Oz Conservative, August, 2007
It will be Asian-born voters and not doctors' wives who decide the fate of the PM's electorate ...
The characteristic that separates Sydney inner-metropolitan electorates between Labor and Liberal is not income, or even property prices, but race. The dividing line is an ethnic mix of roughly 20 per cent of the population. Any seat with more than 20 per cent of its voters born in non-English speaking countries at the 2006 census has a Labor sitting member today with one exception - Bennelong.When he became prime minister in 1996, the Asian-born made up 13.7 per cent of Bennelong. By 2001, the percentage had jumped to 18.4 per cent. On present trends, that figure will be approaching 25 per cent by the time the election is run later this year ...
It was the only seat in the nation's top 20 by ethnic diversity to return a
Liberal MP at the last election ...
This trend is also obvious in Melbourne. If you were to compare a map showing Labor seats and areas of the highest concentration of migrants there would be a remarkable overlap ...
So is the Liberal Party taking stock of the situation and slowing down immigration to preserve its long-term viability? Not at all. It's doing the very opposite. The current Government has almost doubled immigration over the last ten years to about 180,000 per year.
Why 180,000? Because this is the magic number that business wants ...
More: Oz Conservative, SBS
