation.

Alternatively, Australia can take on an increased refugee program to satisfy the conscience of the bleeding hearts who are unconcerned about the long-term economic realities of that policy, but it cannot simultaneously ask the government for Medicare and Gonski and disability services reforms et al.

The system provides refugees with their household goods package because they have arrived with nothing (fair enough) but there is no such package for a woman with children who needs to re-establish after leaving a domestic violence situation.

Refugees get more and  better services and programs than disabled Australians. Think on that, Michael  Moore and your ilk, the next time you see one of Canberra’s 1200 homeless sleeping in a park toilet in the winter.

In all my time in Asia meeting “enroute” refugees intending Australia as their destination, I seriously never met one who told me about their persecution in their country of origin, but they did all tell me about the welfare system they would enjoy on arrival.

Don Bach via email

Consorting laws are ‘discriminatory’

ATTORNEY-General Simon Corbell’s proposed anti-consorting laws are totally discriminatory toward the alleged ACT outlaw motorcycle “gangs”, read “clubs”… or the Honda Goldwing or postie bike clubs for that matter.

How is an attorney-general in total freefall, being unceremoniously dumped by his own party faction, allowed to make decisions such as this with his farewell celebration just down the road.

Michael Attwell, Dunlop

Churchillian view of the Budget

MAYBE the ACT Budget can be summed up in the words of Winston Churchill in 1909: “Governments create nothing and have nothing to give but what they have first taken away. You may put money into the pocket of one set of Englishmen, but it will be the money you have taken from the pockets of another set of Englishmen, and the greater part will be spilled on the way”.

Cedric Bryant, Watson

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