Dick Smith has blasted Australia’s latest record immigration figures for January as a “disaster for families”, as the federal government faces growing calls to reduce the number of new arrivals to ease pressure on the housing market.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, the legendary Aussie businessman slammed the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released on Thursday, which showed the country brought in a record 125,410 permanent and long-term arrivals in January.
Even accounting for departures, the net increased of 55,330 was the highest January intake ever recorded.
“Every Australian family has a population plan to have the number of children they can give a good life to, but at the rate we are going it means the average Australian family will have less,” Mr Smith told the newspaper.
“The problem is billionaire political donors have a short circuit in their brains, and all they want is unlimited population growth to grow their wealth.”
The outspoken entrepreneur has been one of the most prominent voices calling for a reduction in Australia’s immigration numbers for many years.
While insisting he is “pro-immigration”, he has long argued the “figure should be about 75,000 a year” in line with the long-term average for most of the country’s history up until around the 1990s.
Last month, Mr Smith warned that if immigration continued at current levels Austral...
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